Those Awful Hats

Another of my recent DVD purchases was this two-disc set of D.W. Griffith shorts and, wanting to do a movie review but not wanting to sit through a full movie, I decided to watch the three-minute short Those Awful Hats.

Apparently, this one was done when the studio wanted something to play to patrons to remind them to remove their hats as a courtesy to other paying customers. A bunch of people are watching a movie, when top-hatted Mack Sennett and his female companion in a ladies' hat of the day come in, causing a disruption. More women with increasingly elaborate hats come in, until the problem is solved in a rather unique and hilarious way. The short made me think of a couple of later shorts, Robert Benchley's A Night at the Movies and the Pete Smith short Movie Pests.

That's it, which understandably isn't much since the movie is a touch under three minutes. But the joke works, and the special effects (the movie on the screen that the audience is watching and one other) are surprisingly good for a movie from 1909. My understanding is that Griffith donated copies of a lot of his stuff to the Museum of Modern Art, which is why his silents survive when so many others don't. The DVD case art doesn't say if that's the origin of these prints, but the one on the DVD was surprisingly good considering the age, and one of the reviews at Amazon says that's the case for all but one of the shorts. (Bizarrely, many of the "reviews" seem to be for a DVD of some children's movie, but I couldn't figure out what movie since they're all one-liners.)

The box set has two DVDs, each on its own spindle; since these movies are all one- and two-reelers you can't expect each film to have its own DVD and that would be a massive waste. Still, the packaging is adequate. Of the shorts, I think I'd already seen and blogged about A Corner in Wheat, but most of them are new to me.

Those Awful Hats, having been made in 1909, is in the public domain, so there are a bunch of copies on Youtube. The one I linked to has almost the same running time as the one on the Kino DVD set which is why I linked to it; I didn't actually watch to see if the print is as good.