"Mabel's Strange Predicament" is a silent short that is already over a century old as this one was released in 1914. You will find several big names in this one like Al St.John, Chester Conklin and of course Charlie Chaplin. And the female actor who holds her own very well against these established gentlemen is a young woman in her early 20s, who has been in many many films already and can be called one of the biggest female stars. Her name is Mabel Normand and if you read her name in the title in a Chaplin film and see that she also directed everybody here, you can see how influential she was. Mabel is definitely my favorite female from her era and I guess you can also cut the "female". It says here on IMDb that this b&w film runs for 17 minutes, but all the versions I found went on for 11.5 roughly, so they may have raised the fps value. It doesn't matter though as this is a good watch in any case. Charlie's lobby shenanigans end before they repetitive and Mabel is as charming as it gets. The romance story mix-up is a bit over-the-top, but still tolerable. The ending is kinda sweet. Sure more frequent intertitles would have helped as with 99% of other old silent films, but it is not so bad that you don't know what's going on luckily. Fairly entertaining watch and good job by everybody involved including Austrian writer Henry Lehrman. I can see why this one is still so popular today, even if I may be a bit biased with my huge crush on Mabel Normand. Still I believe you should check it out as I was pretty well-entertained here.
