The Wooden Leg

The imagery played with the eye in this film, forcing you to try and hold everything in balance. Although it only lasted 3 minutes, it was a seminar diluting a thesis into a short space of time. Nothing actually happens in it.

I saw this short film in October 1998 at the Cinema Muto festival in Italy. They screened a print on loan from the Metropolitan Museum of Art in NYC. According to the festival's programme, this print had "missing titles" ... however, apart from an opening title and credits, I doubt that this movie ever had titles in the first place: the story is quite simple and doesn't need explanatory text.

IMDb's synopsis is accurate. I wonder if this movie inspired Charley Chase's classic "His Wooden Wedding", in which newlywed Chase is tricked into believing that his wife has a wooden leg.

I'm giving a great deal of slack to the time period in which this movie was made, for a premise that is nowadays quite offensive: namely, that an amputee is unsuitable for marriage. I once had a mutually fulfilling relationship with a one-legged (RAK) lady who had no lack of male suitors.

As I was watching the young and beautiful Florence Lawrence in this brief film, I couldn't help being reminded of her tragic suicide (by a very painful method). More happily, I got a brief laugh from seeing burly slack-jawed Mack Sennett in Lon Chaney territory, as a man with only one leg. I'll rate this movie 7 out of 10.