Tom, Tom, the Piper's Son

This loose adaptation of the nursery rhyme "Tom, Tom, the Piper's Son" has some amusing moments that make it watchable. It actually could have been pretty good if some of the details had been filmed with more refined technique. In that respect, it mainly suffers from being made before film-makers had developed numerous standard techniques for making sure that the audience would notice everything that they were intended to see.

As in the rhyme, the story starts with Tom stealing a pig, and then he tries to get away with it. The chase sequences that follow have plenty of energy, and they make use of a couple of decent ideas. Some of it gets a bit goofy, and overall it is only fair, but it is good-natured enough to work a lot of the time.

It is the earliest part that could have been better. The opening scene in the street fair is actually pretty ambitious, and it is quite detailed. But everything is too close together, and the characters too indistinct, for the viewer to catch all that is going on, unless you go back and watch it a couple more times. If it had been made just a few years later, and/or with just a couple of changes in technique, the scene (and the movie as a whole) could have been much more entertaining.

There's a fair on in town, with beam walkers and jugglers. Tom uses the distraction to steal a pig. Once alone, he wrestles it for a while -- never a good idea -- and then everyone sets off after the swine thief, turning this into a chase comedy.

It's an elaborate movie for 1905, with more than a dozen actors, a pig, geese, and ducks crowded onto the stage, and several sets, including a chimney through which the pursuers chase the felon, everyone remaining spotless. Although there is no credited director, Wallace McCutcheon is credited as one of the writers, and Billy Bitzer is the cameraman. Between them, they get the job done.

For 1905, the crowd direction is very good, although there are pauses that slow things down. Nonetheless, it's too long and confusing to be enjoyable.

. . . TOM, TOM, THE PIPER'S SON from this inept adaptation. One could make the excuse that the Internet was not as sophisticated in 1905 as it is Today in This Our Modern Twenty-first Century. Be that as it July, even the people listening to this literary triumph when it was first delivered to the public on April 15, 1795, knew that the author was NOT referring to an actual, dirty, squealing swine is his terse verse, but rather to a pastry commonly consumed by the poetry lovers of his day. This point comes clearly across in the best picture using this rhyme, first delivered as "Bullwinkle's Corner" on the American TV program, The Bullwinkle Show, January 28, 1960. The two clueless cops grilling Bullwinkle seem to be throwbacks to the 1905 know-nothing flick.