Those Awful Hats (1909)

People are voting emotionally.

if their story seems completely bonkers, almost like a feverish work of fiction, you ain't heard nothing yet.

I think this is a new genre that they're all sort of working their way through it and haven't got all the kinks worked out yet but it's a genre that works for me.

By the time the dramatic fireworks start popping off, each one feels earned.

You'd never guess this was a D.W. Griffith short if somebody didn't tell you. Griffith's shorts usually weren't THAT short, and they were also usually dramatic. Here Griffith shows his comic side and a Keatonesque flair before there such a thing as Keatonesque.People are sitting in a movie theatre complete with musical accompaniment when not only do some people come in late, but the women have on some ridiculous headgear. Maybe it was appropriate for the time. A commotion is stirred, and finally a way is found to make them remove their hats that, again, I say was Keatonesque. You have a film within a film (it's what the people are watching), a mechanical device that is the hero, and then some guy with an obvious false nose and mustache that just happens to be Mack Sennett, early employer of Roscoe Arbuckle, who was the guy who actually got Keaton interested in film.

This ultra-short film from movie pioneer D. W. Griffith isn't so much a film as a public service announcement. In the early years of cinema there were no restrictions on women wearing hats in a theatre (although men had to remove theirs) a situation that led to some heated moments due to the size of some ladies' bonnets.The film takes place in a tiny cinema, and Griffith makes use of a split-screen technique to show the second film taking place on the cinema's screen. It looks fairly primitive today, but was probably quite effective in its day. As the film unfolds, more and more ladies wearing increasingly outlandish hats take their seats at the front of the cinema, blocking the view of those sitting behind. Mass pandemonium almost breaks out until the kind of bucket contraption used by diggers descends from the ceiling to remove one lady's hat before accidentally picking up a second lady who is still attached to hers.It's a fairly amusing picture, and Griffith, who also wrote the piece, displays a sense of humour that he is not normally noted for, but at two-and-a-half minutes it's definitely as long as it needs to be.

Early film short directed by D.W. Griffith; it might be more accurately called a "short short" at barely three minutes. It is entertaining, though. The director is saying, "Ladies, please remove your hats!" Why? Because you can't match a movie when some woman parks herself in front of your seat, and leaves her HUGE hat on.There are some early silent film stars in attendance - obviously Flora Finch, Linda Arvidson, and Florence Laurence. Mack Sennett is the man with the finny nose and the checkered suit. The men are not easy to identify, with their backs turned; but, that must be Robert Harron in the lower right of your screen, going crazy over "Those Awful Hats".The film really MOVES… all the time, there is movement ALL OVER the screen. Ms. Arvidson recalled, in her autobiography, "How many times that scene was rehearsed and taken! It grew so late and we were all so sleepy that we stopped counting. But pay for overtime evolved from this picture." ***** Those Awful Hats (1/25/09) D.W. Griffith ~ Flora Finch, Mack Sennett, Robert Harron, Linda Arvidson

While I have enjoyed some of D. W. Griffith's full-length films, he did have a tendency to drag some of these movies out way too long as well as over-dramatize them from time to time. It's because of this that this short film is so unique! At only three minutes, it's a short and tidy little tale constructed in order to combat the growing size and complexity of women's hats in 1909. While the print from Kino Films was a bit poor in places, the movie was still worth seeing and quite entertaining. Many ladies crowd the tiny theater and the men are beside themselves trying to see the movie with all the huge hats. And, since the ladies WON'T take them off, someone at the theater has created a VERY unique way to combat the problem! See this film--it's funny and only takes up three minutes in your busy lifestyle!