Mary Jane's Mishap

George Albert Smith directed this rather silly comedy starring his wife playing a bucktoothed maid who lights the stove with paraffin. It is a very creative film for 1903 and using special effects and some very funny acting, it works very well.

The story-telling technique is also pretty important. While many films of the day (Melies's included) seldom used any sort of cutting to closeups and were normally very stagy, this short frequently cuts to closeup views of Mary Jane, such as when she accidentally rubs shoe-polish on her upper lip. This use of cutting makes it easier to see her facial expressions, which makes it all the more amusing. Laura Bayley does overplay the part a lot, but this sort of overacting was typical and is part of what makes the film work even today. D. W. Griffith is mostly known for innovating this kind of filmmaking, but as evidenced by this, Smith is equally important and needs more recognition.

This early British comedy is fairly entertaining on first viewing but doesn't hold up well to scrutiny upon repeated screenings. That's not really a criticism of the film itself as the state of the nascent industry back in 1903. Films were still fairly primitive, the idea that they might tell a narrative instead of simply capturing glimpses of real life still a new one.

Influential Brighton filmmaker George Albert Smith brings plenty of tricks and innovative ideas to this tale of a dotty housemaid (played by his wife) who manages to blow herself up by lighting the kitchen stove with paraffin before returning from the grave to frighten passers-by.

Smith combines long, medium and close shots to tell his tale which looks at first like a variety act before the 'mishap' sparks a quick succession of camera trickery that moves the story onto a supernatural aspect.

This little feature from G.A. Smith is quite entertaining, and it is also nicely put together. Although the props and details are clearly from its own period, it also features a main character who could be at home in any era.

The story is a simple one, starting with Mary Jane (played by Smith's wife) as a kitchen maid who mugs for the camera as she goes about her chores. Although her antics are simple, it does a pretty good job for the era of making most of them work well. Then we see Mary Jane's 'mishap' and its macabre but amusing consequences.

Smith's wife proves to be a decent actress, and she makes her character pretty amusing. The mishap sequence also works well, with a clever special effect, and there is a good final gag. While it's nothing highbrow, it was made with skill, and it is still humorous nearly a century later.

After a mishap with the boot blacking, a young woman uses paraffin to light the stove with fantastic, and fatal, results. George Albert Smith's silly four minute opus was quite a sophisticated film for the time, with scene changes, close-ups, split-screen, dissolves, and special effects (double exposures and substitution splices). Star Laura Bayley seems to be having fun, mugging to the camera with a shoe-polish mustache or prancing around as a ghost. One wonders if the scene of the young woman dramatically exiting the house via the chimney inspired similar scenes six decades later in Disney's 'Mary Poppins' (1964). Watch for the falling boots and the inquisitive cat. Silly fun, then and now.

I watched this film on a DVD that was rammed with short films from the period. I didn't watch all of them as the main problem with these type of things that their value is more in their historical novelty value rather than entertainment. So to watch them you do need to be put in the correct context so that you can keep this in mind and not watch it with modern eyes. With the Primitives & Pioneers DVD collection though you get nothing to help you out, literally the films are played one after the other (the main menu option is "play all") for several hours. With this it is hard to understand their relevance and as an educational tool it falls down as it leaves the viewer to fend for themselves, which I'm sure is fine for some viewers but certainly not the majority. What it means is that the DVD saves you searching the web for the films individually by putting them all in one place – but that's about it.

Casting his wife as the Mary Jane of the title, George Smith produced this engaging and technically impressive comedy. Longer than some of his other films this opens with a few minutes of his wife mugging like a good 'un with some boot polish. She is terrible by modern standards but silent movie acting is a different craft and it requires flamboyance and overacting – which she delivers no doubt. After this we get some good effects as Mary Jane blows herself up leading to what I assume was a moral. However Smith marks himself out again by producing a "Carrie" moment half a century before De Palma was even put on earth.

It is a nice surprise and I'm sure it must have caused quite a stir at the time. Yet again another example of Smith being a pioneer of the art – and not a bad little film at the same time.