A feud between the moonshiners ends with the arrival of revenue agents. They search for the secret hideaway where the mountain people prepare illegal alcohol but end up in deep trouble that ... Read allA feud between the moonshiners ends with the arrival of revenue agents. They search for the secret hideaway where the mountain people prepare illegal alcohol but end up in deep trouble that only a little movie magic can save them from.A feud between the moonshiners ends with the arrival of revenue agents. They search for the secret hideaway where the mountain people prepare illegal alcohol but end up in deep trouble that only a little movie magic can save them from.
Storyline
Did you know
- TriviaLeading lady Alice Lake suffered an injury on the set of this film, according to an article in the December 1918 issue of Photoplay magazine. She was preparing to mount a horse when the horse stepped on her foot. Fortunately, Alice was standing on a sandy surface at the time and no bones were broken, but her foot was sore for weeks afterward.
- Quotes
Revenue Agent: Ungrateful daughter! How dare you strike your father!
Moonshiner's Daughter: I love you!
Alices Father: This is crazy! You beat up my daughter and she jumps into your arms!
Revenue Agent: Look, this is only a two reeler. We don't have time to build up to love scenes.
- ConnectionsFeatured in Silent Clowns: Buster Keaton (2006)
Yet, Arbuckle's comedy was less advanced, or refined, than Chaplin's burlesque. Like Chaplin, he had rid his films of much of the frenetic style of Sennett's Keystone, where the two both began their movie careers. But, while Chaplin was adding pathos and satire to his films at this time, while giving extended time to a fewer number of more elaborated gags, Arbuckle's humor remained very broad and retained the sketchy, knockabout gags of Keystone. "Moonshine" is no exception, yet those antics can still be funny enough, and this particular two-reel short is curious and, I think, especially funny because in it Arbuckle breaks down the fourth wall.
Some of the best comedies of the early silent period are parodies, from the one's that spoof a particular film ("Burlesque on Carmen", for example) or films of a single filmmaker ("Barney Oldfield's Race for a Life") to those that mimic the business of making movies ("Behind the Screen"). "Moonshine" is of the latter, but rather than being a behind-the-scenes type of film taking an inside look at film-making at a studio (of which Arbuckle had been in a few already), it pokes fun at movies and movie-making by itself being disassembled. "Moonshine" has its storyline, but the humor is in and the film is about disrupting that storyline to comment on and ridicule the film itself and the film-making process that goes into making it and other such productions. My favorite joke is when Arbuckle breaks down the fourth wall to explain to another character the reason for the implausibility of a plot turn: "Look, this is only a two-reeler. We don't have time to build up to love scenes."
Most of the self-referential humor, or self-parody, is in the intertitles. The film could have used more visual breaking down of the fourth wall, which could have been accomplished simply with a wink at the camera, for example. The print is also in poor shape, although I thought the flickering monkey climbing shot interesting as a result. Nevertheless, "Moonshine" is an interesting early effort at this kind of self-referential humor. And, it's considerably different from Anita Loos's scenarios and intertitles for Douglas Fairbanks comedies, some of which (such as "The Mystery of the Leaping Fish" and "Wild and Woolly") deconstructed in similar ways and with comical results, but not consistently throughout the picture as in "Moonshine". Aggrandizing upon this tradition, Buster Keaton, who costars in this and many other Arbuckle shorts, would make even wittier and more elaborated reflexive films, such as "The Playhouse" and "Sherlock, Jr."
- Cineanalyst
- Aug 22, 2005
Details
- Runtime23 minutes
- Color
- Sound mix
- Aspect ratio
- 1.33 : 1
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