If you like the film comedies of the silent era, you should try the Roscoe “Fatty” Arbuckle short, Fatty’s Tintype Tangle (1915), directed and starred in by the comic actor.
Arbuckle is forcefully funny and entrancingly winsome as the harried Fatty, who is driven to maniacal behavior by his shrewish mother-in-law. Worse than she, however, is the monster of Misunderstanding, arising in the minds of not only the two women in Fatty’s life but also the jealous husband (Edgar Kennedy) of Louise Fazenda. Fazenda? Yes. Married to movie producer Hal Wallis, she was as gifted for slapstick farce as Arbuckle.
There might be too much reliance on the jealous husband’s mad gun violence in Tintype Tangle, but it’s a zippy, lurching jewel all the same. And only 20 minutes long.
(Available on the DVD, The Forgotten Films of Roscoe “Fatty” Arbuckle.)