Archive Watch
Poster for The Unappreciated Joke (1903)

The Unappreciated Joke (1903)

1903 · Silent film · dir. Edwin S. Porter

  • Comedy
Watch now On the Internet Archive

Synopsis

Scene, interior of a street-car. A stout man enters and sits down alongside of a friend and proceeds to read a comic paper. He shows a joke in the paper to his friend, and the both laugh heartily. The friend leaves the car, and his absence is not noted by the stout man. An elderly matron takes the seat. Without looking up the stout man shoves the paper in front of the face of the old lady, thinking his friend is still there.

Synopsis from OMDb

Details

Director
Edwin S. Porter
Studio
Edison Manufacturing Company
Released
1903-08-08
Language
English

Subjects on the Internet Archive

Cast & crew

Reviews on the Internet Archive

★★★★ · surprisingly modern looking · robcat2075 · 2009-04-26

I don't mean the clothes, or set, but the interactions between the characters. This could easily be a sketch on a Sid Caesar show or from an "I Love Lucy" Episode. Typically bad early film framing. Would it have killed them to center the two main characters more?

★★★★ · Product Placement · sdion · 2010-04-28

Notice the signs above the actors... all Edison products... Instead of product placement it's flat out advertising in 1903... I thought it was worth noting

★★★ · A chaser · jonc · 2009-04-27

That's actually not a bad gag. This would have been a "chaser" at the end of a Vaudeville show, shown as the audience filed out. Caesar could very well have performed a variation of this skit in his Vaudeville career. Makes me think more of the Marx Brothers,though, with Harpo and Chico being the players.

More like this