College Chums
About College Chums
A young man proposes in a parlor. In a park, his fiancée, walking with her mother, sees him flirting with another woman. She telephones. He says the woman was his sister and she says she is coming to meet her. A college friend agrees to dress as the sister. The visit makes the lie worse.
Cast & crew
More about College Chums
Edwin S. Porter directed and photographed the comedy for Edison. Edward Boulden, Miss Acton, and Katherine Griffith are named among the players. A Cinema History dates the release to December 1907 and times a viewing copy at 11 minutes. The picture is built in five shots. One of them is a split screen.
Themes
Making
Porter staged the lie, the phone call, and the friend in a dress as one continuous comedy instead of a chase.
Look
Porter photographed the five-shot comedy, including the split-screen telephone with animated text.
Technique
The phone conversation is one composite: two circular views, a city model between them, and moving letters for the dialogue.
Preservation
The film survives, including a copy on Wikimedia Commons.
Notes
- The telephone shot puts the man and the woman in circular vignettes, with a model city between them.
- Their words are animated letters that travel across the gap. When they quarrel, the letters crash in the middle.
- The telephone call carries a main part of the story and is staged as one composite instead of cuts between the two rooms.
- The last shot runs more than eight minutes and is several takes joined so the joins are hard to see.
- A copy is on Wikimedia Commons.
Scenes
- She sees him in the park with another woman and calls him on the telephone.
- Animated words travel between the two circular portraits and collide when the quarrel peaks.
- The college friend puts on women's clothes to play the sister.
