Matrimony's Speed Limit
About Matrimony's Speed Limit
Fraunie will not take money from his wealthy fiancée Marian, and he loses on the market. She invents a rich aunt who will leave him a fortune only if he marries by noon. He proposes to every woman he can stop. With minutes left he lies down in front of a car. Marian and a minister are in it, and they marry him on the spot.
Cast & crew
More about Matrimony's Speed Limit
Alice Guy-Blaché produced and directed it at Solax in Fort Lee. Fraunie Fraunholz and Marian Swayne play the couple. It runs 14 minutes. The Women’s Film Preservation Fund paid for early preservation work when the fund opened in 1995.
Themes
Background
Solax was working in Fort Lee in 1913, when that town was still the center of American production.
Making
The noon deadline is Marian’s invention. There is no aunt and no will.
Music
Silent.
Preservation
Survives. The Women’s Film Preservation Fund helped pay for preservation starting in 1995. National Film Registry, 2003.
Notes
- One of the women he proposes to is veiled. A white actress plays her in blackface.
- The Library of Congress added it to the National Film Registry in 2003.
- About 150 of the more than a thousand films Guy-Blaché produced or directed are known to survive. This is one of them.
- In December 2018 Kino Lorber put it on the first disc of the six-disc set Pioneers: First Women Filmmakers, made with the Library of Congress and the British Film Institute.
Awards
- National Film Registry (2003)
Scenes
- Fraunie proposes to one woman after another as noon gets close.
- He lies in the road, and the car holds Marian and a minister.
Also available
- Kino Lorber, Pioneers: First Women Filmmakers (2018), disc 1
