THE BIBULOUS CLOTHIER (1899)
Article 4689 by Dave Sindelar
Date: 11-22-2014
Directed by James H. White
Cast unknown
Country: USA
What it is: Comic trick short

A tailor with a taste for the bottle discovers that his customer’s dimensions change every time he (the tailor) takes a drink.

Here’s another one of those shorts that spent some time on my “ones that got away” before a copy finally became available to me, and in cases like those, I find myself not wanting to complain about the quality of the copy when it may be the only chance I have to see it. However, it has to be said that the muddiness of the print I found compounded with an intrusive logo splashed across the middle of the screen made it difficult to me to figure out what was going on; I had to watch it twice and consult a plot description of the movie. I have to admit the central idea is rather cute, but I wasn’t impressed with the execution, though the fact that I found it hard to see may have been a big factor there. At any rate, this isn’t one of the more impressive silent shorts I’ve seen.