Directed by: J.A. Howe

4 out of 5

A silent, two-reel short from the early 20s, which I admittedly only saw the survive 8.5 minutes from thanks, firstly, to Youtuber / archivist Dave Glass, but then also by accident: because some jerkos have reuploaded Dave’s clip and titled it as one of the two reels from Alfred Hitchcock’s co-directed silent film, ‘Always Tell Your Wife.’ Sigh.

But anyway!: Watch Your Wife, as rated from this partial glimpse, is a lot of fun: while the first (reel / half?) presumably does some setup that’s lost on me, we pick up with the ability of a duo to disguise themselves demonstrated to a patron. This will look kind of like a quick-change magic act to modern viewers, achieved through mostly seamless cuts in the movie; the successful display convinces the patron to hire the two, and one sets out to a hotel or apartment with disguises and spy gear – based on the title and his actions of peeping into rooms, we can assume he’s there to watch the patron’s wife.

…What occurs from there is kind of befuddling overall, because every male in this movie is madeup in Groucho Marx fashion and looks the same, but visually, it’s very funny, well produced Benny Hill-style nonsense of the investigator getting chased by / chasing a man who was with the wife*, donning and un-donning silly disguises and darting in and out of doors and closets and hampers. The (what I would call) special effects of some explosions and the way the scenes are cut together are honestly great.

There’s some boys-will-be-boys humor to be found with the investigator spending some extra time peeping, and although it’s “innocent” because this was the 20s, I mean, it’s still some dude having giggles over spying on a girl. With that in mind, and allowing that I’m missing whatever context was in the remainder of the movie, this is sincerely incredibly entertaining, and builds up to what feels like a meta ending (although maybe that’s only due to the missing context) that’s a pretty awesome capper on the whole thing.

*Here’s the IMDB plot summary. I was close?