Algorithms are funny old things. After seeking out all the Cretinetti films I could find on YouTube, I suddenly find another one, CRETINETTI’S TWO LOVES, that was posted six years ago. And it’s a good one!
The opening shot creates a nice comic tension since the title clues us in that the window on the right is going to open at some point. And Cretinetti’s flirting is very funny/grotesque.
When, in the next scene/shot, the two loves tumble to each other’s existence, we get a burst of what I’ve called expository pantomime and what Tom Gunning calls gestural soliloquy, and it’s a fine example of the form. Firstly, because Italianate body language comes closer to this conversational semaphore than most national mannerisms (Cretinetti is actually Andre Deed, a Frenchman, but he’s filming in Italy at this point); secondly, because the gestures are directed from one character to another rather than out into the audience (it’s not really soliloquising, I guess); and thirdly because it actually succeeds in putting over an idea. Most of these acts, in Keystone films for instance, flop, because either the mime is interrupting the story to tell us something we already know, or because it fails to convey whatever it is it’s trying to convey. It’s possible that audiences used to be better at picking up the clues.
But here it’s obvious that Cretinetti, that naughty man, is proposing that the rival girls should fight a duel for his, er, hand. And they seem to really like the idea. Returning to his apartment, the comic gathers up his handy epees and duelling pistols and gives us some more gestural soliloquy, which is eloquent, comprehensible, but I have to say a bit redundant. However I think its true purpose is not explicatory but to cement the comedian’s rapport with his audience. I’m not having it, though: the philandering git seems to want one of his girlfriends to off the other, thereby helping him make up his mind and restoring monogamy though a form of natural selection.
All this panto stuff means this movie, an early from 1911, has so far required no intertitles.
You wouldn’t really want Cretinetti’s dastardly plan to work, so it’s satisfying when the duelling ladies inflict more damage on the referee than on one another.
Finally, the filmmakers encounter a plot point that, in their view, can’t be expressed through the medium of arm-waving, so we get this jumbo chunk-o’-text:
“I love both of you. Yet, since I can marry only one, nothing remains for me but to die.”
I dunno, I think Cretinetti could have put that over visually, if pressed.
A couple of very nifty jump-cuts allow our man to hurl himself into the path of an oncoming jalopy, transform into a mannequin as he passes under its tyres, and then turn back into his true self as his heartbroken fiancées drag him off, bemoaning their selfishness, so splash some cold water on his face (a reliable treatment for automobile suicide).
Now, a new plan emerges — each girl wants only for Cretinetti to be happy, so they both want to throw themselves into the river and drown so he can be with the other. In the ensuing struggle — our man isn’t exactly being noble, I think he’s figured out that he’s about to lose both squeezes — he gets knocked into the drink. Cue the ironic ending, where a couple of manly lifesavers haul C from the (rather shallow) water, and the women are overcome with gratitude and, quickly, romantic yearning. The girls convey their admiration for the men’s lustrous moustaches by curling imaginary handlebars on their own upper lips.
Cretinetti is left alone and sodden, his jacket ripped up the back, shambling off chimplike and bereft. A pretty satisfying exploration of modern romance, 1911 style.
shadowplay 
