MAX COMES ACROSS (Max in America) (US 1917)
regia/dir, scen: Max Linder. photog: Arthur E. Reeves. cast: Max Linder (se stesso/himself), Martha Early [Martha Mansfield] (Martha?), Ernest Maupain (Victor?), Helen Ferguson, Mattie [Mathilde] Comont. prod: Essanay. anteprima esercenti/trade screening: 06.02.1917 (Loew’s, New York). uscita/rel: 18.02.1917 (Strand, New York). copia/copy: DCP, 16′ (da/from 35mm); did./titles: ROM. fonte/source: Arhiva Nationala de Filme – Cinemateca Romana, Bucuresti.
For Linder’s first film on his new Essanay contract, he took inspiration from his long voyage to America on the French ocean liner S.S. Espagne during wartime, and the very real danger of the ship being sunk by enemy U-boats, as well as the usual joys and tribulations of any luxury steamer trip. Certainly, such a journey was rife with opportunities for gags and comedy, a fact not lost on Linder. When he arrived in Chicago in November 1916, Linder began to order that the Espagne be reproduced board for board and nail for nail in the largest of the Essanay studios available. George K. Spoor, the President of Essanay, acquiesced to the tune of many thousands of dollars. Linder’s set of the lounge on board, complete with grand piano, used the set-on-rollers technology that Charlie Chaplin would later make famous in his Mutual film The Immigrant (1917). Mal de mer and other seagoing antics complicate the narrative, which involves the ship being bombed, Max in his scarlet pajamas not believing the emergency due to a joke between himself and his shipboard friend, and other such comedy situations.
The plot also included the two men’s rivalry over a love interest, played by screen unknown Martha Early, who soon changed her name to Martha Mansfield. Sadly, she is perhaps best remembered today for the fact that her costume caught fire on the set of The Warrens of Virginia (1924), and she tragically died from the burns several days later.
George K. Spoor’s luring of Max Linder to a supposed 12-film contract in 1916 is the stuff of film publicity legend. H. A. Spoor, a close family member and Essanay’s European representative, allegedly found Linder recuperating from a gunshot wound to his lung in a war hospital in the French spa town of Contrexéville, talked him into a $260,000 contract, and shipped him over several months later, after Linder spent some time recovering in Switzerland.
A review by Peter Milne in Motion Picture News suggests that Linder’s first film for Essanay was a dud: “Max Comes Across is handicapped by practically a total lack of story. To cover up this deficit each episode of the picture has been lengthened until the humor of it is considerably diluted.”  Milne observed that “Mr. Linder is still saturated with the continental idea of humor which doesn’t always score with our own country.” Linder was to learn this difficult lesson, but much too late for the success of his Essanay contract. James S. McQuade in the Moving Picture World, however, praised one particular sequence: “The services of Max as a pianist at a special concert given aboard ship affords one of the most mirthful incidents during the voyage. A storm comes up and the piano slides backward and forward across the salon, with Max either in hot pursuit or in quick retreat; but he always contrives to stick to the piano stool, although in its mad gyrations it is sometimes turned upside down.”
Linder had the same opinion of the Chicago weather as Chaplin, but managed to stay in the city to produce his second film, moving to California for the third. He never completed his twelve-film contract for Essanay, becoming gravely ill in the spring of 1917 and traveling back to Paris later that summer. The Essanay experience left a bad taste in his mouth, and in that of George K. Spoor, who had worked so hard to sign him.

MAX ENTRE DEUX FEUX (US: Max, the Heartbreaker; GB: From the Frying Pan into the Fire) (FR 1917)
regia/dir, scen: Max Linder. cast: Max Linder (se stesso/himself), Marcelle Leuvielle (Dora, la bionda/the blonde), ? (Maud, la mora/the brunette). prod: Pathé (cat. no. 7727). riprese/filmed: 1916 (Genève). anteprima esercenti/trade screening: 03.04.1917. uscita/rel: 04.05.1917 (Omnia Pathé, Paris). copia/copy: DCP, 11′ (da/from 35mm, [orig. 580 m.]); did./titles: FRA. fonte/source: Gaumont Pathé Archives, Saint-Ouen, Paris.
Whenever Max Linder was nearing a mental or physical breakdown, he fled to either Switzerland (Chamonix or Montreux) or the French Riviera (Nice or Monte Carlo). Such was his state when he filmed Max entre deux feux, which was most likely filmed in 1916 but not released until the following spring, when Linder was still in America. Pathé often held Linder’s films for later release to keep him on French screens as frequently as possible.
For this period of recuperation, Linder took with him his sister Marcelle, whom he cast as one of the two women vying for his affections in the film. In true Max Linder dandified fashion, he arrives on the Côte d’Azur and decides to woo two women, hopefully without either of them finding out. Max is successful for a while, but his ruse is soon discovered. The ladies decide to engage in a duel to decide who will be Max’s true love, but Max hides high in a tree to observe the proceedings and ends up being the receiver of the gunshot.
The reviewer in the Moving Picture World (30 June 1917) spent more ink proclaiming “the scenic beauty of the Riviera” setting rather than the success or failure of Linder’s comedy: “The comedy element is rather slow in coming, but when it comes Max gets over a full share of laughs.” Certainly, Linder appearing in a Pathé film in the spring of 1917 must have been a bit confusing for audiences, since headlines were busy reporting his activities in America, working under contract to Essanay.

LE PETIT CAFÉ (FR 1919)
regia/dir, mont/ed: Raymond Bernard. scen, adapt: Raymond Bernard, Henri Diamant-Berger, sulla pièce di/based on the play by Tristan Bernard (1912). photog: Marc Bujard, ? Dugord. cast: Max Linder (Albert Loriflan), Henri Debain (lo sguattero/the dishwasher), Jean Joffre (Philibert), Wanda Lyon (Yvonne Philibert, sua figlia/his daughter), Flavienne Mérindol (Edwige), Andrée Barelly (Bérangère d’Aquitaine), Armand Bernard (Bouzin), Francis Halma (Bigredon), Major Heitner (il pianista tzigano/gypsy pianist). prod: Films Diamant-Berger. dist: Pathé-Consortium-Cinéma. anteprima esercenti/trade screening: 15.11.1919 (Ciné Max-Linder, Paris). uscita/rel: 19.12.1919 (Omnia Pathé, Paris). copia/copy: 35mm, 1266 m., 55′ (20 fps); did./titles: FRA. fonte/source: Národni filmový archiv, Praha.
Max Linder returned from the United States in the summer of 1917, in a state of defeat and dissatisfaction due to the terms of his Essanay contract and the relative lack of success his Essanay films had enjoyed. To attempt to reinvigorate his French film career, he chose an adaptation of a popular stage play written in 1912 by Tristan Bernard, Le Petit Café. Bernard’s son Raymond would direct, and Linder’s friend Henri Diamant-Berger would produce.
Although this would be the first screen version of Bernard’s play, its plot surely may have inspired Mack Sennett’s 1915 film Tillie’s Punctured Romance: both films feature a mountain-climbing wealthy patriarch who falls to his death and “missing” heirs who learn of their legacy while working waiting on tables.
Linder plays the missing heir, Albert Loriflan, who finds a job at the Café Philibert. He ignores the beauty and charm of Philibert’s daughter Yvonne (played by American actress Wanda Lyon), and dalliances both old and new haunt Albert at his place of business. A one-night stand with Edwige the violinist (energetically played by Flavienne Mérindol) results in several humorous encounters, culminating in the rejected Edwige presenting her many children to Albert in hopes of gaining his sympathy and “love.” When Albert finally receives his inheritance, after his father’s lawyer and Philibert join together in an attempt to pinch it from him, the lowly waiter is transformed into a well-dressed man-about-town in his off-hours. This quickly results in a romance with well-to-do Bérangère d’Aquitaine, in scenes shot at the Pavillon in the Bois de Boulogne. She later discovers Albert sweeping up at the café, confronts him, and leaves him in disgust. Albert and Yvonne discover each other at last, and he realizes that he doesn’t need money to be a rich man after all.
Perhaps Linder waited to agree to this story until a good five years after Charlie Chaplin’s Caught in a Cabaret (Keystone, 1914) in order not to repeat, gag for gag, Chaplin’s particular success with the story of a waiter who masquerades as a wealthy gentleman in order to woo women above his class. Linder had met Chaplin in Hollywood in 1917, and the two rivals formed a mutual admiration society. If the audience makes the correlations to Caught in a Cabaret or Tillie’s Punctured Romance, Linder clearly intends the film to be an homage, or at least a nod, to his young counterpart and competitor: the first scene is an out-of-context Linder imitation of Chaplin’s Little Tramp — mugging at the camera in what might be a personal message to Charlie himself.
Bernard makes frequent use of the iris-out in the film, a common practice, but perhaps more notable is his use of Max Linder “narrating” in the same frame with the printed titles, as well as sometimes “narrating” at the bottom of the frame with actors and action taking place at the top. And, several years before Chaplin’s A Woman of Paris (1923) and the American works of Ernst Lubitsch, Bernard effectively communicates one of Albert’s overnight adventures (with Edwige) by focusing the camera on his broken umbrella — left outside her house when they arrive in the dark, and still in that same position the next morning.
G. de LaPlane interviewed Linder for the French revue La Rampe in October 1919, shortly before the film’s premiere. Linder had this to say about the production: “I simply wanted to profit from the summer by filming in France. Diamant-Berger offered me a role I have wanted to play for many years, so I accepted. Convinced that the example must be set by the stars, I strove to realize the will of the author and director during three months of friendly collaboration. I have rarely encountered a more attractive role for an actor than that of ‘Albert’ in Le Petit Café. I am happy to have been able to bring it to the screen.”
Louis Delluc reviewed the film in both Paris-Midi (21.12.1919) and Le Siècle (22.12.1919), arguing that if you liked the stage version, you would like the film version. “You will laugh again,” he writes. While he commends the company itself — and Bernard the director — he has much more to say about Linder: “We will notice a real effort in the play of certain lighting and the choice of ‘natural settings’. If we don’t see everything, if we are unaware of such details worth remembering, the fault will be Max Linder’s. He is so dazzling that one wonders if it is not a comedy whose title is Max Linder, all of whose characters are named Max Linder, whose actors are all the unique and innumerable Max Linder. We have never seen him expend so much verve and energy. What fireworks! Humorist, acrobat, dancer, juggler, mime, jeune premier, what isn’t he? This is a role tailor-made for the triumph of all his brilliant gifts. Finally!”
The Linder film was fondly remembered for years. Maurice Chevalier proposed a remake to Paramount, who bought the screen rights and filmed it in Hollywood in 1930 in English and French versions, Playboy of Paris and Le Petit Café, both starring Chevalier and directed by Ludwig Berger. The script still worked; the French version was a smash hit in Paris.

AU SECOURS! (FR 1924)
regia/dir: Abel Gance. scen: Abel Gance, da un’idea di/from an idea by Max Linder. photog: Georges Specht, Emile Pierre, André Raybas. cast: Max Linder (Max), Gina Palerme (Sylvette), Jean Toulout (Comte de l’Estocade). riprese/filmed: 1923. prod: Films Abel Gance. dist: Comptoir Ciné Location Gaumont. anteprima esercenti/trade screening: 17.06 + 26.08.1924. uscita/rel: 24.10.1924. copia/copy: 35mm, 490 m. (orig. 1500 m. ridotti a/cut to 900 m.), 24′ (18 fps); did./titles: FRA, sbt. ENG. fonte/source: BFI National Archive, London.
By the time he considered making a film with longtime acquaintance Max Linder, Abel Gance had completed his masterpiece La Roue (1923), and was about to begin another, the 7-hour epic Napoléon (1927). Rumor has it that Linder made a bet with Gance that he couldn’t make a film in only three days, and that the result was supposedly the 18-minute Au secours!
The plot begins with Linder’s character visiting his gentlemen’s club on the night of his honeymoon and accepting a bet that he can remain in a certain haunted house for exactly one hour, from 11 to midnight. Greeted with various ghouls, phantoms, and scary animals, Linder’s character is only a minute or two away from success when he receives a panicked telephone call from his new wife Sylvette that she is being attacked by some monster. In an emotionally packed scene, Max succumbs easily to tears in his fear for his wife, ends the bet in failure, and runs home to find his wife in no danger. The owner of the haunted house, a club member, has developed this ruse to help pay expenses, because he has yet to lose such a bet.
While the film was a popular failure — in fact, correspondence exists as to the lengths Gance went in his attempts to get it distributed in America at all — it does contain some rudimentary Gance-isms, most notably his use of high-speed montage, negative image, slow-motion, and reverse-motion. For instance, in a scene in which Max is hanging from a chandelier, Gance distorts the image such that a sense of vertigo is effectively created.
Between the end of filming in June 1923 and the film’s release on 24 October 1924, Linder met the woman who would mark his ultimate descent into madness, young Ninette Peters, whom he met in Switzerland while recuperating after his collaboration with Gance. He would first kidnap her, then marry her on 2 August 1923 in the church of Saint Honoré d’Eylau in Paris. Gance was one of the few to receive an announcement of the marriage from both the bride and groom’s families. There was only one film on Linder’s horizon at this point, Le Roi du Cirque / Max, der Zirkuskönig (1924), which he would film at Vienna’s brand-new Vita-Film studios. Linder’s first attempt on the life of his wife and himself would also take place there. His second, ultimately successful, attempt would occur a year later, in the Hotel Baltimore in Paris, on Halloween night 1925.

Lisa Stein Haven