Australian
Screen

Clip description

Fatty and his friends are being chased by an irate Italian man after Fatty hit a cricket ball through his window. Constable Claffey (Leonard Durell), who bowled the ball, pretends to be uninvolved, after hiding with ‘Seasy’ (Billy Ireland), the smallest member of Fatty’s gang. Fatty (‘Pop’ Ordell) tries to make a getaway dressed as a girl, but a dog unmasks him. Fatty hides at the stable where Hector is being prepared for his big race. Fatty’s father is glad to pay for the broken window when the policeman explains how good the hit was.

Curator’s notes

The film makes good use of real locations in the then mean streets of Woolloomooloo, the same streets in which Raymond Longford had filmed much of The Sentimental Bloke eight years earlier. There’s a real sense of how poor the neighbourhood is, both in the way the children are dressed and the way they behave. The depiction of the comical migrant is interesting too. He’s never identified (nor is the actor named in the titles, as most of the others are) but his exaggerated moustache would have been the first clue to a contemporary audience. This was confirmed by the comical Italian-English title: ‘Fatta de Finn’ etc. There aren’t many depictions of migrants even in modern Australian cinema, even fewer in the silent era. It’s clear that this is not a complimentary depiction, either. The Italian is denigrated for not understanding that cricket is important, for being greedy and ultimately, too stupid to realise when he’s being ridiculed. On the other hand, the film ridicules virtually all adults, but in a relatively gentle way.