Alice Guy Blaché | Cousins of Sherlocko / 1913

double indemnity

by Douglas Messerli

 

Alice Guy Blaché (writer and director) Cousins of Sherlocko / 1913

 

In her 1913 Cousins of Sherlocko Guy Blaché creates another situation of male doubling, but ups the ante just a bit by doubling it in several other ways as well.

        The police are on the trail of the dangerous highway robber Jim Spike (Fraunie Fraunholz)—formerly known as Jim Nail—the chief of the detective bureau putting two new detectives on the job of “nailing” the criminal before they come back that day.

        Before they even begin to determine where the villain might be hiding, they accidentally spot a young man, Edgar Carroll (also Fraunholz), who’s just been kicked out of his lover Jane Ellery’s (Sally Crute) house by a father outraged that the young man has been found sitting in his living room with his beloved daughter. Edgar, it’s obvious, looks precisely like Jim Spike, whose picture is pasted on the cover the daily newspaper that morning, and his father clearly confuses the innocent boy with the criminal the police are after.

        Spotting him leaving the Ellery house, the sleuths deduce immediately that they have discovered their man, hitching a ride on the tail of the car that takes him away.

        Recognizing his predicament, Edgar visits an old college friend, explaining to him the situation and seeking his help. With the man’s mother, the trio cook up a way to outsmart these pedestrian Sherlocks. Dressing up as women, they leave the house, catching the eyes of the amateur detectives and openly flirting with them as well as another detective—so he later claims—who accidently comes upon the scene.

        When the detectives finally get up the nerve to make their sexual move they discover the two smoking Havana stogies, immediately, in their affront to female behavior, arousing their suspicions. The two quickly escape; but when, soon after, Edgar’s wig falls from his head, the masqueraders are captured and taken to the police station, where Edgar is thrown in jail while his friend, amazingly enough, is still thought to be his girlfriend and is treated deferentially as a female.

        Meanwhile, Jane has determined to solve her lover’s problems by tracking down the real Jimmy Spike, which, without any logic, she successfully does on a ferry presumably to Staten Island or Brooklyn (“willing suspension of belief” is often necessary in these works). Pretending to be attracted to him, she leads him on until she spots a local cop on his beat and screams that she is being raped, he coming to the rescue whereupon she hands him over as the criminal for whom they have all been searching.

        In the last scene, Jane’s father arrives to declare his daughter missing at the same moment the policeman brings in Jimmy and Jane, who demand the police release Edgar. When they bring Edgar out of his cell, still dressed partially in his female attire, everyone is utterly astounded, since Jimmy and Edgar look like a perfect match. All laugh, but neither Edgar nor his friend bother to remove their clothing, and Edgar’s friend appears to be openly flirting with Jane’s father before the film sputters to its delicious end.

 

Los Angeles, May 20, 2021

Reprinted from My Queer Cinema blog and World Cinema Review (May 2021).