"Das fidele Gefängnis" or "The Merry Jail" is a German film from 1917, so this one will have its 100th anniversary next year already. And as it is so old already, it should be self explanatory that this is a silent black-and-white film. The writer and director here is Ernst Lubitsch who was in his mid-20s only when he shot this one, but was nonetheless already a fairly experienced filmmaker, even if this was of course still long before his breakthrough in Hollywood and his switch to English-language movies. The original subtitles here are in German and the good thing is that they bring some decent humor to the story and certainly help in understanding the story better. The bad thing is that, just like with so many other silent films, the subtitles are just not frequent enough. We see moving mouths that indicate people talking all the time and still we have no clue what they are saying for the most part. Of course, in many scenes it is not really too relevant, but it still would have been nice. Other than that, this film, despite the experienced cast, also suffers from overacting on some occasions, another major problem in silent films in general. The title is a bit random as this movie is really all about a husband who struggles in being faithful to his wife. The ring references are the best indicator for that. But the wife knows how to deal with him. This is almost 100% comedy, even the romance is not too frequent, despite the beautiful final kiss. Unfortunately, it is really difficult to believe the husband did not recognize his wife on so many occasions and the sub-plots with other characters add very little. As a whole I cannot say I enjoyed the watch too much and this film is really only for the biggest silent film fans. I give it a thumbs-down.
Review of The Merry Jail
