User Reviews

When a German speaking tourist get on a local trolley, he asks everyone how to get where he's going. Finally the conductor tells him to just follow Mrs. C.J. Williams. When he does so, everyone gets upset.

It's a dull comedy because they run the set up to the mistake four or five times to make sure that the dullest member of the audience gets what is going on. That was the common idea of comedy at the time, and it's why Keystone, with its clearly marked stereotypes, fast cutting and not repeating every joke until everyone grew bored, was so popular. No one likes being talked down to, and that's what the slow, dull comedies of the era, like this one, did.

This amusing short comedy is creative and nicely paced. Director C. Jay Williams had a nice touch for the one-reel comedies of this kind that were common to the era. His style is not flashy, but the stories can be pretty creative, and he has a very good sense of timing in his story-telling.

The story follows a German immigrant who cannot speak English, and who as a result gets into all kinds of difficulties just trying to get across town by streetcar. Herr Müller's predicament is treated as an amusing situation full of comic possibilities, but at the same time the good-natured but helpless German is portrayed sympathetically, and there is something of an implicit suggestion that viewers ought to be sensitive to anyone with similar problems whom they might happen to meet.

The Henry Otto scenario is pretty clever in getting a lot out of the possibilities without ever seeming forced or labored. The cast (which includes Williams's wife) does a very nice job in remaining lively throughout the story without ever exaggerating too much. The story features some light but funny turns, and it is enjoyable to watch.

A pleasant, laughable comedy of a German's predicament due to the fact that he can't speak English. An Irish conductor gives him a crosstown transfer and then tells him to follow a woman who also has one. There's a little time left before it expires, and the woman does, or tries to do, some shopping. It is another good picture to the credit of Producer C.J. Williams, and was written by Henry W. Otto. Frank A. Lions gives a touch of thoroughly German good nature to the leading character. Mrs. C.J. Williams is the indignant woman, and the car conductor is Edward O'Connor, a good type. - The Moving Picture World, March 15, 1913