Max in a Taxi (1917)
Directed by Max Linder

Film Review

Max in a Taxi was the last of three comedy shorts which the great silent film comedian Max Linder made for the Essanay Film Manufacturing Company, the American studio that had previously employed Charlie Chaplin.  Linder's previous two films for Essanay - Max Comes Across and Max Wants a Divorce - had both been commercial and critical failures but his third film proved to be moderately successful.  Unfortunately, Linder had by this stage failed to convince his producer George K. Spoor that he was a sound business proposition and so his contract was terminated and he returned to France.

Of the six films that Linder made in America, Max in a Taxi is arguably the one where the comedian most successfully rekindles the spontaneity and exuberance of his early French films.  The film begins with a classic Max gag - our hero attaches a horse the wrong-way-round to his carriage, so that the horse must walk down the highway backwards.  In the next scene, Max (under the influence of strong liquor) insists on walking up a flight of stairs backwards, and proceeds to tumble out of an upstairs window, a stunt worthy of Buster Keaton.  Fallen on hard times, Max makes various attempts to kill himself (presaging the comedian's real-life suicide eight years later), before deciding to take a job as a taxi driver, with predictably disastrous results.  After a series of fairly mundane gags (many of which fail to achieve their full comic potential), the film concludes in a hilarious vein, with Max dangling helplessly from a set of telegraph wires - an apt metaphor for his futile attempts to find his feet in America.

Film Synopsis

When he returns home drunk, Max is thrown onto the street by his outraged father.  Homeless and hungry, Max decides to kill himself by lying on a railway track and waiting for a train to run him over.  The train takes an adjacent line, so Max decides to hang himself instead.  This likewise fails, but he comes across an invitation to a society dance.  He gatecrashes the dance and helps himself to the viands provided for the dancers, before catching the eye of an attractive young woman, who invites him to dance with her.  Later, seeing an advertisement in the paper, Max decides to apply for a job as a taxi driver.  He has never driven a car before, but he doesn't see why that should cause a problem...