Hat Trick

Montreux Comedy Festival 2017 - Best Of(fr)

The Return of Peter Grimm(en)

"Old Peter Grimm makes his ward Katie promise to marry his nephew Frederik [ sic ] and then dies. Frederik proves to be a scapegrace and Peter's spirit returns to right matters and finally succeeds in doing so by communicating with Jimmie who is in a delirium." ( Moving Picture World, 20 Nov 1926, p164.) Peter thus thwarts selfishness and greed and rewards virtue.

A Hero for a Night(en)

Cab driver falls for rich model.

Naughty But Nice(en)

Naughty But Nice was based on The Bigamists, a story by Lewis Alen Brown. Gawky country girl Berenice Summers (Colleen Moore) is catapulted head-first into High Society when her Uncle Seth (Burr McIntosh) strikes oil. Shipped off to a fancy boarding school, Berenice suffers at the hands of her snooty classmates, but the last straw comes when she's publicly humiliated by local wise-guy Paul Carroll (Donald Reed).

Dancing Lady(en)

Janie lives to dance and will dance anywhere, even stripping in a burlesque house. Tod Newton, the rich playboy, discovers her there and helps her get a job in a real Broadway musical being directed by Patch. Tod thinks he can get what he wants from Janie, Patch thinks Janie is using her charms rather than talent to get to the top, and Janie thinks Patch is the greatest. Steve, the stage manager, has the Three Stooges helping him manage all the show girls. Fred Astaire and Nelson Eddy make appearances as famous Broadway personalities.

My father's car(mg)

Two brothers in Madagascar have to repair their father's car before they get caught.

The Butter and Egg Man(en)

Peter Jones is a young man who arrives on Broadway from Chillicothe, Ohio, hoping to invest $20,000 in a play and turn a profit sufficient to buy a local hotel back home. He is conned by Joe Lehman and Jack McClure into backing their play with a 49-percent stake. The play opens out-of-town in Syracuse and bombs. Lehman and McClure want out, and Jones buys them out

Arne Meets Death(sv)

The year is 1995. It knocks on the door of 'Greedy Arne' Nyman's dilapidated house. It is Death who has come to take him. Greedy Arne is not worried of Death, he is more afraid of door-to-door sellers, but first he has something vital to deal with. It will be the beginning of a walk with Death by his side, which continues in an old rusty Volvo 240.

The Applecalypse(en)

After Eve causes a cataclysmic event that sucks all apples into a dark void, the two surviving apples must recruit the help of Steve Jobs and Isaac Newton to save the Garden of Eden.

How the Office Boy Saw the Ball Game(en)

An office boy plays hooky from work so he can watch a ballgame perched high atop a telephone pole. Includes footage of an actual baseball game as if seen through a telescope.

Hello Shalaby(ar)

A comedic play about a struggling theater cast seeking funding to show one of its plays. They stay in a hotel waiting for the financier, but they don't have money to pay the hotel bill, thus getting them into troubles.

Countess María(es)

Honeymoon(en)

Two men are rivals for the same girl. When she finally agrees to marry one, the other--appearing to be magnanimous in defeat--presents his former rival with a beautiful German Shepherd dog as a wedding present. It turns out, however, that he had an ulterior motive--he had trained the pooch to allow absolutely no one to get near the young woman. Complications ensue.

Silken Shackles(en)

The wife of an American diplomat falls in love with a young Hungarian violinist.

Sweet Daddies(xx)

Stage comedian Patrick O'Brien is fired from his job because of his drinking celebration of his son, Jimmy, graduating from college. After the show he meets his son on a cabaret and there meets Abel Finklestein and his daughter, Miriam, and the two fathers form a business alliance, suspected of being bootlegging. They are arrested but are released after it is found they were importing molasses - but Miriam has to promise to marry Sam Berkowitz to secure the release. Jimmy and both fathers are unhappy with this turn of events. This film is lost.

Number, Please?(en)

While at an amusement park, trying vainly to forget the girl he has lost, a young man sees the girl with her new boyfriend. When her dog gets loose in the park, both suitors have to help her catch it. Then, the girl's uncle, a balloonist, gives her a pass for two in his balloon, provided that her mother approves. She then offers to take along the first of her admirers who is able to get her mother's consent.

The Untamable Whiskers(fr)

The background of this picture represents a scene along the beautiful river Seine in Paris. A gentleman enters, and taking a blackboard from the side of the picture, he draws on it a sketch of a novelist. Then, standing in the centre, he causes the living features of his sketch to appear in the place of his own, which is utterly devoid of whiskers. The change is made so mysteriously that the eye cannot notice it until one sees quite another person in the place of the first. Again another sketch is shown on the board, this one being that of a miser; then an English cockney; a comic character; a French policeman, and last of all, the grinning visage of Mephistopheles. It is almost impossible to give this film a more definite description; suffice it to say that it is something entirely new in motion pictures and is sure to please. (Méliès Catalog)

The Living Playing Cards(fr)

A Sailor-Made Man(en)

An idle, wealthy playboy foolishly joins the Navy when the father of the girl he wants to marry tells him to get a job to prove himself worthy.

The Inauguration of the Pleasure Dome(en)

Lord Shiva wakes. A convocation of magicians in the guise of figures from mythology; a masquerade party at which Pan is the prize. The wine of Hecate is poured: Pan's cup is poisoned by Shiva. Kali blesses the assembly as a bacchic rite ensues.