BFI

First announced in James Williamson's catalogue for July 1905, Brown's Half Holiday is a knockabout comedy in a very similar vein to The Dear Boys Home from the Holidays (1904) and Our New Errand Boy (1905). It largely consists of a series of slapstick scenarios involving amateur DIY performed by the hapless Brown under the constant supervision of his wife, who manages to remain immaculately groomed throughout the process of reducing her husband (and their daughter in turn) to grimy, bruised wrecks.

Sadly, much the same adjectives are true of the print in the National Film and Television Archive, the only one known to survive, which is marred by numerous unintended jump cuts and some serious print damage to individual frames. This makes it hard to tell whether the jarring leap in continuity from the scene where Brown falls into the bath to the one where he examines the flue (having changed into neatly pressed jacket and trousers) reflects the original editing plan, as Williamson's synopsis (attached) wouldn't necessarily have restricted itself to onscreen action.

That aside, the action is coherent enough for Williamson's supplied dialogue not to be necessary for audience comprehension - like virtually all his other films of the period, it has no explanatory intertitles.

Michael Brooke

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