A comedy inspired by the Alphonse and Gaston comic strip, features two overly polite Frenchmen (Arthur Johnson and Charles Avery) whose minor dispute over an olive escalates into a mock duel. The film satirizes early 20th-century social decorum through exaggerated gestures and slapstick humour.
Restored in 2022 from a 35mm positive made from the original nitrate negative, preserved at the MoMA, the restoration addressed chemical decay and surface damage. The original intertitles were lost, but were reassembled into the film based on the Biograph Production Records and Biograph Bulletins, preserved at the Library of Congress. The restoration work was carried out by Ruxandra Blaga under my supervision.

Tracey Goessel