So the first thing about this that’s surprising is, it’s not on Hulu, it’s on Youtube… because it’s in the public domain. And yes, it’s from 1927 but I really honestly didn’t think that any movies were in the public domain, so yay, that’s cool.

That’s about where the coolness ends, though, because this is not a good movie. It is, apparently, an incredible technical triumph in the way it moved the camera, and to some extent you can tell that even now — the way it uses double exposures and camera movement is visually interesting by modern standards, and it’s totes easy to believe that it would have been mind-blowing at the time, as it apparently was. (This is by the guy who made Nosferatu, so he was apparently a major early director.)

But this isn’t just a content-less visual exercise, it has characters (sort of: Their names in the credits are things like “Man” and “Woman”), and alas, it has a plot. I’m going to spoil the plot, because you probably shouldn’t watch this movie for the plot anyway, so stop here if you want to watch it and be surprised, although I warn you you’re making a mistake.

Okay, so here we go:

Spoilers

The dude is a farmer in a rural… farming town, I guess? He’s married, with a young kid. BUT, there is a wanton hussy from the big city in town, and she has seduced him. His wife knows this, and cries a lot.

Hussy wants the farmer to join her in the city, and he’s all, but what about my wife? And she’s all, oh you have to kill her, I recommend drowning. And he’s all, hmm, okay, seems legit, we’ve got a plan!

So the next morning, he takes his wife out on the boat and says they’re going to go across the lake/river/whatever-it-is. They get out in the middle, and he stands over her menacingly, clearly intending to kill her. BUT CHURCH BELLS RING, and he can’t do it, so he angrily rows to the other side.

The wife runs away (as one would), and… catches a train that’s passing by for some reason. He jumps on the train, too, all “hey, calm down, I’m not going to kill you (anymore),” but she’s for some reason all crying and not super-happy? Ladies, amirite.

So they get to the city, where holy shit if that is an accurate representation of how traffic worked in 1927, they must have had 3,000 people killed per day, because people are just randomly walking in front of cars non-stop. But anyway, he buys her flowers, and then they crash a wedding, and the priest is all “and you promise to protect her from harm” and the farmer dude in the back pews with his terrified wife is all “OH HOLY SHIT I’VE BEEN DOING THIS ALL WRONG” and breaks down in tears, and then she forgives him, and they go off to have a wacky day of fun.

They go to a hair salon where he gets a shave, and almost shivs a dude who was hitting on his wife. They go get their picture taken. They go to a carnival/fair, where — this is the weirdest part of the movie — he throws balls at targets that release piglets from cages, which then slide down a slide. The piglets, not the cages. I find this very odd, but maybe piglet-slide ball-throwing was a big thing, back in the day?

Anyway, a piglet escapes, and there’s a hilarious bit of slapstick where the piglet gets drunk and goes through a ballroom ‘n’ shit, and then the farmer catches it, and the band strikes up a country dance that he dances with his wife. This scene goes on for a whole musical number.

They have dinner, and then they head back home on their boat, their marriage revitalized and that whole murder thing all forgotten. Yay!

BUT WAIT, SUDDENLY A STORM COMES UPON THEM! The boat overturns, oh no! We cut to later, when the dude has washed up on the shore, but where is the wife? The village sends out a search party, and after a while, they come on some of her stuff… but she’s not there. OH NO SHE IS DEAD, WHAT.

So now the hussy is all, ka-ching, plan went off smoothly, because she doesn’t know about their piglet-dancing, right. So she goes off to the farmer’s house for makeout times, and he’s all, OMG YOU ARE HORRIBLE, and then she runs away, and he chases her, and begins choking her to death, because if you’re going to start a day with a near murder, might as well finish it with another one, right?

BUT WAIT, shouts from the village! They found the wife, and she is alive! He throws the half-choked hussy to the ground, and goes to find his wife, yay! Everyone is happy, the hussy leaves town dejectedly, and the farmer and his wife end on a kiss and they live HAPPILY EVER AFTER and I’m sure he never commits violence against her ever again because that seems plausible.

It’s a bad story, and it was made by a bad society that believed bad things. Unlike the last two of these movies, this one is only worth watching as a historical artifact, and is not in itself enjoyable. Not recommended.