Holding His Own

In this 1916 Christie comedy, the indomitable George Ovey inhabits the persona of 'Merry Jerry,' a picaresque vagabond whose very existence serves as a friction point against the rigid structures of early 20th-century American society. The narrative ignites when Jerry, driven by a mixture of curiosity and desperate proximity, stumbles upon a clandestine circle of law enforcement officers engaged in a spirited game of dice. This subversion of authority—guardians of the peace indulging in the very vices they purportedly suppress—triggers a frantic, kinetic pursuit through a landscape that oscillates between urban grime and pastoral artifice. Jerry’s flight is not merely a physical relocation but a transition into a comedic masquerade; he finds himself on the threshold of a rural homestead. There, the protagonist employs a calculated, performative charm to woo a farm girl, transforming the language of romance into a pragmatic instrument for survival. The film concludes as a meditation on the hobo archetype, where the hunger for sustenance is momentarily sated through the manipulation of social expectations and the sheer audacity of the disenfranchised.