Monkey Business

A gin-soaked tomcat of a husband—crease-laden tuxedo, breath of nightshade and jazz—slips nightly through the beaded curtain of a smoky cabaret where brass laughs louder than marriage vows; his wife, a tempest in lace and vitriol, stalks the gaslit streets with parasol poised like a javelin, hunting the scent of stale perfume back to its source. Between them, abandoned to a cavernous townhouse that creaks like an old man’s knees, their astonishingly pretty infant—golden ringlets, eyes of peridot—crawls straight into slapstick apocalypse: upturned paintpots become azure waterfalls, a bulldog in a bow tie pilots a pram down marble stairs, and the porcelain dinner service reenacts the fall of Rome. The film pirouettes from frenetic bedroom farce to surreal cradle-horror, stitching Keystone chaos to a faint bruise of melancholy; when the wife finally drags her errant spouse home by the ear, the camera lingers on the baby—grinning through a mask of flour—who has, for one immortal moment, been the freest creature in a city of tethered appetites.