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There is only one comic incident in the whole of this passage, yet it was necessary to quote it entire because the staging and editing of the business constitutes a highly elaborate build-up to the chair-toppling.
Mr. and Mrs. Topper are involved in a marital quarrel. (Mr. Topper has previously been involved in a rather compromising situation with another girl and Mrs. Topper is on her guard.) Thus while all the terrible things are happening to Eddie, the Toppers are too engrossed in their own troubles to take any notice : this forms an important part of the treatment, as we shall see later. Further, shot 2 has been specially used to establish that Mr. and Mrs. Topper are not in a position to see the treacherous chair. Both these points had to be established, otherwise the first accident would not make sense.
The actual toppling is presented as follows. In shot 3, Eddie walks towards the chair : the spectator knows what will happen if Eddie sits down and is therefore ready for the joke (cf. the bananaskin). Then, just as the chair begins to topple back, Mrs. Topper* starts another totally irrelevant harangue about her husband's infidelity. For about nine feet, after the chair has toppled over, we are made to listen to Mrs. Topper, and only after she has finished do we cut back to Eddie falling down the well. In this way, the editor has made three jokes out of one.
The first laugh comes when it becomes clear that the chair will topple over ; the second, when we see Mrs. Topper blissfully unaware of what is happening ; and the third, as we cut back to the helpless and forgotten Eddie. Now, obviously, all pretence at realism has been thrown to the winds. An accurate cut would have taken us straight from the moment of toppling into shot 4. It would also have been considerably less funny.
After this incident there is a passage which from our point of view is irrelevant and then we are taken through the whole procedure again. This time the spectator knows what is going to happen from the very beginning and the scene is made utterly farcical. (Note, for instance, the sheer lunacy of Mrs. Topper's remarks over 8 and 9, and the accelerated rate of cutting.) From the moment Eddie re-enters, up to the end of shot 13, it is quite obvious that the whole thing is going to happen again. Shot 13 carries the elaborate build-up to a ludicrous pitch and the actual incident is again cut as before : again, from the shot of the toppling chair we are not taken straight to the falling Eddie, but have to put up with the delay of shot 14. (Every time a comedian
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