The Missing Link

British comic Lupino Lane stars in this surviving fragment from one of his earliest films, a slapstick school romp

This surviving fragment from one of Lupino Lane's earliest films sees the comedy star play the class bad boy in a slapstick schoolroom romp. There's not much of a plot in what survives - and the missing link is actually missing from this fragment - but Lane plays an adult who is posing as a boy (and that's Lane's character's wife posing as another boy!) While the humour may not be terribly sophisticated, the film is a valuable record of one of Britain's best comics in his nascent years.

The original running time of the film was 36 minutes, so a lot is unfortunately missing from this two-and-a-half-minute fragment.