''Domestic Difficulties'' is a 1916 silent animated short film featuring

Mutt and Jeff ''Mutt and Jeff'' is a long-running and widely popular American newspaper comic strip created by cartoonist Bud Fisher in 1907 about "two mismatched wikt:tinhorn, tinhorns". It is commonly regarded as the first daily comic strip. The concept o ...

. The film is one of the earliest animated adaptations of Bud Fisher's comic strip. The film features a humorous depiction of

spousal abuse Domestic violence is violence that occurs in a domestic setting, such as in a marriage or cohabitation. In a broader sense, abuse including nonphysical abuse in such settings is called domestic abuse. The term "domestic violence" is often use ...

. In the film, Mutt's wife is having a night out. She makes Mutt promise to stay in their

apartment An apartment (American English, Canadian English), flat (British English, Indian English, South African English), tenement (Scots English), or unit (Australian English) is a self-contained housing unit (a type of residential real estate) that ...

, but he instead heads to a bar with Jeff. He returns intoxicated and fails to enter the apartment unnoticed. His irritated wife is waiting for him. She beats up Mutt and then defenestrates him.

Plot

Inside an apartment, Mutt is sitting down, strumming a

banjo The banjo is a stringed instrument with a thin membrane stretched over a frame or cavity to form a resonator. The membrane is typically circular, and in modern forms is usually made of plastic, where early membranes were made of animal skin. ...

. Momentarily Mutt's wife comes to the scene. She tells Mutt she is going out, and she tells him to stay home. Mutt seems to give his word on the matter. Mutt then phone calls his friend Jeff and says they will go to a bar once his wife leaves. Mutt goes to bed, pretending to sleep. The wife checks into the bedroom and exits. With the wife apparently gone, Mutt comes out of a bedroom window and climbs down a pipe on a wall where Jeff is waiting. Jeff suddenly spots the wife coming back, and therefore tells Mutt to return to the bedroom. Mutt is able to get back in bed on time to be seen by her there. When the wife resumes to her outing. Mutt climbs down the pipe again and walks away with Jeff. Little do the two men know that as they walk further away from the apartment, the wife surprisingly returns shortly. Mutt and Jeff enter their intended bar. A few hours past midnight, they head to a park where they are supposed to part ways but just decide to sit down and relax. Because they are both intoxicated, they even see the park spinning around them. Mutt and Jeff finally return to Mutt's apartment. Inside the building, Mutt's wife is sitting down irritated, and holding a

rolling pin A rolling pin is a cylindrical food preparation utensil used to shape and flatten dough. Two styles of rolling pin are found: rollers and rods. Roller types consists of a thick cylinder with small handles at each end; rod type rolling pins are ...

. Mutt attempts to climb up the pipe but his intoxication makes it very difficult, prompting him to just use the door. But before he could proceed, Mutt is unsure how his wife would greet him. He then tells Jeff to see if she is asleep. Jeff enters the apartment and goes towards Mutt's room. Jeff knocks and opens the door, only to be pounded and knocked down by a rolling pin. Jeff, slightly annoyed, heads to the outside. Upon going out, Jeff lies to Mutt, saying the wife is fast asleep. As Mutt enters the apartment, the scene remains on the outside where Jeff is standing. Moments later, loud noises break out from the building, implying Mutt is taking a bad beating from the wife. When the noise stops, Jeff considers leaving. Suddenly, a bruised Mutt is

defenestrated Defenestration (from Neo-Latin ) is the act of throwing someone or something out of a window. The term was coined around the time of an incident in Prague Castle in the year 1618 which became the spark that started the Thirty Years' War. This ...

. Also thrown out of the window are some bricks, which all fall on Jeff.

External links

''Domestic Difficulties''
at the

Big Cartoon Database The Big Cartoon DataBase (or BCDB for short) was an online database of information about animated cartoons, animated feature films, animated television shows, and cartoon shorts. The BCDB project began in 1997 as a list of Disney animated f ...

*{{IMDb title, 1112825 Mutt and Jeff 1916 films 1916 animated short films 1910s English-language films 1910s American animated films American silent short films American animated short films American black-and-white films Films about marriage English-language short films Films set in apartment buildings Films about alcoholic drinks Films about domestic violence