A Dog's LifeA Dog's Life was Charlie Chaplin's initial release for First National Studios, and also his first three-reeler. Chaplin plays a tramp (duh!), who shambles around the cold, cruel world with his dog Scraps. Unable to land a job, Charlie and Scraps cadge a meal from lunchwagon proprietor Syd Chaplin (Charlie's brother). Things take a turn for the better when Charlie befriends down-and-out singer Edna Purviance. After routing a gang of crooks, Charlie and Edna head down the road "Where Dreams Come True" for a deliberately improbable happy ending. Together with Shoulder Arms and The Idle Class, A Dog's Life is one of the best examples of Chaplin's wildly uneven First National output. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide
Shoulder ArmsShoulder Arms was
Charlie Chaplin's final contribution to the World War I effort, along with his personal appearances selling Liberty Bonds and his film The Bond. It was released shortly before the end of the war, and Chaplin made prints available to soldiers fighting overseas, for which he was lauded for cheering the severely tested troops. Charlie is a member of the "Awkward Squad" and we first see him being put through his paces in training camp. He has problems with making a proper about-face and with marching, his out-turned feet, constantly annoying his drill sergeant. Exhausted after a hard drill, he collapses on his cot.
"Over there," somewhere in France, the troops are engaged in trench warfare, and Chaplin gives the audience a hilarious view on the difficulties experienced by the troops -- flooded quarters (which he shares with a sergeant played by brother
Sydney Chaplin), constant shelling, sniping and homesickness. In a touching scene, a mail-less Charlie reads a letter from home over the shoulder of another soldier and on his face we can see his emotional reactions to the good and bad news that the soldier reads. Charlie is sent over the top and ends up capturing a squad of German soldiers single-handedly. His next foray, in the guise of a tree, provides a wonderful look at Chaplin's pantomime talents as he "becomes" a tree each time the enemy soldiers approach. Escaping the enemy squad he hides in a bombed-out house where a French girl,
Edna Purviance, lives. She discovers him in her bed and tends to his wounds. Soon they're beset by the enemy squad, searching for Charlie. In the chase, they collapse the rickety house and Charlie escapes, but Edna is arrested for aiding the enemy.
Meanwhile Charlie's sergeant buddy is captured while attempting to telegraph information on the enemy to the allied camp. Edna and Sydney are both brought to the enemy headquarters and Edna is threatened by the evil commandant. Charlie, sneaking down the chimney of the commandant's house, rescues Edna from his advances and locks him in a closet. At that moment the Kaiser, Crown Prince and their General arrive at the camp. Charlie, rushing to the closet, takes the commandant's uniform and impersonates him. Taking charge of Edna and escorting her outside, he is recognized by his captive buddy, and the three of them overcome and restrain the Kaiser's driver and guards and replace them. When the Kaiser and the others enter the limousine, the allies drive them off to the American camp, where Charlie is hailed as a hero and is hoisted on the shoulders of his comrades. But it was all a dream - in classic Chaplinesque-style Charlie is shaken awake by his drill sergeant -- still in boot camp! ~ Phil Posner, All Movie Guide
The PilgrimIn the final film of his First National contract (an early working title was The Tail End),
Charlie Chaplin spoofs small-town life and morality.
Chaplin is an escaped convict who steals the clothes of a swimming minister. At the railroad station he nearly gives himself away by guiltily running away from an eloping couple who want him to perform an impromptu wedding. He boards a train and travels to a small town, Devil's Gulch, Texas, where he is welcomed by his congregation, who have never met the new reverend they've been expecting. He meets the townsfolk and is enchanted by
Edna Purviance, in whose house he will be boarding.
Chaplin arrives just in time for church services and on the way he picks a liquor bottle from the pocket of a large Deacon, only to have it break when they both slip on a banana peel. The Deacon thinks that the spilled whisky has come from his pocket. The plucky fugitive goes along with the ruse and after seeing to the church collection, pitting one side of the congregation against the other in competition to see who contributes the most, he gives a wonderful sermon in pantomime -- the story of David and Goliath. His story is so effective that a young boy breaks into wild applause which
Chaplin acknowledges with the aplomb of a seasoned theatrical.
At the home of
Purviance and her Mother, his impersonation is severely tested by a visit from a couple with a mischievous child, Dinky Dean Riesner. (In later recollections Riesner tells of how he had to be cajoled into punching and slapping his "Uncles"
Charlie and
Syd, something abhorrent to him in real life). A stroll with
Purviance through town brings him face to face with a former cellmate, who is invited home for tea by the unsuspecting
Purviance. During the visit he observes the hiding place of Mother's mortgage money and
Chaplin valiantly but unsuccessfully tries to prevent the crook from stealing it. When the thief escapes,
Chaplin gives chase, but the sheriff, by now aware of
Chaplin's identity as an escapee, causes everyone to believe that the two are in league.
Chaplin however, overpowers the crook and returns the money to
Purviance. When the Pilgrim's true intentions are revealed, rather than arresting him, the sheriff escorts him to the Mexican border. He orders the fugitive to pick a bouquet of flowers. When
Chaplin obeys, the sheriff boots him across the border and takes off, leaving him stranded between warring bandit factions on one side, and arrest as a fugitive on the other, slowly walking into the sunset with one foot in Mexico and the other in the USA. ~ Phil Posner, All Movie Guide
A Day's PleasureCharlie Chaplin's fourth film for First National is generally considered a lightweight entry and a throwback to earlier days. It begins with Charlie, Edna and their two boys leaving their house (actually a corner of Chaplin's studio at La Brea and De Longpre in Hollywood) for a day's outing. The family piles into the family flivver, and after Charlie's amusing efforts to keep the engine running, they arrive at a dock and board a crowded day cruiser.
Charlie has a disagreement with another passenger (Tom Wilson), when he squeezes himself into a place on the bench next to the fellow's hefty wife, (Babe London). When Wilson tosses the famous derby onto the dock, Charlie races off the boat to get it. As the vessel pulls away from the dock, a large woman with a baby carriage tries to board, but ends up stretched between the dock and the boat. Charlie, returning with his hat uses her as a gangplank, then tries to pull her aboard with a grappling hook.
Once the boat is under way, the passengers dance to the music of a small combo, but soon everyone is feeling the effects of the violently rocking cruiser. Charlie has to stop dancing with the lovely Edna to sit by the railing near the trombonist, whose own mal de mer turns the black man quite pale. Meanwhile, Edna and the kids are napping on deck chairs and Charlie decides to join them. In typical Chaplinesque fashion, he cannot seem to assemble his chair. Overcome by seasickness he collapses into the lap of the equally bilious Babe and is covered with a blanket by a helpful steward. When the lady's jealous husband returns with drinks he tries to attack Charlie, but becomes too nauseated to continue, of which the now recovered Charlie takes advantage.
The return trip in the family car is equally eventful. Charlie runs afoul of a couple of traffic cops, is blocked by some irate pedestrians, one of whose foul language spurs Charlie to indicate the divine retribution awaiting him, and backs into a tar truck which spills its contents on the street. The cops, berating Charlie for blocking traffic, get stuck in the tar along with Charlie, but he cleverly steps out of his large shoes and drives off with his family, much to the amusement of the onlookers. This last scene may have originally been intended to occur earlier in the film, according to continuity sheets existing in the Chaplin archives, but was placed at he end of the film for the released version. ~ Phil Posner, All Movie Guide
SunnysideCharlie Chaplin's third film in his First National contract is a simple story of country life, an idyll, which contains two separate dream sequences, a characteristic Chaplin story device. Charlie is a farm hand and general factotum at a combination farm, general store and hotel. His boss,
Tom Wilson, drives him hard, waking him early to prepare breakfast while he sleeps in. Charlie has devised some labor-saving techniques, such as sitting a chicken on the frying pan so she can lay an egg in it, or milking the cow directly into the coffee cups. After Sunday breakfast, the boss goes off to church along with most of the town, while Charlie must tend to the cows. Charlie, reading the Bible, loses the herd as they stroll peacefully up a country road. He finds them in town and must shoo them out of various buildings. When the whole parish comes running out of the church, Charlie enters heroically and comes out riding the bull, which eventually dumps him in a stream below a wooden bridge.
Unconscious, Charlie dreams of dancing through the meadows with four lovely wood nymphs, in a scene of balletic grace and humor. Awakened at the bottom of the stream, he's pulled out by four men including his boss, who kicks him all the way home. Sunday afternoon is Charlie's time for visiting his girl,
Edna Purviance, bringing her flowers and a ring. Their romantic tryst is hampered by her mischievous teenage brother, until Charlie sends him out to play blindman's bluff in traffic. Then Edna's father (
Henry Bergman) interrupts their musical interlude at the pump organ, ordering Charlie away. Back at the store/hotel Charlie is again scolded for being late. A traffic accident outside brings a new visitor, a "city slicker" who is injured and must stay at the hotel. He's attended to by a horse doctor and shown to his room by Charlie, who later sits down to rest. Later, the slicker is preparing to leave when Edna enters the store and attracts the handsome visitor who follows her out of the store.
Worried by the competition, Charlie eventually arrives at Edna's, observing through a window his rival's fashionable ways -- the spats on his shoes, the handkerchief up his sleeve and the cigarette lighter in the handle of his walking stick. Seeing that he's losing Edna, Charlie returns home and tries to emulate his rival by putting old socks over the tops of his shoes and rigging a match to the end of a stick. When he visits Edna she rejects him, giving back his ring. Despondent, Charlie walks out to the street and stands in the way of an approaching car. The impact he feels, however, is from the boot of his boss as he awakens Charlie from his second reverie. The guest is really leaving this time, and when Edna enters the store, she gives the slicker's advances the cold shoulder as Charlie proclaims his devotion to her. He helps the slicker load his baggage into the car and receives a tip. Charlie and Edna celebrate his departure with a loving hug, as the camera irises in. ~ Phil Posner, All Movie Guide
The Idle ClassCharlie Chaplin's eighth film under his million dollar contract with First National is a return to the two reel form, and to the lightness of the Mutual style.
Chaplin plays dual role, that of a vacationing Tramp, and a high society inebriate husband.
Arriving in Miami on the same train are
Edna Purviance, a neglected and lonely wife, who descends from the coach, and
Chaplin, who emerges from the baggage compartment under a train car, complete with baggage and golf clubs.
Chaplin hitches a ride on the back of
Purviance's limousine.
Purviance's forgetful,
alcoholic husband is a natty double for
Chaplin. A telegram tells us he was supposed to meet
Purviance at the train. Already late, he leaves the hotel room without his pants. Escaping notice of the other guests in the lobby causes him to delay his departure, to the point where newly arrived
Purviance finds him hiding in bed.
That afternoon he receives a note telling him that his wife has moved to other lodgings until he stops drinking. He gazes longingly at
Purviance's picture and, his back turned to the camera, appears to be sobbing. As he turns, however, we see the cocktail shaker he is expertly manipulating.
Purviance, meanwhile, is out for a horseback ride, and
Chaplin has found the nearby golf links. His hilarious golf game, highlighted by his run-ins with
Mack Swain and
John Rand pauses when he sees
Purviance pass by on horseback. After looking longingly at her, he fantasizes rescuing her from her runaway horse (in another of
Chaplin's dream sequences), imagining their lives all the way through marriage and children. But the dream ends and
Chaplin returns to his golf game, in which his drive breaks
Swain's whisky bottle causing him to burst into tears, and in which he again runs afoul of
Rand.
The inebriate husband has received a note from his wife, saying that she will forgive him if he attends her costume ball. Dressed in a suit of armor, his visor jams closed, preventing him from taking a drink, and he spends great effort trying to open it.
Meanwhile
Chaplin has got himself in trouble with the law - while sitting on a park bench his neighbor has been pickpocketed and
Chaplin is the suspect. Pursued by a cop, he sneaks his way through an arriving limo and into
Purviance's costume ball.
Purviance, naturally mistaking him for her husband, makes moves toward reconciliation, which
Chaplin welcomes as affection. When greeted by
Swain, who turns out to be
Purviance's father,
Chaplin expects trouble from their golfing encounter, but is amazed that
Swain thinks he's
Purviance's husband.
Chaplin denies that thy are married, which gets him knocked down several times. Caught together by the still visored husband,
Chaplin is attacked but the unknown assailant is subdued by the other guests. Eventually he frees himself and identifies himself to
Swain, who tries to remove the helmet. Eventually
Chaplin uses a can opener to peel back the visor (revealing an unknown actor double), and the confusion is explained. Told unceremoniously to leave,
Chaplin departs, but
Purviance decides they've treated him shabbily and sends
Swain after him to apologize.
Chaplin accepts his hand, but points to
Swain's shoelace. When
Swain bends over to tie it,
Chaplin delivers a swift kick to the derriere, before sprinting off into the distance.
The golf sequences in The Idle Class were inspired by an earlier, unfinished Mutual called The Golf Links, featuring
Eric Campbell and
Albert Austin, portions of which were included in
Chaplin's 1918, How to Make Movies. A still, showing
Campbell and
Chaplin teeing off on the same ball made its way into
Chaplin's autobiography, labeled as being from The Idle Class (made four years after
Campbell's death) and was a source of confusion to
Chaplin aficiandos, until How to Make Movies was assembled by
Kevin Brownlow and
David Gill.
Chaplin's lovely score for The Idle Class was composed for its reissue in 1971. ~ Phil Posner, All Movie Guide
How to Make MoviesIn this comedy documentary begun during the construction of his new studios in 1917, and continued after its completion,
Charlie Chaplin gives us a look, however staged, inside the Chaplin workplace. Although never completed by Chaplin, who wanted to use it to help fulfill his First National contract, it was reconstructed in 1982 by scholars Kevin Brownlow and David Gill from material they found at the Chaplin estate. They got the editing continuity from a page of titles they found in the Chaplin archive. Some of the footage was used in 1959 by Chaplin as a prologue to his compilation, The Chaplin Revue, and used again for the documentary on Chaplin, The Gentleman Tramp. The film begins with a stop-action sequence of the studio being built. Then it shows a dapper, 29-year-old Chaplin arriving at work, greeting his staff, reading his fan mail. His butler is instructed to bring his famous costume, which he retrieves from the studio vault. Chaplin is seen rehearsing his cast and coaching a starlet through a screen test. Viewers are taken into the Chaplin Studio laboratory where they're shown how film is developed and processed and see Chaplin at work in the editing room. Then Chaplin is seen dressing in his Tramp costume and applying the famous mustache. A few scenes from an unreleased Mutual follow, showing Chaplin,
Eric Campbell and
Albert Austin on the golf links. Ideas from these sequences were later used for Chaplin's The Idle Class. This would be Chaplin's final pairing with Campbell who died in an auto accident soon after filming. At the end of the work day Chaplin bids viewers 'Au Revoir." How To Make Movies offers a rare glimpse inside Chaplin's studio, and although he was always guarded about revealing his working methods, it gives viewers the feeling of those exciting, creative days. ~ Phil Posner, All Movie Guide
The BondThis short promotional film
Charlie Chaplin made for the U.S. Liberty Loan bond campaign was shot in a few days during the shooting of Shoulder Arms. Using rather stark, expressionistic sets and props, it tells the story of the various types of bonds between people. The bond of friendship, shows
Chaplin meeting friend
Albert Austin who tells him jokes, borrows money, then invites him for a drink with the money he's borrowed. The bond of love is represented by
Charlie and Edna, who are struck by cupid's arrows and soon enter into the bond of matrimony. But the "most important of all" is the Liberty Bond. Edna is Miss Liberty, threatened by the Kaiser who has subdued a soldier in uniform.
Charlie is seen buying bonds from Uncle Sam who gives the money in turn to a worker, who gives guns to a soldier and sailor. Finally,
Charlie KOs the Kaiser with a mallet inscribed "Liberty Bonds" and extorts the audience to help the cause. ~ Phil Posner, All Movie Guide
Pay DayCharlie Chaplin's last two reeler recalls earlier comedies such as the Essanay Work, with
Chaplin casting himself as a worker rather than a Tramp, but the film shows great advances in film technique.
Chaplin is a construction worker, who arrives late for work, bringing a flower as peace offering for his boss,
Mack Swain. As a ditch digger,
Chaplin leaves something to be desired, but as a brick catcher, he's amazing, due to a very clever reverse action scene.
Lunchtime brings
Swain's daughter,
Edna Purviance with his lunch and
Chaplin seems smitten. He has no lunch, but is lucky enough to partake of some of his co-workers' food due to a very active work elevator, which they all seem to use as a sideboard.
It's pay day and
Chaplin argues about his wages, despite being overpaid. His battleaxe wife
Phyllis Allen (in their first re-teaming since the Keystone days) shows up at the end of the workday to collect his wages, some of which he's able to retain despite her efforts.
That night,
Chaplin and his co-workers go drinking and are quite looped at the end of the evening - bellicose but songful. In a rare night time photography scene,
Chaplin tries to catch the last streetcar home but is pushed out one end when huge
Henry Bergman pushes his way on at the other. In his drunkenness
Chaplin boards a hot dog cart, thinking it's another streetcar, holding onto a suspended salami as a hand strap.
Arriving home at daybreak,
Chaplin has just started undressing for bed when the alarm clock rings, waking the wife. Pretending to leave for work, he tries to settle down to sleep in the bathtub, but is caught and sent out to work by his nagging mate.
Payday began life as Come Seven, a story about two rich plumbers. Production was interrupted by
Chaplin's trip to Europe after only eight scenes were photographed. ~ Phil Posner, All Movie Guide
