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
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
The KidThe Kid was
Charles Chaplin's first self-produced and directed feature film; 1914's 6-reel Tillie's Punctured Romance was a
Mack Sennett production in which
Chaplin merely co-starred.
The story "with a smile and perhaps a tear," begins with unwed mother
Edna Purviance leaving the Charity Hospital, babe in arms. Her burden is illustrated with a title card showing Christ bearing the cross. The father of the child is a poor artist who cares little for of his former lover, carelessly knocking her photo into his garret fireplace and cooly returning it there when he sees it is too badly damaged to keep. The mother sorrowfully leaves her baby in the back seat of a millionaire's limousine, with a note imploring whoever finds it to care for and love the child. But thieves steal the limo, and, upon discovering the baby, ditch the tot in an alleyway trash can. Enter
Chaplin, out for his morning stroll, carefully selecting a choice cigarette butt from his well used tin. He stumbles upon the squalling infant and, after trying to palm it off on a lady with another baby in a carriage, decides to adopt the kid himself. Meanwhile
Purviance has relented, but when she returns to the mansion and is told that the car has been stolen, she collapses in despair.
Chaplin outfits his flat for the baby as best he can, using an old coffee pot with a nipple on the spout as a baby bottle and a cane chair with the seat cut out as a potty seat.
Chaplin's attic apartment is a representation of the garret he had shared with his mother and brother in London, just as the slum neighborhood is a recreation of the ones he knew as a boy.
Five years later,
Chaplin has become a glazier, while his adopted son (the remarkable
Jackie Coogan) drums up business for his old man by cheerfully breaking windows in the neighborhood.
Purviance meanwhile has become a world famous opera singer, still haunted by the memory of her child, who does charity work in the very slums in which he now lives. Ironically, she gives a toy dog to little
Coogan.
Chaplin and
Coogan's close calls with the law and fights with street toughs are easily overcome, but when
Coogan falls ill, the attending doctor learns of the illegal adoption and summons the Orphan Asylum social workers who try to separate
Chaplin from his foster son. In one of the most moving scenes in all of
Chaplin's films,
Chaplin and
Coogan try to fight the officials, but
Chaplin is subdued by the cop they have summoned.
Coogan is roughly thrown into the back of the Asylum van, pleading to the welfare official and to God not to be separated from his father.
Chaplin, freeing himself from the cop, pursues the orphanage van over the rooftops and, descending into the back of the truck, dispatches the official and tearfully reunites with his "son". Returning to check on the sick boy,
Purviance encounters the doctor and is shown the note which she had attached to her baby five years earlier.
Chaplin and
Coogan, not daring to return home, settle in a flophouse for the night. The proprietor sees a newspaper ad offering a reward for
Coogan's return and kidnaps the sleeping boy. After hunting fruitlessly, a grieving
Chaplin falls asleep on his tenement doorstep and dreams that he has been reunited with the boy in Heaven (that "flirtatious angel" is Lita Grey, later
Chaplin's second wife). Woken from his dream by the cop, he is taken via limousine to
Purviance's mansion where he is welcomed by
Coogan and
Purviance, presumably to stay.
Chaplin had difficulties getting The Kid produced. His inspiration, it is suggested was the death of his own first son, Norman Spencer Chaplin a few days after birth in 1919. His determination to make a serio-comic feature was challenged by First National who preferred two reel films, which were more quickly produced and released.
Chaplin wisely gained his distributors' approval by inviting them to the studio, where he trotted out the delightful
Coogan to entertain them.
Chaplin's divorce case from his first wife
Mildred Harris also played a part; fearing seizure of the negatives
Chaplin and crew escaped to Salt Lake City and later to New York to complete the editing of the film.
Chaplin's excellent and moving score for The Kid was composed in 1971 for a theatrical re-release, but used themes that
Chaplin had composed in 1921.
Chaplin re-edited the film somewhat for the re-release, cutting scenes that he felt were overly sentimental, such as
Purviance's observing of a May-December wedding and her portrayal as a saint, outlined by a church's stained glass window. ~ Phil Posner, All Movie Guide
Between ShowersIn his fourth film for Keystone,
Charlie Chaplin was assigned for the last time to
Henry Lehrman, his first director at Keystone. It was
Chaplin's first film with the ostensible star of the film,
Ford Sterling, who had announced that he would be leaving Keystone for a more lucrative deal well before
Chaplin joined Keystone. Between Showers is the first
Chaplin film shot partially at Westlake Park. It shows a few developments of his Tramp character, mostly little bits of "business" that would recur in later films.
Sterling plays a womanizer who steals an umbrella from a cop and his girlfriend. He encounters a pretty girl,
Emma Clifton, on a street corner who is impeded from crossing the street by a huge puddle.
Sterling gives his new umbrella to the girl to hold and goes off to find a piece of lumber for a makeshift bridge.
Chaplin, dresses as the Tramp but without the cane, saunters on the scene, and also offers his help. While they're gone, another cop carries the girl over the puddle.
Sterling returns and when he asks for his umbrella back, the girl refuses.
Sterling attacks her and
Chaplin comes to her rescue, although she seems capable of handling both men. A fight sequence through the park ensues, after which
Chaplin restores the umbrella to
Clifton. It climaxes when
Chester Conklin the cop, summoned by
Sterling, recognizes the umbrella as his own.
Chaplin admits to taking it from
Sterling, but
Sterling has no alibi and an amused
Chaplin watches
Conklin haul him off to jail. ~ Phil Posner, All Movie Guide
Cruel, Cruel LoveIn his eighth film for Keystone
Charlie Chaplin, in frock coat and bushy mustache, is cast in the role of a melodramatic lover who attempts suicide over his lost love. The film is a farce, a parody of the overacted melodramas of the day. Mr. Dovey (
Chaplin) is first seen on his knees proposing in the drawing room of his lady (
Minta Durfee). The couple are overheard and mocked by the lady's maid, whose laughter causes
Minta to eject her from the house. To get back at her boss, she arranges a hoax with the gardener. She feigns injury and her cries bring the departing Dovey to her aid. When
Minta sees her maid flirting with Dovey, she rejects him in a jealous rage. Back at home the despondent Dovey drinks what he thinks is poison; only his highly amused butler knows it was just water. Waiting for the poison to take effect, Dovey has horrifying visions of his eternal damnation. Meanwhile,
Minta has learned of her maid's deception and has sent the gardener to Dovey with a letter of apology. "It's too late. I've been poisoned," says Dovey and the gardener goes back to retrieve
Minta to be at her dying man's side. Dovey now summons doctors to save him, drinking all the milk he can with evident distaste. When the physicians arrive, the butler lets them in on the joke and they play along too, jokingly examining him.
Minta, having raced to her man's home, learns of the hoax and tells Dovey he's going to live. First relieved, then enraged, he attacks all the pranksters and finally embraces his lady, removing from his fingers a ball of hair he had pulled from his head and blowing it away. ~ Phil Posner, All Movie Guide
A Film JohnnieIn
Charlie Chaplin's fifth Keystone comedy we get a look inside the famous laugh factory. Charlie is a movie fan and we first see him creating havoc at a theatre where he gets too involved with the action on the screen and the beautiful actress in the film. Ejected from the theatre, he proceeds to Keystone itself where he mooches money from
Roscoe Arbuckle as he arrives at work. Charlie sneaks into the studio and disrupts the filming, much to the chagrin of the director. He mistakes a scene where the starlet is being manhandled for reality and comes to her rescue. Firing a prop pistol in all directions, he clears the stages before leaving. Meanwhile, a Keystone scout sees a building on fire in a nearby street and telephones the studio. In a parody of
Mack Sennett's propensity to use public events and disasters as backdrops for his films, the cast and crew rush off to do some location filming at the fire. Charlie shows up and again disrupts the filming, causing the director to take after him brandishing a club. The firemen arrive and seeing the struggle between the director and his assistants who are trying to restrain him, turn the hoses on the fighting men. Charlie again tries his luck with the beautiful actress and receives a good shaking in response, followed by a soaking by the fire squad. In a classic Chaplin move, he twists his ear as water squirts from his mouth. When the beautiful actress laughs at his condition, a water-logged Charlie gives up on his movie fanaticism. ~ Phil Posner, All Movie Guide
His Favorite PastimeIn
Charles Chaplin's seventh film for the Keystone Company, the Little Fellow's favorite pastime is drinking and chasing women. The film opens in a saloon where Charlie is partaking of a free lunch and teasing a down-on-his-luck Roscoe "Fatty" Arbuckle who is trying to bum a drink. We see an early Chaplin "transposition" gag when Charlie tries to light a sausage, thinking it's a cigar. After leaving the bar, Charlie accosts beautiful but married Peggy Pierce (with whom Chaplin was involved romantically at the time) as she and her maid wait for her husband to return to their taxi. After being shooed away by the husband, Charlie returns to the saloon and gets into fights with various patrons. In the men's washroom after Charlie polishes his shoes with a towel, he hands the towel to a man who has soap in his eyes, causing him to blacken his face. Exiting the bar again, he follows the maid's taxi home and gets into a melee with the maid, the maid's employer and her employer's irate husband, who, with the aid of his household servants, ejects Charlie from their home. ~ Phil Posner, All Movie Guide
Mabel's Strange PredicamentMabel's Strange PredicamentMaking a LivingThis typical Keystone slapstick comedy was
Charlie Chaplin's first appearance on film. An Englishman (Chaplin) cons a newspaper reporter (
Henry Lehrman) out of some money. The Englishman flirts with a young woman who later turns out to be the reporter's girlfriend, and the reporter and the Englishman fight. Later, the Englishman talks his way into a job at the same newspaper where the reporter works. When the reporter takes some photos of an automobile accident as it happens, the reporter and the Keystone Kops help the driver, and the Englishman steals the photos. He rushes them back to the paper, and they are immediately put in the latest edition. The newspaperman catches up with him, and they begin fighting in the street, and the film ends as a streetcar cowcatcher sweeps them up. Chaplin is barely recognizable in this film, sporting a monocle, a top hat, and a walrus moustache. While this costume had been used in his stage appearances, he quickly realized that it was not appropriate for a film comedian. He would devise his famous costume of the tramp in his next film Mabel's Strange Predicament. Chaplin was unhappy when he saw the finished film because many of the gags that he had performed had been cut out by Lehrman, the director. However, this is typical of
Mack Sennett's Keystone comedies, where there is a lot of running around and fighting, and not a lot of funny gags. ~ Bruce Calvert, All Movie Guide
