Charlie Chaplin Film by Film Thread. Pt. 2: Essanay

I'm a big fan of "The Tramp". A major leap forward - a cohesive plot, lots of funny bits, a likable central character, and sentimentality that still gets me every time I see it.

A few points to add:

It looks like we've got some missing footage near the beginning. The thief makes off with Charlie's lunch and leaves him a brick, but we never see Charlie become aware of the theft - we just see the result - Charlie eating some grass for lunch.

@5:23 - for all the professional wrestling fans in the house - Charlie executes a Thesz Press. Since Lou Thesz was born in 1916 (a year after this film was made), Charlie can lay claim to inventing the move.

Regarding Charlie eating standing up at the mantle, I don't think class disparity has anything to do with it - his rear end is still tender from getting burned a short time earlier.

I'm curious to know how intentional Chaplin was in having the tramp pull his pants slightly forward to make sure everything below was "in order" and then immediately check the sack that he was carrying with him.

And a few favorite bits - Charlie accidentally whacking himself with the brick after he runs off the thieves, and just as the pathos is about to overwhelm the film, we get Charlie wiping his eyes on the curtains(?), or some other sort of hanging that probably wasn't meant for the task. And the ending of the film ... of course ... deservedly iconic.

 

Good point on standing while eating. Had not thought of that.

Any thoughts on whether Charlie smoking cigar scene is meant as fantasy or just a leap forward in time?

The ending is truly marvelous.

 

I think it is a leap forward in time. Over the time of healing from the bullet wound the tramp has been welcomed into the family.

Imagine that - a bullet in a silent comedy that actually hits its target and causes lasting damage.

 

Re: The Tramp. The end was filmed in Niles Canyon, right outside of Niles, a section of Fremont, CA., in the San Francisco East Bay Area. The road is still a two lane road, rural-looking as it was back then. Of course, Broncho Billy filmed Westerns there, too. And it looks it!

 

And this was the last of the 5 films he made in Northern CA.

 

By the Sea (film #43)
Released April 29, 1915
One reel 14:03

This film is a trip back for Chaplin in many ways: location, length, and simplicity. He was relocating from Essanay's studio in Niles, CA to a new studio Essanay was building for him back down in LA, but it wasn't quite ready yet so he made a gap filler one reel film on the beach in Venice (site of the Tramp's first appearance in Kid Auto Races). This has perhaps even less of a plot than Kid Auto Races or most of his Keystone one reelers and was entirely improvised and shot in one day. It is pure physical comedy. After one solo gag where Charlie slips on his own banana peel, it teams Charlie and Bud Jamison as a couple guys on the beach on a windy day. Their hats are attached to their jackets with strings so that when they blow off they don't go far. They do repeatedly blow off, the strings get tangled, the hats get switched, and they begin fighting as a result. The most memorable bit is 30 seconds or so of a classic flea circus bit (where he follows non-existent lice from Bud's hair with his eyes) that he later presented in an expanded manner in Limelight. After a few minutes of 2 man clowning, Edna pops in and Charlie starts flirting with her, showing off some of the tricks he can do with his hat and its string. Then Charlie and Bud decide to "be pals" and go out for ice cream, stiffing the ice cream seller and winding up in a bit of an ice cream fight.

It's not a bad film for what it is. A year earlier at Keystone it would have been a bit above average in quality and it contains fine examples of pure physical clowning. Viewed in chronological order though, it is clearly a time out and really a leap backwards from the evolution he and the Tramp character had undergone. But there's nothing wrong with a good bit of fun produced quickly and simply while waiting for his studio to be ready. And it has some nostalgia value as it really was the last thing of the sort that Chaplin ever attempted. Returning to Venice CA for an improvised comedy make this and Kid Auto Races nice bookends to stage 1 of the Tramp's film career, even if stage 2 had already really begun with The Champion, A Jitney Elopement and The Tramp.

Rating:
Content: 7/10
Print: 6/10

 

His Regeneration (film #44)
Released May 7, 1915
One reel 14:52
Director: Gilbert "Bronco Billy" Anderson

This film has a 1 minute cameo by Chaplin who provides about a minute of comic relief (none of which is even very funny, but it is better than the rest of the film) in a 15 minute drama starring studio co-owner "Bronco Billy" that feels like 60 minutes and utterly fails to hold my attention or motivate me to summarize it. In the minute he is on screen, Charlie flirts with a girl, pats the butt of a sailor and collides with several dancers (many of them sailors). I had to watch it again now that I have the BluRay to complete the assignment I have given myself. It you are so OCD that you need to watch it too, rest assured that you can turn it off at the 3 minute mark and you will have seen all the Chaplin content.

Really this isn't even remotely as entertaining as A Thief Catcher, and I gave that a 1, so I had to pull a "reverse Nigel" and go one lower.

Rating:
Content: 0/10
Print: 5/10

 

I don't have a lot to add here. Maybe I could say that it looks like Edna raided Margaret Dumont's closet for her outfit in this one. Overall a vaguely entertaining film.

I believe you have Bud Jamison confused with Billy Armstrong. Billy is Charlie's "pal" with the straw hat, Bud is Edna's beau. I didn't recognize Snub Pollard (without his usual makeup) as the ice cream clerk.

 

Oops you are right. Thanks for the correction.

 

I find Charlie's bits sufficiently amusing. The film overall does serve to remind us of the context that Chaplin was making films in, and why he was so popular. "His Regeneration" is at times difficult to follow (in part because the two male leads in the first half of the film look fairly similar from a distance, and are dressed in much the same manner - it's not until they are both on the screen together that I'm sure that they aren't the same person!) The acting is overwrought ... the climax actually pretty dull (with the "fatal" shot clearly missing its target) ... and yet audiences came out for a film like this. No wonder people found most everything Chaplin did to be genius.

 

Work (film #45)
June 21, 1915
Two reels: 28:12

OK, I slowed down my pace a bit. But so did Charlie, with this film coming out 6 weeks after his cameo in Regeneraton cameo and ten weeks after the last film he put real time into: The Tramp. The only similarly longer gap in his career had come when he switched studios from Keystone to Essanay, and here he was had switched from Essany's studio in Niles to a newly built one in LA.

This is a much lighter film than the Tramp - as the title suggests, it is a work comedy like Musical Career (the closest parallel) or Dough and Dynamite - but with less plot than either of those. That is actually a plus, as the plot added nothing to a film like Dough and Dynamite, just slowing things down a bit from time to time. This one is basically a nonstop stream of at times quite inventive physical comedy of a fairly non violent sort.

The extended opening segment (about a quarter of the film) has Charlie struggling to pull a heavy cart bearing his whip wielding boss (and soon a friend of his boss as well) up steep streets and fields. Not really able to maintain balance with the riders, he gets lowered down an empty manhole and hoisted in the air ala the mule in The Music Box and Max, the Grinch's reindeer.

Once the cart gets to its destination, Charlie struggles up a flight of stair with their equipment, and we learn that Charlie and his boss are spending the day working a job putting up wall paper in a private home. The stream of physical comedy that can be made from a situation like that is fairly endless, but I most liked two bits that are not obvious outgrowths of the situation.

My favorite occurs after the lady of the house, seeing the workers, decides to put her silver in the safe as a precaution. The priceless reaction has Charlie suspiciously eyeing the lady, pointing and whispering, and deciding to put his watch in a pocket he pins shut to keep it safe. This to me is a different level of comedy than we have seen before.

Another great bit has Charlie meticulously doing his nails using a large hand tool size file, sander and paste spreader - like instruments using various wallpaper implements. There is also a nice segment where he flirts sweetly with Edna, til he accidentally gets her dirty and decides to try to get rid of the black stuff he got on her arm by covering it with white wallpaper paste.

The ending of the film, with a stove blowing up the building and Charlie's head emerging from the rubble is a direct cop of the ending to Dough and Dynamite.

Rating:
Content: 8
Print: 5

 

I think "Work" is an enjoyable and important film. From a very basic standpoint, I find it funny (although the last couple minutes degrade into early Keystone). From a more complex standpoint, i think it is another important film (like "The Tramp") in Chaplin's evolution. One can see intricate planning in some of the bits (particularly those related to the railroad tracks), and the tilt of the camera to document Charlie's "uphill struggle" is simple but very effective. Most importantly, in contrast to "Dough and Dynamite" and especially "The Property Man", Charlie has gone from the oppressor to the oppressed. He is set upon by his sometimes Simon Legree-like boss, and the whining, demanding customers who "deserve" the physical comedy that they fall victim to. One gets a hint, probably for the first time (and most certainly unintentionally) of Chaplin's politics.

 

A Woman (film #46)
July 12, 1915
Two reels: 23:01 (Image DVD 26:14)
(Park comedy # 12; Drag comedy #3)

As suggested by the title, this film is most notable for Chaplin's third, best and final stint in drag. But that occupies only about the last third of the film, coming after what is at this point a pretty standard one reel park comedy. The drag scenes in particular run a little longer on the Image DVD, which seems to be slowed down and less tightly edited than the 3 minute shorter BluRay, which does not seem to miss any major elements.

The most interesting development compared to earlier park comedies is the greater and more imaginative use Charlie makes of his cane, using it to lift a skirt, poke a hat off, pull a woman off a bench by her ankle, position people and lead them around by the neck, and even execute a judo style flip of a policeman over his shoulder and into the lake (he first gets another man in the lake with a combo of cane, bottle crashed on head and kick). Another nice cane bit has Charlie, who has been stealing sips of someone's drink, get poked in the belly by a cane and emits a stream of the stolen drink in sync.

Shortly after sending the men into the lake, Charlie starts flirting with Edna and another woman and winds up going back to their house. There, Charlie sits on a couple hat pins which bury themselves in his rump, entertains the girls by spearing donuts on a large knife (sometimes a hat pin or large sword is just a cigar?), and gets kissy with Edna. Trouble ensues when Edna introduces him to her father - who is the man Charlie pushed in the lake. A fight ensues, Charlie runs off, and, in an ordinary park comedy, the film would end here.

Instead Charlie finds himself upstairs in a walk in close with a headless mannequin wearing a nice woman's ensemble. After briefly acting embarassed to walk in on "her" he gets the idea to try her on as a disguise. He is practicing his woman walk when Edna encounters him, reacting with laughter and reminding him to shave the mustache and change his shoes. His disguise initially proves effective, as he is fetching enough to have to fend off the advances of first Edna's father and then his friend. But the jig is up once he starts to lose pieces of his ensemble in the process.

So this isn't a bad film, but it's more of a look backwards then a step forward. Park scenes figure far less prominently in his output after this and he never dons another dress. It looks real nice on the BluRay version, which is visually a big step up from the Image DVD edition.

Rating:
Content: 7/10
Print: 7/10

 

"A Woman" doesn't do much for me. We've seen the "plot" of the first half of the film over and over again, and there's not enough new or clever material to justify the retreading. The second half of the film is predicated on one's ability to subscribe to the Bugs Bunny principle - that any male character who dresses in drag is instantly irresistible to every male in sight. I can see audiences responding to this a hundred years ago, but it doesn't translate well to 2016.

 

The Bank (film #47)
August 9, 1915
Two reels: 25:01

This film can be seem as a revisiting of the themes in The New Janitor, refracted through his evolution from the best of the Keystone comics to The Tramp. In the process he has begun to build gags into larger scenarios instead of firing them off as rapidly as possible, and to express a range of convincing emotions.

This is immediately apparent with a minute and a half segment of him walking down the street looking more dignified than he has before, entering a bank looking important, and opening the safe (which looks a bit like something out of Modern Times) to (surprise) retrieve his mop and janitor outfit - perhaps the longest period yet Chaplin has made us wait while building towards a visual punch line - and the only segment where he wears his common outfit. The rest of the first third of the film consists of hijinks with another janitor (Billy Armstrong) involving every possible permutation of dousing and swatting folks with mops and an escalating war sweeping papers back and forth into the rooms the other is trying to clean (building to include a fan). Another nicely built gag, a bit later, has Charlie taking a man's pulse and acting like he thinks the man is sick to get him to stick his tongue out. He uses the man's tongue to lick a stamp, tries to mail a letter, but then rips it in three pieces to fit it in the mail slot.

The meat of the film is the second segment in which Charlie mistakenly believes Edna is giving him a gift (a tie) and love note (meant for the cashier, "Charles"), leaves flowers and a note for her in return, and observes her throwing them away when Charles explains that those are from Charlie the janitor. The expression of joy when Charlie first finds the note and gift is wonderful, with his face first lighting up, then acting bashful. He then starts going a little nuts, (spinning a wheel that clamps his hand into something like a horizontal vice). His expressions of joy keep building as he blows kisses, dances and stumbles into a wall. A few minutes later, Charlie shows us the flip side of his broadened emotional range as we see stages of his grief in the pain in his face watching her rip up the note, the avoidance of eye contact when she walks by, the decision to save the roses, venting with a kick at the other janitor when he puts on a tie, followed by seeming acceptance of his lot.

The final segment shows us the bank being attacked by robbers who take Edna hostage. Charlie gets to play hero, engaging in a fast paced string of physical stunts, and save the girl while Charles literally cowers under his desk.
SPOILER ALERT
At the end there is the reveal that this final segment was all a dream. The dream framing is done a lot better here than in Prehistoric Past. When you watch this sequence a second time it is completely obvious where the dream starts and you wonder how you missed it, yet it is done so seamlessly that at least I missed the transition the first time.

This is Chaplin's most mature film yet and is also quite funny. I would say it is the best of the 47 I have reviewed so far, though The Champion might be my personal favorite of them. But this is one well worth watching for any fan of his later work.

Rating:
Content: 9/10
Print: 6/10

 

Nice review. The Bank is probably my favorite of the Essanays.

 

I support the notion that this was Chaplin's best film to date. It's definitely on my short list of films I'd choose to show as an introduction to Chaplin for a modern audience. Funny, cleaver, heart-warming, heart-breaking ... and rewatching it this morning I was really taken by the minimalist use of intertitles - not a lot of them and often very brief (they weren't needed because the film does such a good job with exposition).

 

Shanghaied (film #48)
October 4, 1915
Two reels: 27:26

While Chaplin has had to this point a tendency to follow up his "big leap forward" films with a step back, this one takes that pattern to a new level. Often in the past that has seemingly been the result of having taken a long time to make a film and needing to do one quickly afterwards to get on schedule. But here that explanation does not work as the 9 weeks that elapsed between the Bank and this film is the longest gap he has ever had between films (no film at all released in September 1915), apart from when he switched from Keystone to Essanay and relocated from California to Chicago between films. If anyone is aware of any back story that explains what may have happened in those two months to occupy him and account for the drop in quality, I would be very interested to learn about that.

This is basically a run of the mill one reel Keystone film, stretched out to two reels, dropped into the latter half of his Essanay benefit, and without even the benefit of the amusing Keystone cast. The cast here, other than Charlie, is pretty bad. Stereotype characters chewing the scenery. The plot is that a ship owner needs to wreck his boat to collect insurance on it, hires Charlie to help him "Shanghai" a crew with a not quite "fatal mallet," and then Shanghais Charlie himself. The subplot is that Charlie and Edna (the ship owner's daughter) are in love, the ship owner objects and tries to keep them apart, and Edna stows away on the ship, leading to the owner having to save her from the explosion he has planned for the ship. Edna really has little to do here though and does not add much to the film.

So what are the unique and redeeming features here?

On the unique side, most of the on-ship sequences feature a lot of boat rocking, sometimes achieved through tilting the camera (the exterior shots - which aren't real convincing because the horizon tilts along with the ship), and through having built an interior ship set that could actually tilt (perhaps construction of this device accounted for the long time it took to make the film). These bits are not real funny, but perhaps they seemed impressive to a 1915 audience.

On the redeeming side the pickings are slim. There is some nice cane play with Edna early in the film. There is a 30 second segment where he does some Irish style dancing. Not all that funny, but only the second time he has really used dance in a film, something that he does more in later years, and it is interesting to see. He also does a nice miming of nausea, being too sick to eat due to the tilting ship.

That's about it. Honestly I didn't really crack a smile throughout the film, and I watched it twice. 54 minutes I will never get back.

The print quality is quite good with the BlueRay a significant improvement on the Image DVD. Discounting His Regeneration, in which Charlie only had a brief Cameo, this is his worst film since at least His Prehistoric Past. In the words of the Starkist announcer "Sorry Charlie."

Rating:
Content: 3/10
Print: 7/10

 

I don't feel that "Shanghaied" is a classic film, but I do like it a great deal more than you do.

There are a number of bits that make me laugh, and I find that the film moves along entertainingly enough ( I was never "checking my watch" during my recent reviewing).

I like the first little bit where Charlie dusts off the bit of ground he is about to stand on (it's just funny to me in an absurd way). I really like the bit where Charlie "makes work" under the threat of being whipped by the captain - randomly moving the cart hurriedly back and forth and then trying (in vain of course) to shovel something on to it. And there is just a touch of Marx Brothers anarchy in Charlie's inverted "salute" that he displays to authority figures throughout the film.

The trappings of melodramatic silent film (the nearly-omnipresent dime store facial hair and eye brows, the over-the-top acting by Edna's father when he reads her note) are so overdone that it makes me think that Chaplin was attempting parody/satire more than he was simply making a film in the style. Surely that's the case by the time he gets to Mutual, as Eric Campbell's eye brows and beard can attest,

What I find odd, watching the Image DVD, is the pattern that the film degradation sometimes takes on. Rather than, say, a 3 minute piece of edited footage demonstrating consistent degradation, the print quality seems to align with the original source. Let me try to bring clarity to that statement with an example. There are sequences were the film goes from better quality (sequence on deck) to poorer quality (sequence in the water alongside the ship) back to better quality (on deck) to poorer quality (in water) and on and on. Unless a better quality print had all the water sequences edited out (why would it?), necessitating the recruitment of a poorer quality print, why does this pattern prevail? And it happens a number of times, and sometimes the "on deck" material is better than the intercut shots and sometimes it is worse (but a pattern is evident). Other times, there is no pattern evident. Surely there's a logical explanation?

 

Interesting point on the possibility of parody of the earlier style, that had not occurred to me. And it makes some sense as it is a real break from what we have been seeing in his more recent films. It is consistent with my observation that this seems kind of like a Keystone plopped down in the Essanay period.

Unfortunately your observation about the shift in quality from interior to exterior is going to make me play parts of this film again to see if that carries over to the Flicker Alley DVD at all.

Always glad to read that someone enjoys one of these films more than I do. I felt bad about slamming this one as much as I did, but I am trying to make comparisons and the contrast between this and The Bank was so glaring.

Had it come right after Prehistoric Past I would have said it was a step up.

 

Yep, most (but not all) of the in the water shots are notably worse quality on the BR as well. And by and large the interior shots are better than the exterior - I wonder if the brighter exposure could play in, with flaws being more apparent against a whiter backdrop, though it seems unlikely to make that big a difference. A lot of this film on BR is some of the best quality we have seen yet.

And I just determined that this film is significantly funnier on slight fast forward (sped up 25% per my stopwatch) even lacking the audio. Perhaps it originally was meant to be run faster and the slow speed is part of why it seems to drag so much for me. I would boost the rating from a 3 to a 5 played at a 25% faster speed.

I would guess that ideal would be more like a 15% speed up but I don't have that option.

 

A Night in the Show (film #49)
November 15, 1915
Two reels: 24:15

First time I watched this in my sequential viewing of the films I saw it as a step back the Keystone era, though much better executed than Shanghaied was. Actually this steps back in some ways to a pre-Keystone stage, as it is based loosely on the Mumming Birds sketch Chaplin performed with Karno, inspiring Sennett to hire him. There is no plot whatsoever here. Charlie is drunk and goes to see a music hall show, hits on a girl and gets into physical altercations. One twist is there are two Charlies: one a rich guy in a tux ("Mr. Pest," instantly recognizable as Charlie despite the finer clothes), and a poor guy in the balcony ("Mr. Rowdy," who despite wearing a bowler looks far less like Charlie, perhaps due to a bushy mustache, and acts less like him as well).

Despite the lack of plot, it is all very well done as a bit of drunk physical comedy, particularly in the first half in which he fails to understand the ticket line (first butting ahead of every one then lining up behind a statue), fights with orchestra members, knocks a large woman into a fountain and pulls her out, then hits on Edna until backing off after inadvertantly holding hands with another man on her lap. But the pacing of the second half falters as our Chaplin viewing is interrupted by the dull acts he watches, including a belly dancer, a snake charmer, a couple singers (who we of course can't her but they appear to displease the audience), and a fire eater - whose fire prompts Mr. Rowdy to douse everyone with a fire hose as the conclusion.

After a couple more viewings I started seeing the film in a different way, almost as something between a subversive parody of and a loving homage to the Keystone and Karno approaches to comedy - really highlighting how far Chaplin had advanced so quickly. I can't be sure of this, as from 2016 I can't really say what would pass in 1915 as a parody of 1913-14, but it added to my appreciation of the film. This first struck me watching his altercations with the orchestra members, in which the Trombonist appears to be channeling Chester Conklin and the conductor has Ford Sterling's mannerisms and hair. Another throw back has this film featuring more pie throwing than any other Chaplin film, as basic a staple of slapstick as the chase. It also has I believe the first use (by Leo White) of blackface in any Chaplin directed film (there was an instance in His Favorite Pastime, but Charlie was only an actor at that point, not even contributing the scenario). His use of blackface may even have had a bit of any anti-racist message here, for two reasons. First, Leo is not adopting any of the broad caricature aspects of blackface, he is just wearing the make up and otherwise acting like anyone else in the cheap seats. Second, by using blackface, Chaplin was actually depicting an integrated audience. Which certainly would not have been the norm in some of the areas where his films were being viewed.

Seen in this light, the film really transcends the plotlessness and make for quite interesting viewing even beyond its amusement value. This film is also the best overall print quality we have seen so far. I would say about 90% of the footage used on the BR version is better in quality than any more than 20% of the footage in any of his earlier films. The score in this version is also quite nicely done with some close to sync sound effects included in the score.

Rating:
Content: 8/10
Print: 8/10

 

Doing my homework tonight. Watching the Oct. 1915 Cecil B. DeMille version of Carmen, which Chaplin parodied in his next film.

Not a real fan of non-comic silent film, but I will take one for the team here.

Remarkable that the first print I found on YouTube is better quality than almost all the 1915 Chaplin films.

 

The odd running time (just over 23 minutes) makes me suspect that big chunks of this film may be lost. Certainly the bit where Mr. Rowdy gives the boot to the face (shown in slow motion on the Image DVD) looks like a tiny scrap of footage with the surrounding material missing.

There aren't a great many laughs here, especially, as you state, when the "show" begins. My favorite moments are Mr. Rowdy's two near-falls out of the balcony (when he first takes one step too many getting to his seat, and when he is so taken with the "beautiful" dancer). There are some interesting things to observe regarding the folks in the expensive seats and the poor folk in the balcony. Apart from Leo White in blackface, the character to Mr. Rowdy's right appears to be made up as a Jewish stereotype. And I'll agree with your point that this is more of an early attempt at showing a diverse audience populating the cheap seats than any stereotypical humor. I only recently (a few months back) got my first look at Keystone's stereotypical Jewish characters (Cohen & Goldberg, played by Ford Sterling and Henry Lehrman) - it made me wonder if Chaplin saw any of the films in this series (they were made before he came to Keystone, and ceased by the time he arrived), and what he might have thought of them.

The "boy" with the pies (or whatever those things are) always reminds me a bit of Joe Besser's character Stinky.



I was curious to see if he was played by a grown man, and a little Googling reveals that he was Dee "Skinny" Lampton, "billed" at 5 feet tall and 300 pounds. He was 17 when the film was made and didn't live to see 21 (appendicitis).



Final random thought - I always found the title of the film a bit odd - "A Night IN the Show" vs. "A Night AT the show" ... is the title a comment on the way Mr. Pest and Mr. Rowdy both manage to, in a way, become part of the show? Or is it archaic (or British) phrasing?

 

I've seen it once (that was enough for me), but it certainly does add to one's appreciation of what Chaplin was doing in his film.