Category: Charlie Chaplin

Principal Cast : Charlie Chaplin, Edna Purviance, Leo White, Billy Armstrong, James T Kelley, Bud Jamison, Wesley Ruggles, Albert Austin, ‘Snub’ Pollard. Synopsis: As Colonel Nutt is experimenting with explosives, a new janitor is joining his household. The inept janitor proceeds to make life difficult for the rest of staff. Meanwhile, a foreign agent arrives at the house in hopes of getting Col. Nutt’s latest invention. The inventor throws him out, so the agent then employs a thug to get the formula. When police head to the Nutt home to…

Read More

Principal Cast : Charles Chaplin, Edna Purviance, Lloyd Bacon, Leo White, Bud Jamison, Ernest Van Pelt, Paddy Mcguire, Billy Armstrong. Synopsis: The Little Fellow finds the girl of his dreams and work on a family farm. ******** Made for the Essenay Studio and released in 1915, Charlie Chaplin’s The Tramp represented a cementing of the “little fellow’s” core traits and personality within the confines of his short reel big screen adventures. Although the character had appeared numerous times on screen before The Tramp came along, it has been the opinion…

Read More

Principal Cast : Charlie Chaplin, Edna Purviance, Eric Campbell, Albert Austin, Henry Bergman, Marta Golden, May White. Synopsis:  The Little Tramp escapes from prison; saves a girl and her mother from drowning; and creates havoc at a swank party. **** I’m not sure what I was expecting with a film using the word “adventure” in its title, but it wasn’t this. Chaplin’s twelfth and final film for the Mutual Film Company, released in October of 1917, takes the Tramp out of the studio boundaries and onto the fabulous Californian coastline, particularly a…

Read More

Principal Cast : Charlie Chaplin, Edna Purviance, Eric Campbell, Albert Austin, Lloyd Bacon, Henry Bergman, Frank J Coleman, William Gillespie, James T Kelley, Charlotte Mineau, John Rand, Janet Miller Sully, Loyal Underwood, Eric von Stroheim Jr, Leo White, Tom Wood. Synopsis:  A reformed tramp becomes a police constable who must fight a huge thug who dominates an inner city street. ******** Chaplin the superhero: Easy Street sees the world’s best little Tramp take on Eric Campbell’s hulking streetwise bullyboy in a showdown for the ages, a frantic climactic chase sequence encapsulating…

Read More

Principal Cast : Charlie Chaplin, Henry Bergman, Edna Purviance, John Rand, Albert Austin, Wesley Ruggles, Eric Campbell. Synopsis:  Charlie competes with his fellow shop assistant. He is fired by the pawnbroker and rehired. He nearly destroys everything in the shop and and himself. He helps capture a burglar. He destroys a client’s clock while examining it in detail. ***** Chaplin’s sixth short under the Mutual banner sees him working at an old-style pawnshop, and getting up to his usual slapstick antics. Inventive, comedic, often raucous with pratfalls and endless mugging to camera,…

Read More

Principal Cast : Charlie Chaplin, Edna Purviance, Eric Campbell, James T Kelley, Henry Bergman, Lloyd Bacon, Albert Austin, Frank J Coleman, John Rand, Charlotte Mineau, Leota Bryan, Fred Goodwins. Synopsis:  After causing restaurant chaos at work, a bumbling waiter tears up the local roller rink with his skating. ***** The eighth of the Chaplin shorts made for Mutual, The Rink is yet more farcical brilliance from the little Tramp and his beautiful comic timing. Although the film spends an inordinate time in a restaurant before Chaplin gets anywhere near a roller-skating rink,…

Read More

Principal Cast : Charlie Chaplin, Eric Campbell, Edna Purviance, Henry Bergman, John Rand, James T Kelley, Albert Austin, Frank J Coleman. Uncredited: Leota Bryan, William Gillespie, Janet Sully, Loyal Underwood, Tom Wood. Synopsis: An alcoholic checks into a health spa and his antics promptly throw the establishment into chaos. *** Charlie Chaplin’s 1917 short film The Cure is hilarious. Although lacking the biting social commentary of The Immigrant (which would debut after The Cure) or the outright zaniness of One AM or The Count, The Cure’s slapstick comedy is distilled Chaplin perfection,…

Read More

Principal Cast : Charlie Chaplin, Edna Purviance, Eric Campbell, Albert Austin, Lloyd Bacon, Henry Bergman, Leota Bryan, Frank J Coleman, James T Kelley, Charlotte Mineau, John Rand, Wesley Ruggles, Leo White, Tom Wood. Synopsis: Charlie is an overworked labourer at a film studio who helps a young woman find work even while his coworkers strike against his tyrannical boss. ***** Madcap silent farce from Charlie Chaplin ticks all the genre boxes for “behind the scenes on a film set” we’ve come to know and love. Trapdoors, pie-fights, women dressed as men, pratfalls…

Read More

Principal Cast : Charlie Chaplin, Edna Purviance, Eric Campbell, Leo White, Lloyd Bacon, Charlotte Mineau, Albert Austin, John Rand, James T Kelley, Frank J Coleman. Synopsis:  The Tramp falls for a gypsy girl, while she falls for a handsome (if unsuccessful) artist. ***** Of the twelve short films he made under the Mutual Films banner, Charlie Chaplin’s The Vagabond – being the third and released in July of 1916 – is one of the more unique. For a film barely stretching 30 minutes, it transitions midway through from knockabout slapstick comedy…

Read More

Principal Cast : Edna Purviance, Clarence Geldart, Carl Miller, Lydia Knott, Charles K French, Adolphe Menjou, Betty Morrissey, Malvina Polo, Henry Bergman. Synopsis: A kept woman runs into her former fiancé and finds herself torn between love and comfort. **** Charlie Chaplin’s short films had turned him into a major Hollywood star, if not the biggest screen icon in the world during the formative studio years of American film. His “Tramp” persona had allowed him considerable creative freedom, ultimately providing the means to co-found his own studio, United Artists, with fellow…

Read More