Saturday, January 05, 2008

Amazing how much you can do in 33 minutes. Makes you think.

A Night Out (1915) by Charles Chaplin continues the Ben Turpin collaboration with great results.  Not rivals in this one, exactly, they are least start as friends, meeting outside a bar.  When Charlie arrives to meet Ben, there is another guy (Bad) waiting outside the bar.  Charlie and Bad have an altercation, but a cop shows up and they go inside the bar. Bad walks down the street to a below ground restaurant with a BIG Bouncer.

Charlie and Ben emerge from the bar LOADED, and wander down to the restaurant, where they are seated next to Bad.  Bad is a pompous ass and Charlie doesn’t like him, provocations are exchanged, with Turpin soon intervening to “protect” Charlie (who REALLY doesn’t need it).  It ends up that Turpin gets the bum’s rush from the bouncer.  A woman joins Bad and starts hitting Charlie with her purse, provocations are continued until Bad gets a pie in the face, and Charlie brushes his teeth with a plant from and IN the restaurant fountain, as well as washing face, pits, hands.  Bouncer makes Chaplin leave.  He is reunited with Turpin outside and they return to the first bar.  The Bouncer leaves the restaurant and goes home to his hotel and wife. Charlie and Ben emerge twice as drunk as before and check into the same hotel.  In the hallway they run into (without knowing) the bouncers wife and begin flirting and competing, Charlie kicks Ben through the door to get rid of him.

The Wife goes into her room, and Charlie starts peeping through the keyhole at her!  The Bellhop, carrying a seltzer bottle, catches him, and he ends up escaping by squirting HIMSELF with the seltzer, in the crotch.  He goes in/out of his room, bellhop leaves, and he knocks on the door.  The Bouncer answers and begins rolling up his sleeve to beat Charlie.  Charlie calmly turns around, and, followed by the bouncer proceeds to go into his room, pack, and check right out of the hotel, leaving Turpin.  Chaplin then goes to Hotel 2 to check in, but ends up on a bench in the park, but with a room at the hotel.  The bouncer and wife also check into Hotel 2, and Turpin awakes and seeks out Charlie in the park to demand he pay his half of Hotel Room 1! Chaplin bludgeons him 5 times with a brick, right down to flat on the ground, then returns to Hotel 2.  Some lengthy getting-ready-for-bed gags ensue, until the wife’s dog escapes her room and hides under Chaplin’s.  The girl chases the dog into Charlie’s room, and the husband discovers Chaplin in the room with her, draws a gun, and Chaplin leaps out the window!  END.

The Champion (1915) starts out with a classic Chaplin 2 shot: Tramp and Dog.  Chaplin tries to share his last hot dog with the dog, but the dog doesn’t want it!  “Persnickety Dog”.  The long and the short of it is, a fighter looking for sparring partners gets knocked out by Chaplin (with a horseshoe in his glove) so badly that he runs off down the road AND JUMPS ON A TRAIN OUT OF TOWN!!  As a result, Chaplin is given a shot to fight “uppercut” the champion.  Great series of gags about training, and then the big night, with an absolutely hilarious main fight that ends with, well this one you should go and see yourself, the ending is a LU LOO!

In The Park (1915). Charlie Chaplin once famously said, “All I need to make a Comedy is a park, a policeman, and a pretty girl.”   This must be the film he is talking about, because that is really the whole thing, save for a thief and a fat swishy guy.  We open with a pretty girl watching 2 spooners.  “The Bite Bit”. Chaplin is walking through the park and stealing, posing as a blind man. Chaplin steals right back from him!  A cop shows up, Chaplin greets him and goes to sit on the bench with the spooners, the man tries to get rid of him. Charlie starts flirting with the pretty girl, who is reading a romance novel. But Fats is her man, and Charlie is driven off, right into the middle of 2 guys fighting over a can of sausages.  Charlie kicks one of their asses, then steals a rope of sausage from the other guy, hits him with it, and runs off.  The thief steals from Charlie, so while he does, Charlie steals a purse out of HIS pocket.  Then, as the purse is on the end of his cane, Fats is charmed by it and tries to buy it.  Charlie sells it to him, but the thief sees this and kicks him in the ass to try and get it back.  Fight ensues but ends on cop’s arrival. Thief then hits everyone in the park except the cop and Chaplin (who he is aiming at) and knocks them all out!  Charlie flees, but a suicidal man is trying to throw himself into the lake to drown and wants Charlie’s help, Charlie obliges by kicking him into the lake.  The cop takes Fats and the purse and confronts Charlie who then kicks BOTH of them into the park and runs off. END

Endless experimentation, and innovation. In The Champion, Chaplin cuts 2 motion shots together, one on an angle, one standard Sennett side-side, to emphasize and amplify movement, and it works, though it would count as a “jumpcut” under “continuity rules” (which ARE NOT all that, especially not anymore). More tomorrow…..

Comments are closed.