A Busy Day features Charlie in drag, trying to disrupt a parade in a shameless rip-off of his previous Kid Auto Races At Venice.  A Fatal Mallet also stars Sennett (a rare appearance, and for good reason—his acting is more uneven than his directing) fighting with Charlie over girly girl Mabel.  They are both dull Sennett products exhibiting little craftsmanship or art.

The Knockout is a half hour long, an epic for Keystone.  It is basically a Fatty Arbuckle boxing vehicle with Charlie coming between prize fighter Fatty and Edgar Kennedy.  Chaplin’s ballet-like brand of slapstick (barely) salvages the film, and The Knockout again makes it abundantly clear why Chaplin quickly outshone his peers.

Mabel’s Busy Day is an eccentric step up.  Mabel is the much put upon, unkempt hot dog vendor at a race track.  Charlie, as a dandy, arrives amidst much shenanigans, including dance-like slapstick with some Keystone Kops.  Charlie spies the patrons abusing poor Mabel.  He comforts her and, when her back is turned, he steals her hardware to go into business for himself, with predictably disastrous results.  Chaplin here is without sympathy, even if he ends up as abused as the girl he himself abused and, realizing what she has been put through, finds enough pity for her to accompany her through the iris out.  Again, the odd chemistry between Charlie and Mabel inexplicably works, although Chaplin would find more apt female counterparts later in his career.

“Laughing Gas” (1914, unrestored)

Chaplin co-wrote Mabel’s Married Life with Norman and, although Sennett officially directed, it is moving towards the style film historians will later term “Chaplinesque”; it is easily the best of the Sennett-directed Chaplin Keystones.  Charlie and Mabel are a married couple out on a Sunday promenade in the park.  Charlie grudgingly shares his banana with the Mrs.  He momentarily steps into an inn, which gives Mack Swain ample opportunity to stop and flirt with Mabel.  The little fellow doesn’t have much substance compared to big Mack.  Mack’s wife (Eva Nelson) arrives in time to put a temporary stop to the antics of the trio.  Charlie blames Mabel and sends her home, which gives him plenty of time to return to the bar.  On her way home, Mabel buys a life-size dummy (?) from a shop.  When the store’s delivery boys arrive with the dummy, Mabel is embarrassed to be caught only in her PJs (it is 1914).  She wraps a leopard skin rug around her torso and sends the boys packing.  While Mabel engages in balletic slapstick with her new boy toy, Charlie is engaged in slapstick of a more, inebriated violent nature with Big Mack and locals at the inn.  Worn out by the dummy, Mabel jumps into bed.  Charlie staggers into their apartment and predictably mistakes the dummy for Mack.  Charlie’s fight with the dummy is classic Keystone.  When he believes Mabel has been unfaithful, Charlie starts straggling her, much to the horror of eavesdropping neighbors.  The dummy gets in a few more whacks at both Charlie and Mabel before she pulls off the dummy’s hat, much to Charlie’s amusement.  Charlie and Mabel end their silly fight with a kiss.

Laughing Gas was written and directed by Chaplin, and with him now fully in control, we see a vast improvement over the previous Keystone efforts. This is a frantic, delightfully amoral short with the Tramp as a janitor for a dentist, and he’s particularly cruel to his employer’s patients and to a dwarf assistant (Joseph Sutherland).  Charlie’s boss is Dr. Pain (Fritz Schade) and Charlie is not above flirting with Mrs. Pain (the underrated Alice Howell, a favorite of Stan Laurel’s).  On the way to the pharmacy Charlie knocks out Mack Swain’s teeth with a flying brick, thus giving Dr. Pain yet another customer (Chaplin later reworked that business in his debt feature, 1921′s The Kid, he and Jackie Coogan intentionally throw bricks through windows to drum up paying customers for their glass replacement business).  There is quite a bit of erotic interplay between Charlie and Alice, then between Charlie and patient Helen Carruthers, whom Charlie takes advantage of when he takes pliers to her nose in order to plant a kiss on her lips.  Charlie steps on customers, brutalizes them, mocks clergymen, and clearly only cares for the pretty girls.  He is an unrepentant hedonist (a fact which predictably endeared this incarnation of the Tramp to many of the Surrealists).

The Property Man is the first two-reeler solely written and directed by Chaplin. He plays a prop man at a vaudeville theater. Charlie likes to drink beer backstage, smoke cigarettes, bark orders, and brutally abuse his elderly, Quasimodo-like assistant (Josef Swickard).  Charlie gets kicked around by the Strong Man (Jess Dandy), but Charlie, in turn, callously kicks his assistant in the face.  Charlie flirts with the Goo Goo Sisters (Vivian Edwards and Cecile Arnold) and cleverly utilizes the stage props in numerous slapstick gags.  Mack Sennet shows up as a patron who boos the bad acts and cheers the (unintentional) funny man Charlie.  Chaplin would later rework and draw out this idea in The Circus (1928).  The chaos climaxes with Charlie taking a hose to all, another gag he would revisit in the inferior A King in New York (1957).  Despite the crudeness, Chaplin’s sharpening skills paint him as our protagonist.

The Face on the Barroom Floor is an oddity in the Chaplin Keystone cannon.  It is a satire of the Hugh Antoine d’ Arcy poem, telling the tale of an anti-social vagabond who strolls into a tavern and (after spitting on the ass of a sleeping patron?!?) solicits multiple drinks from the local sailors as he recounts his fall from grace.  Through flashback Charlie narrates his life as a successful painter (painters were a lifelong source of romantic fascination for Chaplin), ruined when his love (Cecile Arnold) runs off with his model (Jess Dandy).  The d’ Arcy poem is quoted throughout the short, and Chaplin contrasts the tuxedoed painter with the filthy, dejected vagabond.  The painter unwittingly sits on his palette, eats his paint, and sullies his clothes.  As the vagabond, Chaplin obsessively sketches the image of his lost love on the tavern floor, but, in his drunken state, he only manages a shoddy smiley face.  Violent barroom antics ensue when the locals try to kick him out.  The vagabond collapses, falling face down in his own drawing (in the poem, the vagabond falls down dead).  Barroom Floor is not so much a comedy as a brief, dramatic sketch in which Chaplin’s screen persona acknowledges and celebrates being an annoyance.  Although Chaplin’s acting here is more advanced than in the earlier efforts,this is a film which would have benefited from the nuanced pathos of later Chaplin.  Still, it’s an interesting, ambitious attempt to break free of formula.

Recreation is another park comedy, in badly deteriorated condition.  The Tramp is suicidal until a pretty girl (Helen Carruthers) happens along.  Charlie’s newfound zest for life gets short-shifted when her sailor boyfriend and the Kops come along to spoil things.  It all ends with brick throwing and everyone in the lake.

In The Masquerader Chaplin and Arbuckle start off, as themselves, in a typical day at the film studio.  Fatty inexplicably vanishes after Charlie transforms into the Tramp and the cameras roll.  Charlie flirts with a couple of dishy tomatoes, misses his cue, and gets sacked by the callous director.  What’s a Tramp to do?  Charlie dons his best Mrs. Doubtfire, gets a job as an actress, and flirts with the boys before his ruse is discovered and he winds up at the bottom of a well!  Since it’s a one-reeler, there is no real time to milk the potential (Chaplin will do that in Essanay Studio’s 1915 A Woman), but this is a resplendent sketch.

Two Sinatra-styled duets:  His New Profession teams Chaplin with Charley Chase.  Chaplin is looking through the Police Gazette in the park when Chase hires the Tramp to look after his inconvenience: a wheel-chair bound uncle, thus freeing Chase to tend to a pretty girl.  Chaplin wheels the annoying crippled guy around the pier.  The Tramp wants a beer and steals money from another annoying crip.  Predictably, chaos escalates with the two paraplegics engaging in wheel-chair slapstick, and Chaplin trying to steal Chase’s girl.  Throw in a couple of Keystone Kops and bodies falling from the pier and this winds up as a representative example of early cinema anti-PC amoralism. The Rounders is Chaplin’s only genuine teaming with Arbuckle, and that is regrettable because they make a charismatic pair.  Charlie and Fatty are a couple of married rounders.  Charlie is married to the abusive dyke Phyllis Allen, while Fatty abuses Minta Durfee.  Al St. John and Charley Chase make cameo appearances, but it’s Chaplin and Arbuckle who serve as rudimentary precursors to the Laurel and Hardy brand of team comedy.  The scenario is thin, but primitively amusing.  The two disdainful hubbies pair up for a night of the town and much pouring of liquor.  The wives will come a-hunting; the boys will find refuge in a park and a sinking rowboat.

The New Janitor has a more intricate plot.  Charlie is a janitor working in a bank firm.  One of the junior managers (John T. Dillon) is being blackmailed for unpaid debts, and plans to steal money from the vault to pay off his blackmailer.  Meanwhile, Charlie gets fired for dumping a bucket of water onto the bank president (Jess Dandy).  Bank employee Helen Carruthers catches Dillon in mid-thievery.  She yells for help.  Charlie, on the verge of clearing out, hears her, foils the robbery and gets mistaken for the thief.  The real culprit is finally revealed and Charlie is rewarded with a raise.  Chaplin would remake the film, as The Bank (1915), at Essanay Studios.  Chaplin’s later trademark sentimentality is in evidence here, albeit subdued.

Those Love Pangs pairs Chaplin with Charles Conklin again as rival mashers, fighting over a bevy of women.  First they compete over their landlord (Helen Carruthers), then reliable Keystone regulars Cecile Arnold and Vivian Edwards (as prostitutes!).  The girls prefer Conklin, which prompts suicide attempt by Charlie, put a stop to by a Kop. Chaplin winds up with the girls and, of course, it ends in chaos at a local cinema.  Chaplin alone makes it watchable with idiosyncratic vignettes which have nothing to do with the narrative.  He perfects his cigarette kicking here and turns his cane into a toothpick.

Dough and Dynamite is another two-reeler and became the biggest hit among Chaplin’s Keystone films. Charlie is a waiter who outdoes himself in his abuse towards a customer.  He and fellow waiter Conklin are forced into the kitchen when the bakers go on strike.  Naturally there is frantic slapstick hijinks aplenty, but it’s Chaplin’s slower paced characterizations that make this a Keystone stand-out.  He turns dough into bracelets and rings, and with powder on his hands he intentionally and unintentionally gets his floury hands on the daily duties of several dames, including the boss’ wife (Norma Nichols).  Big boss man (Fritz Schade) sees Charlie’s handprint where it don’t belong, and it ends in an apocalyptic, dough-slinging finale.  The boys are unaware that the striking bakers have planted dynamite in a fatal loaf, and at the end the war-weary Tramp emerges from a sea of bread, bricks and mortars.

Mabel was back with Chaplin in Gentlemen of Nerve and, although a nominal film, it is good to see them together again.  Charlie is Mr. Wow Wow who, with Mr. Walrus (Mack Swain) sneaks into the track.  Charlie spies a pretty girl with a soda, plops down next to her, and steals sips.  Mabel is saddled with the roving eyes of Charles Conklin; eventually she winds up with the more appreciative Chaplin.

Chaplin is a piano mover in His Musical Career, a precursor of sorts to Laurel and Hardy‘s Music Box (1932).  It’s exactly what you would expect, with Charlie having an extremely rough go of it, ending up in a lake.  Laurel and Hardy improved on the subject, but Chaplin’s influence on the later film is undeniable.

His Trysting Places is a two-reel ensemble piece and all the better for it.  Chaplin and Mabel are a not so blissfully wedded couple.  She is stuck with the cooking and the infant.  She hands the baby to Charlie who takes the tyke in arm like an old suitcase.  Charlie clearly can’t be bothered with the brat, and hands his son a real pistol to play with so he can read the paper uninterrupted.  In striking contrast, we see the happy domesticity of Mack Swain and Phyllis Allen.  Chaplin edits these sequences like a string duet, and laces it with swelling cynicism.  Charlie and Mack run into each other in a nearby restaurant, and there is a scene with them fighting over food, including a chicken leg (prefiguring their starvation scene in Chaplin’s masterpiece, The Gold Rush, in which Mack imagines Charlie to be a chicken).  On their way out of the ensuing chaos, Charlie and Mack mistakenly grab each other’s coats.  In Mack’s coat is a letter, to his wife, suggesting a romantic meeting at their trysting place in the park.  In Charlie’s coat is a list for baby’s grocery needs.  Naturally, Mabel finds Mack’s letter in the coat she believes belongs to Charlie.  Convinced her husband is having an affair, she wallops him and then goes to find the other woman at the rendezvous spot.  At the park, Phyllis discovers the grocery list in her husband’s pocket and is convinced he is hiding an illegitimate child.  It all plays out like an identity mix-up from “The Marriage of Figaro.”

Charlie and Mack do a wife swap in Getting Acquainted.  Here, Charlie is married to Phyllis and Mack is married to Mabel.  This movie is noteworthy as the last teaming of Chaplin and Normand.  It all takes in the park, and the respective husbands are ambitious about dropping their wives to flirt with other girls around.  A Kop from the flirting patrol tries to quell the Don Juan syndrome.  The usual park slapstick is present, but it’s subdued for a Keystone comedy, and there is a prevailing farewell sentiment hovering over the film.

His Prehistoric Past was Chaplin’s final film for Sennett, and it sounds far more promising than what it actually delivers.  Chaplin dreams he is strolling through a prehistoric park.  Mack Swain is a rival neanderthal.  It could have used a Raquel Welch or a dinosaur or two.

Tillie’s Punctured Romance was Keystone’s first feature, and the first feature comedy film of any kind.  Although made before Getting Acquainted, it was released several months later.  The star here is Marie Dressler, who also starred in the Broadway musical on which the movie was based.  Chaplin, as a city slicker, steals everything but the camera.  Mabel is Charlie’s ex, and knows that Charlie is after Marie because of a potential inheritance from her rich uncle.  The Keystone Kops are also on hand, and although feature length slapsticks usually outstay their welcome, Tillie does not (neither do most of the Abbott and Costello features, or any of the Three Stooges movies).

“Chaplin at Keystone” also features a 1916 animated French short, Charlie’s White Elephants, which crudely pays homage to Chaplin and Arbuckle.  “Inside the Keystone Project” is a documentary which follows the painstaking, eight year restoration of the films.

Chaplin perfected the short film format during his stay at Mutual Studios.  Many critics consider his Mutual shorts to be his best.  There is much to be found as well in the Essanay shorts, made between Keystone and Mutual.  Keystone co-stars Mabel Normand and Fatty Arbuckle would each have tragic falls from grace, while Chaplin went onto unparalleled success.  Indeed, he is almost the only silent star whose films are still regularly revived.

Earlier this year, Flicker Alley released the restored Keystone Chaplin shorts.  That restoration was long overdue.  For years, public domain labels had churned out DVD prints that were so execrable as to be virtually unwatchable.

In 1914, his first year at Keystone, the Tramp is in his infancy, and his later self is only occasionally glimpsed.  Making A Living (1914) is notable mainly as Chaplin’s screen debut.  The Tramp is not yet born; rather, Chaplin appears as a swindling, Don Juan-like English dandy who foreshadows few characteristics of the famous persona.  This mess of a film was directed by the Austrian native Henry “Suicide” Lehrman (so nicknamed by stuntmen because Lehrman, unconcerned about the danger of stunts, was risky to work for).  Lehrman later dated actress Virginia Rappe.  At the time of her death in the infamous Fatty Arbuckle scandal, Lehrman testified against Arbuckle at the trial and capitalized on the publicity.  In the Chaplin at Keystone collection Lehrman appears as a reporter in Making a Living and as a film director in Chaplin’s second released film Kid Auto Races at Venice, Cal. (which he also directed).

Kid Auto Races at Venice, Cal. is the film in which audiences first saw Chaplin as the Tramp.  This vast improvement over Chaplin’s debut was entirely improvised, shot in less than an hour.  The Tramp shows up at an auto race and, spying a film crew, becomes obsessed with being the center of the camera’s attention.  The race crowd is at first curious and then entertained by the intruding Tramp, who interacts with them.  In his second film, Chaplin proves more innovative and considerably more talented than any of his co-stars or even his biggest influence at that time, Max Linder.  The Tramp is sparkling and animated as the unashamed egoist, an extroverted, defiant “little man” whose stubborn spunk and ambition rise to the forefront when he, unsuccessfully, tries to convince the director and crowd that he is far more interesting than a silly race.  This is one the funniest and most compact of the Keystone Chaplins.

Though released after Kid Auto Races, Mabel’s Strange Predicament was actually the first film in which Chaplin donned the Tramp persona.  This film co-stars Mabel Normand, whose home-spun shop girl persona is still unique in the annuls of film history.  Mabel’s tragic life and premature death is the stuff of legend, befitting Jerry Herman’s splendid, underrated 1974 musical “Mack and Mabel” (the CD recording features the inimitable Robert Preston and Bernadette Peters). Normand’s films are still neglected, although three of her features,  Mickey (1920), What Happened to Rosa (1921) and The Extra Girl (1923) have been released on DVD and are good showcases for her screen persona.  Normand herself (awkwardly) directed Mabel’s Strange Predicament.  Although Chaplin was undoubtedly the superior craftsman, Richard Attenborough’s unflattering portrait of Normand in his pedestrian biopic Chaplin (1992), starring Robert Downey Jr. as Chaplin and Marisa Tomei as Mabel, is inaccurate and unfair.  Normand clearly influenced and mentored Chaplin, and she was actually the only one of his Keystone directors with whom he had a mostly amiable working relationship.  Chaplin does a convincing drunk act as the ever amorous Tramp who, after pursuing several other girls, comes across Mabel’s sexually provocative (for its time) after-hours pajama girl, locked out of her room by a dog and a bouncing ball.  Chaplin and Normand play off of each other fairly well here, though it’s solely due to their idiosyncratic mismatch.  Despite the stars’ odd chemistry, the film is melodramatic and overstays its welcome. Chaplin’s inebriated Tramp makes later lush acts, such as Dean Martin’s, seem comparatively cartoonish.

Much was made over the recent discovery of the believed-to-be-lost A Thief Catcher, directed by Ford Sterling, who is actually the star here.  Chaplin has a bit part as a Keystone Kop, which is mainly of interest as a precursor to his role as policeman in the later Mutual masterpiece, Easy Street (1917).  Harold Lloyd once claimed that Sterling was the best of the silent comedians.  Today, looking at Sterling’s work in front of and behind the camera, Lloyd’s proclamation seems dubious.

Between Showers is the last Chaplin film directed by Lehrman.  It again stars Sterling, and it is one of the flattest of the Chaplin Keystones.  Sterling and Chaplin star as the Masher and the Rival Masher, who engage in embarrassingly rudimentary slapstick over damsel-in-distress Emma Clifton.  Clifton is seeking gentlemanly assistance  in crossing a muddy puddle.  Chester Conklin, in his typical and dull kop routine, disrupts the menage a trios.  Between Showers is mostly notable as the film which introduced the Tramp’s shoulder shrug, skid, the “Tramp walk”, the nose-thumbing, and the adolescent hand-over-mouth laugh.

A Film Johnnie was directed unimaginatively by George Nichols. The Tramp waxes amorous over Keystone girl Virginia Kirtley after seeing her in a western at the nickelodeon.  Charlie signs up as an extra in Kirtley’s latest film.  Not for the last time, the Tramp will mistake a film shoot for a real-life damsel-in-distress situation.  Naturally, chaos ensues.  Along the way, Keystone’s roster of stars, including Fatty Arbuckle (playing himself) appear to lend Charlie support.  Another Chaplin trademark bit is introduced here: utilizing a prop for something other than its usual purpose: a pistol is used first as toothpick and later as a lighter for his cigarette.

While Keystone founder Mack Sennett was uneven in his duties as a producer, he was even more uneven as a director.  Sennett was behind the camera for Tango Tangles, which mainly features Sterling and Arbuckle, with an out-of-costume Chaplin stuck on the sidelines.  Chaplin, fresh faced and appearing, uncomfortably, sans makeup, looks every bit the bland romantic lead type of the period.  Tango Tangles was filmed at the Venice Dance Hall and stars Minta Durfee (Arbuckle’s wife at the time) as the much fought over hat-check gal.  Despite his handsome looks and awkward exposure, Chaplin does a convincing drunk again, albeit briefly.  Arbuckle, perhaps surprising to contemporary audiences, is quite athletic, despite his girth.  In this, Arbuckle prefigures the equally athletic (and even more rotund) Oliver Hardy.

Nichols was back to directing Chaplin in His Favorite Pastime. Chaplin thankfully returns to the Tramp characterization, and although this is a better film than its predecessor, it is a sore spot in being one of the few Chaplin films which features blackface comedy.  Of course, Chaplin did not direct or write this one, and the star’s well-known disapproval of racist portrayals in film is in sharp contrast to peers such as Buster Keaton, Harold Lloyd and Harry Langdon, all of whom had no qualms about resorting to blackface for yuks.  Chaplin’s discomfort with stereotypes placed him well ahead of his time.  Peggy Pearce was his love interest, and she is the first of Chaplin’s many co-stars with whom he had an off-screen relationship.

Cruel, Cruel Love is another Nichols-directed Keystone short.  Chaplin and this director had a turbulent working relation, and it shows.  The star was clearly out of Nichols’ league, and what little there to enjoy about Cruel, Cruel Love is most likely due to Chaplin’s contributions.  Chaplin plays the aristocratic Lord Helpus (indeed) who decides to poison himself after he mistakenly believes he has been rejected by Minta Durfee.  Thanks to his amused butler (Edgar Kennedy) Helpus mistakenly drinks water instead of poison and imagines himself (briefly) in a Georges Méliès-styled hell.  Always one to rework an idea, Chaplin later expanded on the mistaken poison gag in his black comedy, Monsieur Verdoux (1947).

The Star Boarder again co-stars Minta Durfee.  Nichols directs Chaplin for the last time and Chaplin’s later, daintily OCD Tramp who would appear in his pictures for Mutual is briefly glimpsed.  Durfee is the Tramp’s landlord and she clearly likes him better than her brutish husband (Edgar Kennedy) or her terror of a son (Gordon Griffith).  There is a brief, out of place tennis-match-as-aphrodisiac between Chaplin and Durfee.  As in many later Chaplin films, it is a sequence that fits poorly with the rest of the narrative that is most memorable.

Mabel at the Wheel was the first of Chaplin’s two-reelers, and was co-directed by Normand and Sennett .  As written by Normand, Chaplin here is in a Ford Sterling-like villain role (at which Chaplin is far betterthan Sterling).  Normand is the nominal star, but Chaplin steals every scene he is in, and Normand the director lets him (she was far more generous to ‘competitive’ talent than Chaplin ever would be).  This is a handsomely mounted film dealing with an auto race and has Chaplin atypically behind the wheel (unlike Keaton, Chaplin was a bit of a technophobe who never learned to drive).  Although Mabel at the Wheel cannot be categorized as a “Chaplin” film, it is Keystone at its near-best, chock-full of period spectacle and dastardly villains.

Chaplin once said “all I need to make a picture is a park, a policeman, and a pretty girl.”  Twenty Minutes of Love is the first film for which Chaplin gets co-directing credit (along with Joseph Maddern).  Chaplin uses that already well-worn formula but, unfortunately, it results in a too-standard park comedy with co-star Minta Durfee hopelessly cute in her Mother Goose-like getup.

Caught in a Cabaret is another Mabel Normand film and Chaplin’s second two-reeler.  Again,Normand the director points the actor’s spotlight on her co-star.  Additionally, she co-wrote the film with Chaplin, and was instrumental in building up his character.  Caught in a Cabaret is superior to the previous Mabel’s Strange Predicament and feels, at times, like a precursor to what is, arguably, Chaplin’s greatest feature, The Gold Rush (1925).  The Tramp is fully encased in Keystone edginess here as he is determined to impress an out-of-his-league high society girl.  He works as a waiter in a cabaret under the dictatorial Edgar Kennedy.  Although we are meant to root for the Tramp here, our sympathies are not unreserved.  He is rude and selfish and the film opens with him mistreating a female customer by stealing her drink.  During lunch break, the Tramp is taking his canine out for a walk (to attract the fairer sex) when a young boy (Gordon Griffith) tries to steal his dog.  Charlie does not hesitate to violently knock the tyke to the ground.  Next, the Tramp comes upon a “society bud” (Normand) as she is being mugged in the park.  The Tramp chases off the mugger while Normand’s sissified, rich boyfriend (Harry McCoy) helplessly cowers from afar.  Charlie passes himself off as the Greenland ambassador Baron Doobugle and Mabel takes her hero home to meet the kinfolk.  Mabel invites “The Baron” to a party and Charlie hurries back, quite late, to his job with the jealous McCoy following him.  Fellow waiter Charles Conklin is quick to inform Kennedy of the Tramp’s tardiness, which will reap Conklin a thorough beating from the Tramp shortly after.  Of course, Kennedy gives Charlie a firm scolding.  Regular Sennett heavy Mack Swain appears to annoy hostess Minta Durfee; Chaplin puts a stop to that with the end of a mallet.  Charlie plays the ladies man at Mabel’s soiree and he is literally the life of the party, further arousing Kennedy’s jealousy.  Once Charlie leaves (to get back to work again) Kennedy hauls the partygoers off to the cabaret to expose his nemesis’ true identity.  A barroom brawl results and Mabel ends the film by taking a brickbat to her phony Baron.

Chaplin’s next film for Keystone would be Caught in the Rain.   It would be his first real film as both director and star.  Caught in the Rain will lead off the second part of the “Chaplin at Keystone” series next week.

Quite surprisingly, The Merry Widow was a critical and box office success for von Stroheim.  The film was so successful that it was remade in 1934 by Ernst Lubitsch (as a musical, replete with the Lubitsch touch, starring Maurice Chevalier and Jeanette MacDonald) and in a best-forgotten 1952 version starring Lana Turner.  Despite a studio mandated, ill-fitting happy ending, von Stroheim’s silent version is, predictably, the most bizarre.  The director added much to the story, stamping it with his idiosyncratic touch and causing the film to go considerably over schedule and over budget. The previous year’s Greed had nearly bankrupted the studio and sent producer Irving Thalberg to the hospital.  After The Merry Widow, von Stroheim would not direct a film for three years.

The story is aptly set in the fairy tale kingdom of Monteblanco (visually realized by the lush cinematography of Oliver Marsh and surrealistic mattes).  Prince Mirko (Roy D’Arcy) is heir to the throne . Second in line is Mirko’s womanizing cousin, Prince Danilo (Gilbert).  Enter the American chorus dancer Sally O’ Hara (Murray) whose legs are immediately noticed by all the attending males.  It is the first of many such scenes with burning gazes.  Baron Sadoja (Tully Marshall) is the elderly perv who bankrolls the kingdom.  Sadoja’s gaze focuses on O’Hara’s feet, and von Stroheim takes the route of delirious excess in visualizing the Baron’s foot fetish (one orgy-like fantasy sequence glides over rows of shoes, a scene that outraged Thalberg.  The director nonchalantly explained that the character had a foot fetish, to which the producer replied, “And you have a footage fetish.”)  Mirko envisions O’Hara as a Venus de Milo torso and, he will only home to her arms when,  they are adorned with jewels.  Danilo’s leer fixates instead upon O’Hara’s bee-stung lips.  He objectifies her, but after pulling a bit of prankster deception on her he later feels guilty for his lust for a sincere maiden.  He quickly proposes to her, and then he cowardly jilts her after the King and Queen persuade him not to marry a commoner.  Devastated, O’Hara rebounds by marring Sadoja who, after merely kissing his wife’s shoulder in the bridal chamber, falls in the ultimate climax of death.  Now widowed and the wealthiest woman in the kingdom, O’Hara becomes the booty.  Mirko and Danilo duel over her.  Danilo loses, but survives with a minor wound (!) Of course, being an MGM production, a happy ending is called for, and it nearly wrecks the film.

Mirko is von Stroheim’s sadistic Prussian antagonist, a part the director relished and understandably wanted to play himself.  Unfortunately for von Stroheim, Thalberg rejected the director as actor, prompting the casting of D’Arcy.  D’Arcy’s florid portrayal reaped praise aplenty from critics and audiences, turning him into a villainous star.  Unlike his co-stars, D’Arcy survived sound but his acting style was stylistically baroque and dated quickly, relegating him to “B” films and serials, such as Shadow of the Eagle (1932) opposite John Wayne and Whispering Shadow (1933) opposite Bela Lugosi.  Contemporary audiences may find D’ Arcy’s acting dated, but appealing in its otherworldly expressions (overt leering, a seemingly frozen, malevolent grin).  It is easy to see how he walked away with the film.

Part of von Stroheim’s excesses in the filming included costly Prussian underwear, worn by D’ Arcy underneath his costume (and therefore never seen) merely to get the actor in the right mood.  Still, it’s hard to sympathize with Thalberg’s sense of frustration.  Having worked with von Stroheim numerous times, Thalberg knew the his penchant for opulence and, rightly, felt the film needed this director’s brand of genius.  Von Stroheim’s own comment, comparing his Merry Widow to Lubitch’s more conventional remake, is telling: “Lubitsch shows the king on the throne first, then in the bedroom.  I show him in the bedroom first so you know what he is when you see him on the throne.”

Years later, upon meeting von Stroheim, Orson Welles complimented him by assuring the director that he was “ten years ahead of his time.”  Von Stroheim retorted, “twenty.”  Seen today, von Stroheim’s films certainly stem from silent film stylization.  However, his uncompromising sense of vision and aesthetic commitment show von Stroheim as still being ahead of his time.  Of all von Stroheim’s films, the director liked this one least, feeling that he had compromised too much with Thalberg.  In a way, he was right, but regardless, the director’s surreal hedonism personally soaks the film, albeit in a subdued light.  No serious film student should bypass the works of Erich von Stroheim, and The Merry Widow is the essential starting point to a richly unique oeuvre.

Island of Lost Souls deviates from the original story (which, predictably, prompted H.G. Wells to voice his disapproval), but the film is simply told.  Like 1932′s Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde, Island  is a pre-Hayes code film, and it shows.  Of course, both films were taken from  literary sources, and that too is apparent.  Lost Souls‘ literacy is due to screenwriter Philip Wylie, who also adapted Wells for James Whale‘s The Invisible Man (1933).  The inimitable Charles Laughton, one of the great classic screen actors, plays Dr. Moreua with a classicist’s relish.  Laughton is one of the major reasons for this film’s success, and as director Kenton shows atypical subtlety. These factors, combined with well-crafted sets and make-up, add up to a striking milieu.

Island is almost an old-dark-house genre film, except that the stranded visitor, Edward Parker (Richard Arlen) ends up in a sort of kinky, contemporary Eden.  God is present in the symbolic persona of Dr. Moreau and although he is the antagonist, he is a three-dimensional one.  He is intelligent, crafty, and that naughty twinkle in the divine eye is ever present.  God is creating again, although this time he’s attempting to correct his previous mistake by making man from the image of Eden’s animals.  Eve (a Wylie addition) appears in the exotic Lota (Kathleen Burke, who notably showed up in the following year’s pre-Code Murders in the Zoo).  Lota, AKA Panther Girl, alternately projects innocence and unbridled sexuality, and she is utilized by Moreau to usher forth a new Adamic age, with Parker as the new Adam.  Of course, in every Eden there’s a rotten apple or two, and here it’s Parker’s abroad girlfriend (Leila Hyams, from Freaks) and the Beast Men, Moreau’s ungrateful children who hold a grudge against their creator for little things like torture, brutality, and vivisection.  The Beast Men are led by the Sayer of the Law (Bela Lugosi, who is well-directed). The Sayer calls the creator out for hypocrisy and original sin.  The Beast Men are well sketched here, which is a sharp contrast to the mere animalistic portraits drawn in subsequent versions.  The finale is natural jolt, so much so that no other celluloid interpretation of the tale can match it.  This lucidly told imaginative spin on Dr. Frankenstein’s Eden still holds up remarkably well.

As for the Criterion treatment, most welcome authoritative commentary is given by historians Gregory Mank and David J. Skall, along with filmmaker Richard Stanley (the original director of the 1997 version, who was replaced by John Frankenheimer).  Stanley offers entertaining, honest insight.  A little less welcome are reflections by John Landis and Devo.  Production stills and the theatrical trailer are excellent supplements.  This is a superb release that is essential for classic film lovers.

DIRECTED BY: Jean Vigo

FEATURING: Delphin, Jean Dasté, Louis Lefebvre, Gilbert Pruchon, Coco Golstein,Gérard de Bédarieux

PLOT: Schoolboys stage a revolt at a French boarding school.

WHY IT MIGHT MAKE THE LIST:  Zéro de conduite is an important historical film.  It founded the boarding school subgenre, creating a template used by Francois Truffaut (The 400 Blows) and more weirdly by Lindsay Anderson (If…)  With it’s dwarf headmaster, disappearing balls and drawings that come to life, the film is as playful and experimental as a mock rebellion staged by schoolboys before Sunday dinner.  Its mildly surreal oddness nudges the needle on the weirdometer, but, despite its near-legendary status, it’s not thoroughly strange enough to make its way onto the List on the first ballot.

COMMENTS:  Jean Vigo’s extraordinary backstory is almost as fascinating as his films.  The son of an anarchist who died in prison, the auteur left a tiny (about three hours worth of film) but extremely impressive body of work before succumbing to tuberculosis, the age-old nemesis of romantic poets, at the age of 29.  Adding to his mythological stature is the possibility that he may have contributed to his own demise by laboring on his final film up until his last moments, instead of getting much needed bed rest; he may have actually worked himself to death, literally giving his life for his art.

By banning Zéro de conduite, the director’s film about an imaginary rebellion in a boys’ boarding school, for thirteen years, the French censors only augmented Vigo’s legend.  From the perspective of patrons who are used to seeing political leaders openly mocked and clitorises graphically snipped off in movie theaters as they munch on popcorn, the idea of a movie with only a single “merde!’ and no violence, fetal rape, human centipedes, or even an obvious political target would be banned for over a decade is almost unimaginable.  The film contains hardly audible whispers of schoolboy homosexuality, but it was suppressed not for these but for its “anti-French spirit” and “praise of indiscipline.”  Vigo’s anarchic, anti-authoritarian philosophy, which pervades the film’s 44 minute running time, was too hot and subversive for 1933 sensibilities.

Today, of course, the movie is notably tame.  In fact, if you’ve been exposed to any of the anti-authority movies made since Vigo’s film, you may go in expecting to see Nurse Ratchet-styled psychological abuse and sadistic cane lashings.  But there isn’t even one blow delivered in Zéro, much less 400.  The student’s major complaints are being awakened early in the morning and served beans meal after meal.  Their teachers aren’t madmen and dictators, but ineffectual buffoons.  The headmaster is a dwarf with a fake beard; far from being an imposing figure, he’s at eye level with the boys he lords over.  The lack of any real oppression and outrage here expresses Vigo’s libertarian philosophy far better than if  had overplayed his hand and identified authority with excessive cruelty.  What the school is guilty of imposing on the children isn’t tyranny, but a dreary, drab, linear conformity: the rows of beds, the marching in lines, the short-pants uniforms.  The boys don’t revolt against a corrupt social order; they rebel against the ridiculous notion of order itself.  It’s the purest ideal of anarchy.

Vigo wasn’t a card-carrying Surrealist, despite being a contemporary of the movement.  He nonetheless relied on a few of the same shocking, reality-busting techniques as the Un Chien Andalou crew.  His philosophical anarchism extends to the movie’s form; Zéro de conduite refuses to be restrained by logic or possibility.  There’s a scatterbrained teacher who breaks into a Charlie Chaplin impersonation during recess; a ball that magically disappears and reappears; and a cartoon sketch of a “Mr. Beanpole” who animates and morphs into Napoleon.  The children’s first revolt is a dreamlike pillow-fight with slow-motion and backwards sequences, scored to eerie music: a wordless anthem accompanied by a back-masked accordion.  (The music for this scene was actually written out first, then inverted and performed by musicians in reverse, then played backwards on the soundtrack to restore the original melody in a distorted form).  The ridiculous headmaster keeps his hat under a glass dome on a mantlepiece that’s too high for him to reach without standing on his tiptoes.  The weirdest touch of all may occur at the final ceremony that the boys disrupt as their pivotal act of rebellion: the principal and his honored guests and associates sit in chairs in front of bleachers, watching soldiers performing on pommel horses.  The bourgeois dignitaries arrayed behind them are a row of life-sized dolls.

The seldom-seen Zéro de conduite is one of those films you once read about in musty old reference books (or, these days, on a cached blog entry buried deep in your bookmarks) that turns out to be somewhat underwhelming when you finally see it.  The pacing is creaky, the drama underdeveloped.  The grand revolution the film has been building towards consists of about thirty seconds of the boys throwing coconuts and pots down on the heads of the established order, who meekly depart, stage left, without putting up a fight.  It’s a noteworthy and original work, but had the French not banned the film, I doubt it would carry the legendary reputation it has today.  Censors are the best marketing department a movie can have.  Zéro is worthwhile to see for its historical importance, and it’s a work of art, to be sure; but to my mind, it falls just short of masterpiece status.

While it’s combination of weirdness and reputation make Zéro de conduite the most significant title for our purposes, it’s not the headliner of the Criterion Collection’s “The Complete Jean Vigo.”  That honor goes to L’Atalante, Vigo’s only full-length feature, a masterpiece of sentimental romance about a barge captain who takes his young wife to live on board his vessel.  While this tale of love and betrayal is a surprisingly conventional work from the anarchistic Vigo, there are a two famous impressionistic sequences that have a weird-ish poetry to them.  In one, the captain (Dasté, the sympathetic teacher from Conduit) sees a vision of his wife floating in the muddy depths of the Seine; the other is a wispy, sadly erotic montage of the two lovers writhing in separate beds, connected only by a shadowed polka dot motif.  The Criterion disc also contains Vigo’s only two shorts.  Taris is a profile of a French swimming champion.  It features beautiful underwater photography, but shows little true passion, and feels like work done for hire.  Far more interesting is À propos de Nice, an experimental pseudo-documentary (some scenes are staged for comedic effects) on the vacation city of Nice, filmed partly during a street carnival.  Nice features lots of crazy Dutch angles and pans, strange faces, juxtapositions (a shot of a primping woman is followed by an ostrich), and a healthy interest in sex (dig that upskirt camerawork!)  There are a few sequences that qualify as lightly surrealist: tourists who turn into dolls and are raked along with the chips by a roulette croupier, a man with a politically incorrect case of sunburn, and a surprising nude scene.  Like the rest of the disc, Nice won’t be to most modern tastes; but it’s fascinating because it was made before the rules were laid down, by a director making up a visual language as he went along.  It’s novel and enthusiastic enough to catch the interest of anyone serious about cinema.  Vigo scholar Michael Temple provides commentary on each film in the set.  A second disc is full of interviews and documentaries about Vigo, and also contains a (very short) animated tribute by fellow filmmaker Michel Gondry.

Zéro de conduite is in the public domain and may be viewed or downloaded at the Internet Archive, among other venues.

WHAT THE CRITICS SAY:

“…a series of vignettes lampooning the faculty climaxed by a weird, dream-like rebellion of the entire student body. These amorphous scenes, strung together by a vague continuity may be art but they are also pretty chaotic.”–A.H. Weiler, The New York Times (1947 re-release)

The Eye Like a Strange Balloon Mounts Toward Infinity (Odilon Redon) from Guy Maddin on Vimeo.

Comparisons to Dickens are apt, but Sjostrom’s film casts an even more complex and lugubrious milieu.  The movie is based on Selma Lagerlof’s novel “Korlarlen” and, in contrast to the expressionism popular during the period, Sjostrom opts for a naturalistic setting.  While The Phantom Carriage does not take the easy route of escapist fantasy for adolescent boys, that does not mean it is lacking in intensity.  One scene clearly seeded Stanley Kubrick‘s idea for Jack Torrance in the unsettling “Here’s Johnny” scene from The Shining (1980) .

The cinematography, by Julius Jaenzon, is exquisitely haunting.  Jaenzon’s use of double exposure in the ghostly carriage holds up impressively for a 90 year old film.  The Phantom Carriage was released the same year as Charlie Chaplin‘s groundbreaking The Kid.  Both films are, rightly, considered spiritually progressive, humanist films of the silent era.  However, Sjostrom’s film does not fall into the maudlin sentiment that occasionally mars Chaplin’s premiere feature.

Along with Chaplin’s The Great Dictator, The Phantom Carriage is one of the most important releases of the year.  Sjostrom’s influential classic is also among the most long-awaited Criterion releases of early cinema.

“A Trip to the Orphanage” appears to be an outtake from Saddest Music, reimagined as a pure mood piece.  The finale of “Orphange”—when Maria de Medeiros kisses a sleepwalker on the cheek, and he says “goodnight, mother” to her—actually appears in the film.  There, the episode has no explanation.  You won’t get one in “Orphanage,” either.  The man walks through a wintry street with a sleepy, dazed expression.  We also see shots of de Medeiros’ China doll face, and briefly view her posing with an anonymous child.  A woman appears and sings a generic aria of lament: “so fraught with pain his yearning soul…”  A sparse piano accompanies her.  Snow falls over all the characters, and lace curtains billowing in the wind are superimposed on the picture; sometimes there’s one set of drapes waving in the foreground and a second set in the background.  Singer Sarah Constible’s voice is opera-trained and lovely, and “Orphanage” is a Canadian saudade that’s as melancholy as a lone snowflake drifting on the wind.  It’s also just as light, and in a mere four minutes it’s there and gone, just like a dream.

“Sombra Dolorosa” returns us to more familiarly comic Maddin territory, with a deranged plot, hysterical intertitles (“to save your daughter you must defeat… El Muerto!!”), and the same psychotic editing that characterized Cowards Bend The Knee.  It tells the story of a bereaved widow who must defeat death in a wrestling match, before an eclipse arrives, in order to save her daughter from suicide (“FROM SUICIDE!”, the titles remind us).  After bodyslaming El Muerto into submission, however, the rules suddenly change.  Now, Death must eat her husband’s corpse before the sun comes up, or he’s forever lost!  Meanwhile, inconsolate daughter Delores decides to kill herself anyway by throwing herself into a river, but a good Samaritan saves her.  It all ends happily (?) with the father’s ghost entering a mule to wander the world.  “Sombra” shows Maddin’s gift for grabbing key elements of a milieu—in this case, Mexican folklore—and filtering them through his distorted lens to create a unique, rich and cohesively warped world.  It’s the dream you might have if you fall asleep in front of a TV showing Mexican wrestling after chasing a bad burrito with three shots of mescal.

A whole different kind of weird comes in “Sissy-Boy Slap-Party,” a humorous approximation of what a pre-Code homoerotic smoker might have looked like if it was made by a clueless pervert who found the Three Stooges strangely erotic.  The plot has a fetishistic simplicity: an old man leaves on a bicycle to buy condoms, warning the languid shirtless men sunning themselves on rocks on a stagebound tropical island, “remember: no slapping!”  No sooner is he out of sight than the boys decide to give the foley guy a real workout as they sissy-slap each other with abandon, in every combination and variation imaginable, non-stop for three minutes until their overseer returns from his errand.  African tribal drums and a jungle bass pulse provide the prono throb, but the desperate avant-garde violin solo laid over the beat carries the slappers to an ecstatically anxious musical climax.  The joke is simple but very strange, and effective because of its absolute dedication to its absurdly kinky premise. The humor hits you like—well, like a slap in the face.  It’s a short every weird movie fan should seek out.

Sissy-Boy Slap-Party keeps getting longer.  It began its life in 1995 as a 2-minute short; unused footage was re-cut into the 2004 Saddest Music in the World version to extend it to four minutes.  A six-minute “director’s cut” also exists and can be viewed on Guy Maddin’s Vimeo page.  I think the four-minute version is the best; the long cut uses a lot of editing tricks that make it overly obvious the movie is a postmodern experiment instead of twisted erotica from a bygone age.

WHAT THE CRITICS SAY:

“…[the shorts] demonstrate how Maddin can be far more fulfilling when he allows himself a narrower focus. Sissy-Boy Slap-Party plays like a goofy homage to Kenneth Anger’s Fireworks and Jean Genet… Sombra Dolorosa [is] a demented take on demented Mexican melodramas replete with grieving widow, masked wrestler and garish (yet oddly beautiful) two-strip colour.”–Anthony Nield, The Digital Fix (R2 DVD)