Tillie’s Punctured Romance (1914) Review

Chaplin in the end (of the beginning)

Tillie’s Punctured Romance is a historically significant film. It’s the first feature length comedy ever and it’s also the last Charlie Chaplin at Keystone film when ordered by release date. It is a pretty epic way to tie him off. Those watching every Chaplin film can see this as a finale to this era. Functionally, the film has a lot of Keystone elements, but now things take longer to progress and the story escalates. Sometimes the movie will seem like a more typical comedy before Keystone antics break out, like when bricks suddenly start being thrown. There’s some filler that is very similar to the types of things viewers would be familiar with. There’s scenes of Tillie, Charlie Chaplin, and Mabel Normand walking around being silly. We deal with things like someone getting drunk for the first time and someone in a hurry to run away from where a problem is.

Despite the filler, the film has a decent pace and isn’t too boring. Keystone two-reelers are often more tedious, as if they had one-reel of material and stretched it out. The main benefit of Tillie is that you’re always curious what will happen next. This studio has functioned as an idea box of sorts and plenty are used here. Some of the “ideas” thrown at the cast aren’t what you would expect. Even if they are, they’re still in a journey that satisfies, even though probably for only one viewing. The main negative is that if you don’t find the studio funny, all you have is the story and characters. They’re alright enough, but they don’t make a strong impact. There are more dialogue scenes than you might expect. They aren’t too bad, but it would’ve been ideal to have fewer of them. They are unexpected as they focus on the main characters in a way that often develops them. It’s nice to see that even the first feature comedy can understand that it’s important to care about the characters.

The two female leads, Mabel Normand and Marie Dressler, make weak impressions. Dressler is particularly similar to Chaplin’s weaker moments of always managing to make messes and be a little too clumsy and dumb to be approachable. Charlie Chaplin is much better, having an aura of confidence and a seductive nature, only to be far weaker and pathetic underneath. It helps that he seems to be getting the best scenes. There’s a great bit where he’s nervous and starts picking at his cane, taking it apart. Chaplin as always is great at falling in a funny way. Charlie is someone you can love to hate. When Tillie accidentally steps on Charlie’s foot after a few occurrences of her accidentally hurting him, he raises his cane, as if to strike her. There’s a scene where a woman upsets Charlie. He goes to backhand her and a cop nearby laughs. Charlie is quick to seduce Tillie, with the latter seeming a little uncomfortable. She’s easily won over. While the romance is obviously underdeveloped, the movie doesn’t put much importance in it, so it’s excusable. It’s arguably part of the joke how fast they decide to wed.

The warm lighting and pretty shots make this one of the better directed Chaplin at Keystone films. Other favorite moments are Mabel’s introduction where she walks up to the camera; a shot of Mabel in front of a street, with us seeing the camera capture down the road; and a slightly shadow-covered policeman being filmed with a low angle, making him seem more intimidating. Charlie Chaplin’s introduction of his back to the camera before turning around looks pretty snazzy and would’ve been a fantastic way to introduce him in his first film. The editing is better than the shorts, but still could use some work.

There’s a scene in front of a movie theater where all the background posters are for Keystone films. The film within a film, A Thief’s Fate, is hilariously cheesy. A man finds a note that fell off a girl that reveals she has money and her family had to work very hard for it. At a party, it appears a man flirts with Charlie. It’s hard to interpret him as something other than a coded queer. There’s a few big fight scenes of varying levels of relevance to the story. They all feel like they were included as it’s such a staple of Keystone. They’re fine enough, with the very last one being kind of cute. They at least look better than a lot of the ones in shorts. They don’t feel very natural to the story, with there not being much build up. Only one is particularly annoying due to it in a way substituting for better character moments.

SPOILERS

When Charlie sees Tillie’s father hide a large sum of money, he leaves to the other room and closes the door. While this isn’t of consequence in the movie, if he actually closed the door in real life, he would be revealing through the sound that he saw the money. When Tillie is upset at a restaurant, surrounding men try to calm her down. Why would they care? After Tillie is arrested, she conveniently has rich relatives who bail her out. It’s funny when in the movie within a movie, the female accomplice of the thief extends her arms and yells when she’s arrested. She also laughs like an over the top villain.

Tillie applies for a job. Does she have a place to live? She has no money, so how could she? One of the funniest moments is when Charlie discovers that Tillie has inherited a fortune from her uncle in a newspaper. He hurries to Tillie to marry her. He gets down on his knees on the wet ground and manages to make a mess. Tillie marries him. Her doing so doesn’t make sense due to how poorly he treated her before. Also, the newspaper said she was the only heir, yet her father was shown to be alive. Later, Tillie decides to kill Charlie for cheating and starts firing at him, often in crowds. It’s a shame that this very out of the blue element is happening instead of something that deals more with the characters’ established emotions and arcs. Tillie keeps having pretty clear shots to hit Charlie and then either doesn’t shoot or doesn’t hit. She appears to forgive Charlie briefly, only to get mad at him right after.

There’s a 180 degree rule break with Tillie firing at Charlie and Mabel. It’s also obvious that the mansion and the dock are two very different areas, yet the editing suggests they’re right next to each other. It seems the uncle really being alive didn’t add anything. You’d think that would be what scared Charlie away, but that instead happens because he was caught cheating. Also, no one made sure the uncle was dead? There is no final joke, with the very last scene light on humor. While the lack of humor is a shame, the positives of the film really play into it as it is cathartic to see Tillie and Mabel both break up with Charlie and hug, as if they’ve gotten over either committing crimes and/or getting upset over things like Charlie. This scene would work far less if the characters were written worse.

OVERVIEW

It probably wouldn’t be hard to make a fifty-minute cut of this eighty-minute film without anything seeming missing. The film also suffers due to the lack of good jokes. The movie has a nice enough story for when you want something like this, but it stretches out its small few novelties until about breaking point. Without Charlie Chaplin, the lack of a good performance might push the movie to being unwatchable. While Chaplin from basically the beginning of his career was giving good performances, he sometimes had times where he seemed to be phoning it in. Even when he was trying, it sometimes wasn’t for the best film. Sadly very few of the thirty-five surviving are worth a viewing. It seems Chaplin understood that as he kept making fewer and fewer films a year until 1920 where he made zero. After that it was once in a while. The good and/or worthwhile Chaplin at Keystone films are Making a Living, Mabel’s Strange Predicament, The Star Boarder, Twenty Minutes of Love, Caught in a Cabaret, A Busy Day, The Face on the Barroom Floor, and The Masquerader. Tillie’s Punctured Romance doesn’t make the list, but wouldn’t be too bad a watch in addition to the others.

A cute dog that made this cameo in the film

Horse Feathers (1932) Review

Harpo crying

Horse Feathers unfortunately is a step down in runtime from the earlier Marx films as it doesn’t even reach seventy minutes, at least the cut that currently exists. It went through re-editing and cutting that makes the final film disjointed. Many of the scenes, such as the opening as an example, have start and stop pacing. “We’ve done one bit, now let’s jump to the next.” The opening has a reasonably long exposition scene between Professor Wagstaff, played by Groucho, and Frank Wagstaff, played by Zeppo, after a series of jokes and a song. It feels un-Marxian to have long scenes of talking that’s heavy on information and light on humor. The musical numbers are as usual good, though Harpo’s solo seemed to have some issues with sound quality. The numbers are also clustered close together, as if some moments in-between the musical numbers were removed.

Groucho keeps turning away when he sings “I’m Against It”, as if he’s going to sit down. He stretches his guitar playing later. Some of his fourth wall-breaking jokes are quite amusing, as is his scene where he’s teaching. After Wagstaff introduces himself twice, one time messing up where he’s from, Baravelli says, “Well, you didn’t stay at the other college very long.” There’s a funny moment where Baravelli, played by Chico, spouts gibberish probably intended to be Italian. Pinky, played by Harpo, causing a raucous in traffic is a pretty random scene, being unnecessary to the plot, but it is a riot, especially the “Police Dog For Sale” part. It’s honestly one of the best scenes in the film. Pinky is asked to undress and he manages to do so in just seconds. The scene of Baravelli and Pinky with the two football players is one of the funniest moments in the group’s first four films.

Sometimes Zeppo’s vocal is stiff, as if he’s uncomfortable. He does manage to be an excellent singer, singing “Everyone Says I Love You”. Apparently Zeppo had a radio show around this time where he sang. I’d love to hear it. Frank being a college student for twelve years seems like something that should have payoff, but it doesn’t. There are also aren’t many moments of Frank with his father, another great and undeveloped idea. Pinky does something to irritate Frank. We see him argue with him in the background of a scene very briefly. This would’ve been a good moment for Zeppo to get something funny to do, but he doesn’t. Frank feels incredibly pointless here.

The opening title card for Thelma Todd and David Landau is onscreen longer than for the brothers. At one point Baravelli insults Connie, played by Thelma Todd, and she has a great look of confusion on her face. It’s strange seeing Thelma Todd act like a ditzy girl with a cartoonishly high voice in one scene. Todd plays as an alternate version of Groucho. Thelma is Groucho if he was a beautiful woman that had an easier time staying out of trouble. Both manipulate people and seem selfish, aided with a smooth tongue. That scene of Todd raising her voice seems like something a female Groucho would do.

While the core cast is great, the professors in the background of the “I’m Against It” scene look quite awkward, having faces of not knowing what to do or when they move not doing so naturally. David Landau as Jennings could be doing more to get laughs. Miscellaneous issues include a duck in the water that is obviously fake. In one scene, Pinky is punched and it’s pretty clearly fake. Part of Pinky’s clothes goes over his head, suggesting a stunt double did the fall. The ending would be more satisfying with more build up. More of these characters interacting and flowing through the story instead of scenes having the formula of, “We get information on the story and then something silly ends the scene.”

SPOILERS

Why would Baravelli tell Wagstaff that the password is the name of a fish and later the password? Both seem like ways to just push the plot along. Frank’s romance to Connie is just dropped. It would be hard to believe it didn’t have resolution in the original version of the film. MacHardie and Mullen look quite silly pretending to be college students. We could’ve had jokes from that idea. Such jokes could relate to Frank as all three actors are in their thirties and filling roles you’d expect to be filled by twenty year olds. Later, how did they have a key to the room Baravelli and Pinky ran in? There’s ultimately no resolution to those characters. They apparently were unbeatable and then they just lose.

Some of the jokes are phenomenal. Favorites are Pinky being asked for money for coffee and then pulling a hot cup of coffee out of his pocket. “I’m just hanging around in case something goes wrong with her pipes. Wagstaff looks in camera. That’s the first time I’ve used that joke in 20 years.” There’s a scene where it’s easy to miss that Wagstaff doesn’t have a cigar. At one point during it he sticks his hand in a man’s pocket and takes one of his. Baravelli is at the game in his underwear. Sadly, next scene he’s wearing a typical football outfit. At least he’s wearing his signature hat.

A commenter on my Monkey Business review said I was too politically correct for not liking the Harpo chasing women bits and other “outdated” moments that seem less clever than jokes that aren’t insensitive. There are gags in Horse Feathers that are essentially sexual harassment, though there’s a lot more to them than earlier ones. Wagstaff and Baravelli go to Connie’s room and try to mack on her, touching her without asking. This is in-line with Wagstaff’s sliminess and after numerous people either visited Connie or wanted to get with her, it’s funny that Baravelli breaks the logic of his own character by wanting to get with her, as if he was destined to fulfill the punchline of everybody wanting to bother her. There’s also the moment where Baravelli sits down, kisses a woman, then turns and kisses Pinky, angering them both and causing them to fight. When Jennings leaves Connie, Pinky is there and kisses her neck before leaving with him. Pinky is making noises and doing things that wouldn’t be out of the ordinary from the perspective of the two saying goodbye unless they turned around and saw him clowning around. Admittedly, any of these moments do slightly hit a wrong nerve for arguably making light of touching people without consent. They are still very funny and I couldn’t say I’d think the film would be better without them.

Pinky racing a chariot to the finish line and then pulling out balls to get more and more touchdowns would almost be the perfect final joke in terms of how much it’s a gut buster. There are a few subplots that should’ve been tied up and after that scene would be the most sensible place to put them. However, we don’t get any of those. The only scene after that is not particularly funny or necessary and may as well have been cut. Connie apparently marrying the brothers is an odd ending. There wasn’t really any setup for it. It seems like something that would’ve made sense in an earlier cut of the film. The boys (sadly no Zeppo) look excellent in those tuxedos and Thelma Todd’s dress is to die for. Shame it couldn’t be in tow with a better final joke.

OVERVIEW

One problem with the Marx Brothers is that they couldn’t escape a lot of situations they get in if they were more realistic. They manage to find groups where their manic nature is tolerated, at least to a degree. Imagine if the other characters acted like real people? They’d be arrested very quickly. The straight men can never be truly straight due to having to let them be. Thus, the Marx Brothers aren’t truly a critique of society due to having to misrepresent society. Part of Groucho’s shtick is how unsuited he obviously is for his positions.

You can’t deny that Horse Feathers is very funny, but the story is to a degree broken, as if there are scenes that would’ve made everything make sense that are missing and what’s left are references and moments that are confusing on their own. It’s still a definite viewing for any comedy fan due to the performances and humor, but it’s a shame it was so close to having a strong story. The movie starts out a little disjointed, essentially due to forcing in setup without the story being able to get comfortable, but it picks up in the second half, being very funny with snappy pacing. I’m getting to the point where the cinema lost media I might want most is the deleted scenes of Marx Brothers movies.

Harry Langdon At Hal Roach (1930) Review Part 3 – With Industrial Strength Thelma Todd

Post-Bath Thelma

I’ll call it and say if you are a Thelma Todd fan and only want films where she has at least a decent amount of prominence, you only need to see Introducing Harry Langdon, Hotter Than Hot, The Shrimp, and The King. Her other three appearances are far more minor. With the first and last one, she manages to be one of the only things worth watching and appreciating in the story, as Langdon is mostly a pretty poor protagonist. He’s fared relatively better in Hotter Than Hot, The Fighting Parson, and much better in The Shrimp, but generally it seems if he doesn’t have good material, he will not only not be funny but seem like a nuisance that’s destroying the good graces of the whole affair. He can be quite excellent when given the right material. Shrimp has lovely jokes, but still could be better in a lot of ways.

Hot, Skirt Shy, The Head Guy, and King would all probably jump from middling at best to decent if the one change you made was replace Langdon with someone else. Even his best two performances in Parson and Shrimp would probably be better with the right person. Imagine Buster Keaton with those rods in his arms fighting a villain or Patsy Kelly proclaiming she’s the king and will do as she pleases. The other three shorts are so bad that they probably aren’t salvageable.

The Big Kick (1930)

The film starts with an intertitle that looks like one that’d be in a silent film. Edgar Kennedy is good, having a loud and booming authority to him. He’s like a more composed Billy Gilbert, as Gilbert is more likely to be clownish. Kennedy asks, “Who’s running this joint?” and then we see Harry looking silly as usual. That’s a good gag. Amusingly, Langdon is silent a lot, as if someone realized how irritating his voice can be. This film would mostly work as and feels like it could’ve been a silent film script reworked. It was released in Spanish. It wouldn’t be surprising if a short was made with little dialogue so it could easily be translated. There is a gag related to a loud car engine that would be hard to pull off in a silent without something like an intertitle that explains that the car is too loud for anybody to be able to hear each other.

This short is one of the most offensive cases of Langdon thinking being annoying is funny and no one seeming to have good ideas. What’s with all the filler? So much of this is Harry doing basically nothing as if he was trying to think of a gag on the spot. There’s an extensive scene of him just starting his day. And for the thousandth time, Harry is out of place in his own film, as if a group-story, like the police versus some bootleggers, was altered to fit Harry in. It’s not even like he is a cop or bootlegger, he is just off to the side. During the climax, the main plot doesn’t involve him and he’s doing random superfluous things. The tone and pacing don’t fit at all, with Harry being slow while the more interesting action without him is fast.

The scene of Harry with Nelson McDowell and the latter’s car is one of the better moments. McDowell has many amusing facial expressions. Another one of the better Harry moments is when he sees something scary and has a worried look on his face. You can imagine that facial expression being something he’d pick up from the silent era. It’s the right level of expressive. Normally, Harry can really overreact. Nancy Dover is a solid straight man and there are moments for her to shine, especially in the climax. Sadly, she doesn’t get too much to do. This is the only film on Letterboxd directed by Warren Doane that’s not a Charley Chase film.

SPOILERS

It’s not a great joke, but it was chuckle-worthy when Harry was maddened by people asking for directions and not wanting to buy anything. The police seemingly could endanger the leads by telling them to keep killer bootleggers from leaving if they show up. Why does Harry take the fake people and bring them into his business? Why does he knock their heads off? How does he think they’re alive? Just because his character is childlike doesn’t mean he has to be stupid. Also, Harry pulls a gun on those fake people he thinks are real. Why does basically every short include Harry having a desire to kill or hurt people when for the rest of the film he is excessively innocent? Hal Roach once again shows his progressive side when the day is ultimately saved by a woman. That almost proves how pointless Harry is.

The Shrimp (1930)

Harry has a pretty embarrassing flub on the delivery of his line in the beginning. His acting is also terrible in this earlier scene, as if he was really tired when delivering it. It’s bizarre how unnatural he seems, especially when he’s supposed to be inspired and riled up to not take abuse anymore from the other characters. Harry is fluid with the actors, like Thelma Todd and the landlord. You can imagine they rehearsed their scenes a lot to get the pacing as good as can be. Harry has some good verbal comedy when he mocks someone for failing to hit him. Langdon is generally much better here than in most of the other shorts.

The whole supporting cast have little to do, but are fun doing whatever they’re given. Max Davidson, Jim Mason, and of course Thelma Todd are particularly good. Periodically, “Pop Goes The Weasel” plays. It’s amusing that later it would play in another film about a normal man that becomes more willing and able to fight after something happens, the far better Punch Drunks. There’s an intertitle at the beginning that explains that the boarding house is ran by a lazy father while his wife and daughter “slave”. Show, don’t tell! It would’ve been nice to see how Harry found out about Max Davidson’s experiment. For those that want a similar premise but with W. C. Fields should see Running Wild.

SPOILERS

Seeing as Harry knows the others like to prank him, why would he sit down when the chair is pulled out for him? Obviously someone was going to let him fall. It’s funny that the “anesthesia” to knock out Harry is simply a mallet to the head. Harry is strangely stiff when taken to surgery. It’s like he’s in shock. Harry refusing to stay in the surgery room and going to the boarding house could’ve yielded some fine jokes. When he arrived, he was wearing an unexplained bowler hat, so maybe something happened that was cut? When Harry knocks Thelma’s book out of her hand in response to her knocking off his hat, she is furious, not understanding how he could’ve done that when she essentially did the same thing. It’s funny when Harry moves his hand in different ways, as if to start his next move, and Thelma shifts around trying to anticipate it. The film could live without the moment where he needlessly threatens to backhand her. Arguably him pushing her and almost kicking her would’ve been as bad, but those at least appear goofier. He didn’t push her hard and didn’t seem like he would kick her hard. The backhand evokes an abusive boyfriend.

Harry has similar good timing with the landlord. He scares him by just moving around an umbrella, taking advantage of it being hard to know where he’s going to try to hit. Harry slips on the floor. It makes sense as just because he has this confidence doesn’t mean he wouldn’t still have his clumsy ways. Harry’s girlfriend, Nancy, seems proud of him for “kicking her”. For starters, we didn’t see him do that. Also, it’s pretty disturbing she’d apparently be so happy about that. Even if you think it’s okay to kick people that are rude, she didn’t do anything to Harry or anyone. Another funny verbal moment is when Harry has finally gotten Jim to give up on trying to beat him. Replicating an earlier scene of the film, Harry puts a bowl of berries in front of Jim and asks, “Do you like berries?” “No, no.” Harry pulls out something to whack Jim with and in a deeper voice asks, “Do you like berries?” “Yes, yes.” Harry puts his face in the bowl. Jim’s discomfort helps make the scene.

The climactic fight scene at the end is sadly short. While it might seem strange that Harry would just automatically be the man of the house upon winning a fight, it is consistent with what was established in the film and in Hal Roach movies generally. People have “won girls” or other kinds of social respect by fighting. Even the police sometimes seem easy to escape being apprehended by if you can fight them. In the beginning of The Shrimp, you’d think that the various people who pick on Harry would have better things to do. They’re literally fully grown adults, but that’s how they’ve asserted their control. When Harry makes even a minor attempt to stop Thelma from picking on him and a slightly larger one with Jim and the landlord, they give in very quickly. Fighting and asserting control is their one trick and now that they’ve lost it, they’re afraid. Perhaps if they were beaten badly enough, they’d lose social respect. It seems that no one, either Harry in the beginning nor the others at the end, considers calling the police to stop the fighting. Perhaps that would be considered weak of someone to do? “You can’t be a real man if you don’t get in fights for no reason!” It’s possible that Harry was stopped after the end of the film, either by the police being called on him or someone hurting him when his guard is down, but the ending is clearly suggesting that he’s won.

The King (1930)

The gags, especially the early one, tend to be better in The King than in most of the series, but there are quite a lot of poor jokes. The Fighting Parson and The Shrimp manage to be more consistently solid. They also had duds in them. Beyond the weak jokes is how poor Langdon is, ruining a lot of jokes with potential. His vocal performance is particularly weak here. Take him repeatedly saying, “Water, water, water.” He’s so stiff in voice and action, as if he doesn’t understand what his character is doing. Harry doesn’t act like a child here. That’s not inherently bad, but he feels directionless. It’s as if he didn’t think that character type would work, so he just phoned his way through it. James Parrott as the advisor and Thelma Todd as the queen are great. It would’ve been nice to get a few more shorts of at least Todd reprising this role. A favorite line of hers is, “Well I’ll show you who’s king around here.”

The opening intertitle of the film is good, “Recording ye merry deeds of ye King whilst ye Queen didst go far away on ye vacation-” Harry gets his foot caught in a hole. After a cut, it’s out of the hole, without us seeing how. Fans of sex will like the moment where we get a closeup on Thelma’s feet as she undresses. The ending is far too contrived. If others like how stupid it is, fair enough, but it not even beginning to make sense can to some sink the comedy. The opening half is better due to focusing more on the ensemble than Harry and just one other person. Harry is called a chaser. The Chaser 3!

SPOILERS

Thelma chasing Harry around a bench with a group of girls holding up that thing that drags behind Thelma is hilarious. Furthermore when she spanks Harry. The idea is funny, but it gets better when she hits a piece of metal in his pants. Harry being kissed by Dorothy Granger, followed by his gun going off is a lovely dirty joke. “Oh, your majesty, accident?” “On purpose.” Thelma puts a key in her dress, only for it to fall out the bottom. Harry preparing to catch it at the bottom suggests this has happened a few times before!

Harry seemingly wants to kill himself at one point. Why is he so obsessed with killing or suicide in this series? I can’t say objectively that Thelma handcuffing herself to Harry isn’t funny, or Harry trying to get in bed like this isn’t funny, or Dorothy thinking the cuff is a bracelet and just deciding to put it on isn’t funny; just that personally these moments are too idiotic, especially the last one as why would she just put that on without asking? She would’ve found it lying on the floor attached to a chain. One good moment is when Thelma yanks her arm with the cuff on and we hear the sound of Harry crashing into something. Also good is when after Dorothy puts on the cuff, Harry puts his finger to his mouth, as if contemplating what just happened. Why would the advisor need to talk to Harry about his accommodations right then, apparently at about bedtime? Just once I’d like someone to see something that makes someone look bad, and they try to figure out if it was a misunderstanding politely instead of attacking them.

And for anyone sad we didn’t get to see Thelma taking a bath, the closest we’ve gotten to seeing her do that is when she falls in one in The Pajama Party. Also, her girl friend Patsy Kelly took a very pre-code one in The Grand Dame.

OVERVIEW

The second biggest crime of the Harry Langdon at Hal Roach series is that no one can keep Harry consistent. Maybe he’s a child and later in the same short he’s doing something that feels “adult” or like a different type of child than the Langdon-type of “Imagine you gave a kid an adult job or function and let’s see how they try to understand it”. The main issue is that these shorts just aren’t funny overall. To be fair, my favorite two and a half best shorts are generally solid, but nothing essential. I would say this series is only for Langdon fans, but it seems they don’t like it due to how the man acts. Ranking these shorts from worst to best would go: Hal Roach Presents Harry Langdon, The Big Kick, The Head Guy, Sky Boy, Skirt Shy, Hotter Than Hot, The King, The Shrimp, and finally The Fighting Parson. Admittedly, The King is only that high because of Todd. All hail King Thelma!

His Prehistoric Past (1914) Review // The Tramp #25

Chaplin in the film

One of the reasons I wanted to watch every Charlie Chaplin film was to see how many of them were Tramp films. His Prehistoric Past is the second last Chaplin at Keystone and I know the last one has no Tramp in it. Thus, Prehistoric is the last of this era of Trampage. You could perhaps call this the end of the Tramp season 1. It’s been an interesting journey going through all these. The Tramp isn’t vicious or violent for the most part here. He acts like someone who just wants his girl and is also a bit of an asshole. That being said, there’s one point where the Tramp is surrounded by women, a man takes them all, and the Tramp hits him for them back. There are other violent moments, but they seem to be coming from him wanting to just have what he wants and be left alone. He doesn’t pick fights.

Miscellaneous comments include: There’s a funny moment where Mack Swain pulls out a club, as if to hit someone, but then seems to change his mind and puts it away. One actor keeps looking at the camera and it’s very annoying. The inside of Mack’s hut looks weird. It’s obviously not rock. Is it supposed to be? It would’ve been better if this short being a dream was a twist at the end, not a set up for the story. The ending would be more surprising.

I wonder if it was felt that simply having this story be set in prehistoric times was too much for audiences to grasp. There are cases where a fantasy or film with unrealistic elements, like The Wizard of Oz, is made to be a dream as it’s believed the audience couldn’t buy it otherwise. That being said, seeing as none of these Keystone films have been realistic, this might be hard to believe. Maybe a way of reconciling the earlier violent Tramp with the later kinder Tramp is that the kind Tramp dreamed any film where he was violent? It appears that in the seconds of Prehistoric set in the modern day, he gets mistreated. The Tramp also doesn’t do any wrongdoing in those moments.

You could take this as a character moment for the Tramp. Either he’s so violent in real life that all his dreams have that in them, even if he seems to be trying to escape it, or if the violent shorts are dreams, then it’s a power fantasy for him. If you watch a film like, The Star Boarder, then imagining him dreaming a violent short makes sense give or take.

SPOILERS

There’s a handful of good gags. One is where a man lifts the Tramp’s animal hide and intends to poke him in the butt. However, he revealed his presence in doing this and is thus kicked by the Tramp. Later, The Tramp and two others slowly move around a rock, trying to get the one in front of them. There’s a nice meandering score for this part, as if building up suspense. There’s a title card that reads, “They Exchange Cards”. The Tramp and Mack have amusing responses to reading the leaves, as if they’re business cards. The Tramp goes to hit someone over the head for taking the girls, then we cut before the club reaches his head to the Tramp where he was before with the girls again.

You’d think the Tramp could tell the women that were around him left without him needing to open his eyes. There’s a scene where the Tramp gets caught in the water. Were we supposed to fear he could drown? It’s a pretty random thing that of course isn’t plot relevant! In the seconds of time after the Tramp wakes up from his dream, he is apparently badgered by a cop. Someone’s really trying to throw this in every film, aren’t they? It’d be interesting to see if Keystone filmmakers (and also those on early Hal Roach) hated the police.

OVERVIEW

It wouldn’t be surprising that the reason the Tramp would later be more likable is so we can want him to win. Those films make good use of utilizing the character’s down points to get him to be sympathized with. The goal is to have a developed story, which needs developed characters. It’s easier to achieve the “goal” of these early shorts, to get laughs, with someone so comically unsocial and unlikable. It’d fascinate to see the alternate universe of Chaplin where he maintained the “the Tramp is a horrible person” element and still made movies seen as masterpieces. Perhaps he tells John from The Kid to not respect authority and how to get with women? To be honest, those ideas don’t seem that funny, but maybe a genius could’ve figured it out? Even the villainous Chaplin roles don’t manage to stay fresh for all these films. That might be because of the generally poor quality of them.

Despite the handful of good gags, most of His Prehistoric Past isn’t something you’d get much out of unless you were a Chaplin super fan. That sums up most of the Keystone films nicely. Based on the sorts of premises they have, it’s not hard to have at least an odd good joke, but as a whole they are repetitive.

Getting Acquainted (1914) Review // The Tramp #24

Chaplin in his death

Of the late in the day Chaplin at Keystone films, this has the weakest directing, looking very flat. The park setting doesn’t help. I couldn’t believe that this film had the same cast and location as His Trysting Place. You could believe both films come from the same recording day. Wikipedia calls the Tramp, “Mr. Sniffles” here, though such a name isn’t in the film. Seeing as he was called “Mr. Wow-Wow” in another, I’d like to think one is his mother’s name and the other his father’s. In all seriousness, seeing as it’s not in the movie, it’s BANISHED! The Tramp looks at Cecile Arnold’s butt for a second before looking away. Would be interesting to know if Chaplin got distracted for a second. The Tramp is portrayed give or take at his creepiest and most predatory here. This isn’t the first time he does something that’s simply very unlikable. It’s hard to tell if the joke is that he’s a horrible person for doing what he does or that the woman on the receiving end isn’t into it.

Mabel Normand and Mack Swain got a decent amount of material and thus opportunities to be funny. However, they seem to be going through the motions. Chaplin is a little, but there is a bit of a spark. No one seems to really have their heart here, as if this was just something everybody wanted to get out of the way as soon as possible. The camera is strangely high up in one scene, so there’s a lot of dead space at the top of the frame. A policeman walks from one frame to another, but based on where he left the first frame, he wouldn’t have arrived where he did in the second. There’s a scene where someone throws something at someone, but because of bad editing we don’t see the person get hit. The cop overacts quite a bit.

As has been a staple, that policeman is stupid, clumsy, and violent. The “They Get Acquainted” title card is funny. It’s a little unexpected and clever. The best acting moment is when a dazed Tramp lifts his hat with a mindless face, as if he is running on mental autopilot and wants to lift his hat to be polite. I’m curious to know what the Tramp sees in Phyllis Allen’s character. The same goes to Mack Swain when he was married to her in His Trysting Place.

SPOILERS

The Tramp quite brazenly hits on Mabel. He does a trick in order to touch her arm and try to kiss her. Possibly by accident, the Tramp lifts his cane with it caught in Mabel’s skirt, so we see some 1910s lady leg. Scandalous! The Tramp continuingly and poorly tries to get with Mabel while she’s consistently saying no. This includes him touching her. Mabel doesn’t hit the Tramp in response, instead trying to get help. She acts like all she wants is to avoid conflict. Perhaps she’s afraid that if she tried violently escaping him, he’d get violent in response. This feels somewhat realistic and thus not funny. Admittedly, it wouldn’t have been funny even if they were being goofy.

Mack is similarly creepy and handsy. It seems like he didn’t know Phyllis would have a problem with him touching her without permission. The men don’t seem to mind the other being grabby with their wife, which makes sense as they were doing the same thing. Near the end, the couples briefly and seemingly become friends for no reason. Based on Keystone logic, you think they’d be fighting each other. One of the best gags is when the Tramp sneaks up behind the policeman and pulls on his leg with his cane.

OVERVIEW

Sexual Harrassment: The Movie is definitely one of the least interesting or worthwhile of this series. Beyond it making light of sexual harassment, it just doesn’t have many good moments and it’s more sloppily put together than other Chaplin films made around this time. It’s more in tune with the earlier installments. It’s similar to Recreation, though at least that one had the good graces to be six minutes instead of fourteen. Thank Fanny Getting Acquainted wasn’t a two-reeler. As this is the last Mabel and the Tramp film, I propose a timeline of their various encounters: Mabel’s Strange Predicament, Mabel’s Busy Day, A Film Johnnie, Caught in a Cabaret, The Fatal Mallet, Getting Acquainted, Gentlemen of Nerve, Mabel’s Married Life, and finally His Trysting Places. Fortunately, it seems this dysfunctional romance didn’t last too long.

His Trysting Place (1914) Review // The Tramp #23

Chaplin in the Mabel

His Trysting Place easily could’ve been a one-reeler. The main story starts halfway through. A lot of the first half isn’t necessary, though it’s not too unpleasant. It’s surprising this short was considered worthy of being two reels considering how little there is. The Tramp and Mabel Normand are married again. Their relationship is generally portrayed as dysfunctional. The Tramp once again does things that aren’t grounded or connectable, and thus are not relatable or very funny. One is giving his son a gun to play with, seemingly not understanding how dangerous that is. Much of his humor is predictable. Chaplin’s improved directorial style remains, though the same ol’ same ol’ of bars and parks has gotten quite old.

Sometimes Mabel can overact and other times not. At one point, she’s upset and is heightened, but it feels like she comes from something real. In little time, she’s gesticulating far too comically. If her movements were better thought out, less would be more. Mabel does many Tramp-esque things. Just like him, she unthinkingly gets water spilled. She throws something at him when she’s upset. When Mabel finds the baby with the gun, she doesn’t do anything comedic or unexpected, she acts close to how a normal person would… and that’s not funny. This is supposed to be a goofy comedy! The middle between normal and hyper wacky is the sweet spot here.

The Tramp gets a moment to be violent, where over basically nothing he gets in a fight with someone and makes a big scene. This sort of thing would fit a lot better in the older shorts, especially because of how little it takes to provoke him. That fight scene is, however, quite good. It’s like the Tramp has had so much practice getting into fights at places like this that he knows what to do to win them. The Tramp is generally not that violent this short.

Mack Swain makes a weak impression and Phyllis Allen makes a negative one due to her overacting. Note her facial expressions. At one point, the baby is wrapped in a blanket and is obviously not really in the blanket. Why not put a doll in it so it looks like something is actually there? Later, Mack is clearly holding the baby-blanket differently between shots, as if he swapped from having his head on his left arm to his right. The Tramp looks at a crumpled up piece of paper, but it’s not crumpled when we get a closeup of it for the audience.

SPOILERS

Why would Mabel give the baby back after how grossly he was handled by the Tramp? She doesn’t notice him holding him just as recklessly as before. One of the funniest moments is when the Tramp nonchalantly eats a stranger’s food in front of him and wipes his hands on his beard. That minor player is great, having a look of disbelief on his face. Another great bit is when the Tramp uses a handkerchief and sets it down. Someone moves it, he goes for it again and feels around and can’t find it for obvious reasons. That’s a gag you could miss when watching! Earlier, there’s an intertitle that says, “He takes the wrong coat”. It’s a shame we didn’t get a visual way of learning this.

Despite the Tramp and Mabel making up over the main issue by the end, they still have loads of other problems. There’s no sign the Tramp will be more responsible with their baby, which was shown to be a problem based on Mabel’s response. It’d pay for him to stop getting into bar fights, but maybe the characters don’t care as that’s not shown to be a problem here? The Tramp doesn’t get in trouble. When Mabel thought the Tramp was cheating on her, she gets mad and starts beating on him, seeming unable to listen to him. The ending is fun, with the dust clearing only for Phyllis to discover that Mack was cheating on her. We get yet more spousal abuse, which is unfortunately a common trope. There’s not a sign that Mabel will be more respectful of the Tramp when there’s the appearance of him doing something wrong. You can imagine the attitude of the filmmakers is that women hitting their husbands isn’t a big deal, and possibly the same with husbands hitting their wives.

OVERVIEW

As is standard, this short doesn’t have enough going for it to be worthwhile. It’d be interesting to see if someone could fan edit the best bits from the poor shorts and make a highlight reel of sorts. The bar scene here could’ve happened in numerous other installments.

Red Dwarf S02E06 Parallel Universe // Series 2 (1988) Review Part 6

My DVD of Series 2

Context for those unfamiliar with Red Dwarf (Spoilers for S01E01 of the show)

Dave Lister, played by Craig Charles, is the last man alive. He’s living in the mining ship “Red Dwarf” with a hologram of his dead roommate, Rimmer, played by Chris Barrie; a member of a species of evolved cats, “The Cat”, played by Danny John-Jules; and a computer on the ship, Holly, played by Norman Lovett. Lister crushes on a deceased member of the crew, Kristine Kochanski, played by Clare Grogan. Kristine and Rimmer died due to a radiation leak that killed everyone on “Red Dwarf”, except for Lister and non-humans.

“Parallel Universe” starts strong with the “Tongue Tied” song. The scene shows that the four leads should be treated as a comedy group, not just Lister and Rimmer. Even the character without a body is involved in this dance number. John-Jules was a professional dancer, so it makes sense he’d get a moment like this. He’s a pretty good singer, though Charles and Barrie show themselves weak. There are sadly not very many moments in the series that focus on the Cat, so this is a nice thing for him to get. It’s amusing that the Cat had this as a dream and he apparently was looking for something else on the “Dream Recorder”.

Eventually we get to the great premise of the episode, the group meets an alternate universe version of the crew that’s female. Due to a lack of time, this concept isn’t explored to its fullest extent. The Cat, as an example, has the bare minimum number of scenes to justify his presence, Lister and Rimmer are mostly concerned about plot, and Holly and his counterpart have two scenes together. A more thorough development of the implications of this could be hilarious and probably better than the somewhat meandering nature of the story. Too much time is spent on setting up the episode, which could’ve been cut back to make room for the main idea, if nothing else.

It is still a fun watch as the women give good interpretations of their male counterparts. Arlene Rimmer is incredibly unlikable. She demonstrates the worst of our Rimmer. That being said, male Rimmer isn’t generally as bad as female Rimmer here or as fans sometimes make him out to be. While he is sexist and has a few times done things like try to coerce women into being with him, he usually is portrayed better than this, like his sometimes thoughtfulness and the positive bonds he’s managed to form with people. This is not to say male Rimmer isn’t sometimes horrible, especially when he’s done the aforementioned things.

There’s a scene where male Lister says Deb Lister belched an entire song to him. He begins to do the same and after about two seconds there’s a close-up to him saying, “Class”. Perhaps this went on longer and then someone realized it wouldn’t be very funny, so it was cut short with that cut to mask it? Deb at one point pulls a prank on the Cat. Male Lister’s done the same to Rimmer. The Rimmers have a book on how to hypnotize the opposite sex. While the Listers don’t seem to approve of this, they don’t take it as a big deal. At the end, Deb is pretty dismissive of a problem Lister is having. She’s lacking understanding in the way men stereotypically are to women and specifically on women’s problems.

There’s a moment of male Lister and Rimmer talking about women that seems like it could’ve been pulled from a Series 1 script. It’s personal and shows off their personalities beyond anything else. Just like in “Me²”, Rimmer doesn’t like being around another Rimmer. I wonder if in an earlier stage of this script, the crew were actually going to go to Earth and the scene of them thinking they will go to Earth never got cut. Based on the premise of this episode only covering the cast traveling to an alternate universe, why else would the Holly Hop Drive be presented as being able to travel through space?

Hattie Hayridge as Hilly is really good. Sadly, she gets an incredibly minimal amount of things to do this episode. Let’s hope we see more of her, ey? There’s one scene of a strangely long transition shot of the ship set to some very 80s music. Possibly in this universe humans can and do travel to Pluto, based on a line. It seems the reason why the scutters and other things you’d think wouldn’t be given personalities have them and also why holograms can touch each other is to provide more story possibilities. It would be dull to have the Rimmers not be able to touch and you can spruce up scenes by having more for the characters to interact with than just the core cast. There are a decent amount of contrivances for characters to meet other people because without them the writers might run out of situations that can only use the four protagonists and their personalities. Even the Cat seems to have been included in the show so it’s not so razor focused on Lister and Rimmer.

SPOILERS

The Cat is constantly insulting the Dog and saying how bad he smells, yet he still is with him during the episode. You’d expect him to just be alone. The Cat’s plot for the episode could’ve been him in disbelief there was no female Cat and thus wandered around looking for her. The scene of the Cat and the Dog dancing is pretty weak. The actors don’t seem to be trying very hard. The Cat’s dance literally being sped through suggests no one thought it was funny enough to see. It’s amusing that the Dog is seemingly a parody of Americans.

You’d think male Lister and Rimmer would want to sleep with themselves, considering them not having had sex in a while. Based on how he has been portrayed, if male Rimmer made a woman as uncomfortable as he is with Arlene when she tries to sleep with him, he would understand that and not pursue her. Of course, a character like this isn’t perfectly consistent due to different writers and interpretations of the character. Rimmer could always go to Red Dwarf to avoid Arlene. He puts up with her quite long. 

The point of this story is for Rimmer to understand that his actions on how he treats women are wrong. There’s even a moment where it seems Rimmer is supposed to be learning a lesson, with Lister saying that the horrible female Rimmer is just like him. That “lesson” doesn’t blend well with the comedy. It’s like the story is stopping to inform the audience that sexual assault is wrong. This is after the “comedy” scenes of Arlene groping Rimmer, which seem to suggest that the writers think it’s funny for men to be assaulted by women. Episodes like “Demons & Angels”, “Rimmerworld”, and series 1’s “Me²” do more justice to the idea of alternate versions of the crew or at least Rimmer.

Male Rimmer wants to hide from female one, yet next time we see him he’s with her. They catch the Listers in bed together. There wasn’t any chemistry between the Listers. It’s a shame we just see them having slept together instead of some buildup to that first. The big revelation is that Deb impregnated Lister. How exactly can men get pregnant? It doesn’t make sense! There was an explanation, but it doesn’t really work. The scutter having kids is even more confusing. It was possibly foreshadowing when the Cat spoke of the joys of one’s kid growing up and leaving, based on them leaving Lister in the title card of series 3’s premiere.

Lister is in no place to want to leave, but Holly says they have to go now or never. There’s no establishment or reason for them to have to go right then other than the plot necessitating it. Earlier, Lister mentioned the Holly Hop Drive being broken without it being set up that it had stopped working. It’s understandable why the script would need to hurry Lister back to the main universe. Based on the problem at hand, you could theoretically imagine Lister wanting to stay during at least the birth of his children and possibly for the rest of his life. It seems Rimmer thinks that his relationship with Lister is so close that he would be the uncle of Lister’s children. This episode works well as a finale to this first era of the show, especially because this plot point concludes the Lister’s children arc, which was established last series. It’s a shame that we wouldn’t get to see them again.

SERIES 2 OVERVIEW

Red Dwarf fits into a few distinct eras, in-between them are dramatic changes to how the show feels and looks. From after this point, the show will be far less preoccupied with the former crew members of Red Dwarf. It’ll be more action-heavy, less bound to the ship, and Lister and Rimmer will less be the center of the show. In fact, starting with series 3, the Cat and new character Kryten will appear in every episode, while Rimmer will not. Someone that liked these first two series and wanted more of the show that was similar to it might want to start it up with series 7 episode 2 or 3. Series 8 is more ship-bound, so maybe you’d want to skip to series 8 episode 1? They never truly returned to this format, but those were decently close.

That strong characterization for Lister and Rimmer is appreciated, as it makes them feel more real and really gets you rooting for what they want. Rimmer numerous times thinks someone or something is/has aliens without evidence to think so. Admittedly, what it usually ends up being is something stranger than if it was aliens. Rimmer sometimes has depression from lacking a body. In the same way people can feel uncomfortable having qualities of their body they don’t want, this might depress a person. Rimmer sleeping and exercising could be things he has been programmed to need so he can stay sane.

It seems Lister has been able to find a sense of comfort and joy with his current situation. Given he wants to return to Earth, there’s an easy way to do that, go back into stasis. Wouldn’t he want to be as young as possible by the time he gets back? It seems he might enjoy adventuring so much he prefers it to anything else, such as trying to find Kochanski. Also, why not at least try to bring Kochanski back as a hologram? This was tried in the past, then dropped. For all Lister knows, that’s the only way he’s getting her back. It seems he might like Rimmer so much he wouldn’t try to get him turned off. That being said, the cast apparently threaten their own lives in “Parallel Universe” when they use the Holly Hop Drive despite thinking Holly could’ve made a mistake that could kill them. It’s as if they felt that if they can’t go to Earth, they may as well die.

Despite the Cat having more to do in terms of good lines, we don’t know what he wants. It can be inferred that he’s fine with staying with Lister, which is what Lister wants, but the more nuances that can be included the better. He is the least developed character. While Holly has a degree of senility, he acts most senile in the episode which addresses it, “Queeg”, and the episode after, “Parallel Universe”. It would’ve made more sense for Universe to come before so it could function as foreshadowing for the former episode. Holly gets more lines this series. We see some sharp wisecracks in this episode and others. There are fewer scutters in this series, as well. It’s as if they don’t need to fill in for interactions with characters as much, as the episodes move more away from the stuck on the ship concept.

It seems imaginable that the reason the show was set so far from Earth and so distant in the future is so the types of life and situations that would be around would be very strange and uncomfortable. There’d be less of a chance of returning to a familiar Earth. Thus, it could seem disappointing that the show wouldn’t focus on this foreign world and instead something relatively like shows of the time, inside a small area that is designed to accommodate humans.

When I first watched Red Dwarf many years ago, I greatly preferred the series 1-2 premise of the show, “Rimmer and Lister argue while Holly jokes, the Cat roam’s around complimenting himself and not much else, though he does more later. The stories take place on Red Dwarf.” Reexperiencing them, that idea seems somewhat tired. It still works well enough, but the episodes that introduce other characters and strange concepts tend to be more enjoyable and yield better performances. The Cat is so funny that it’s shocking his role in series 1 was so small.

With the cast being balanced with a new character coming next series and the stories really taking advantage of a larger budget and ambition, these older episodes can feel like an oddity and something that really couldn’t have worked for almost thirty-five years and seventy-four episodes (the equivalent of seventy-six). I can imagine that if everybody was determined to keep the show’s format of staying personal and more or less inside Red Dwarf, the show would run out of ideas by around series 3 and if it ran much longer, people might say the show stopped being good around then. It seems series 2 knows this, as it dares to dream more and has more sets and minor characters and other ways of stretching its legs.

While it sometimes seems a shame that the plans to have more than six episodes for any given series didn’t work out, as we could’ve had more of the show, series 1 and 2 might have suffered from such a thing. There might be episodes that feel very much like filler. Series 7’s “Duct Soup” is essentially this and is thus among the show’s weakest outings. That being said, episodes like Universe could’ve benefited from being a two-parter. It doesn’t seem it would be hard to take two episodes from every series and make them two-parts.

Despite criticisms and the show having more to grow, these early episodes are consistently funny and worthwhile. A newcomer should probably start with series 3, but if they didn’t then they wouldn’t be in for a bad time. The moments of heavy focus on the characters will be toned down for the better, but those elements’ presence is still well done and worth having. They’re arguably valuable in order to fully appreciate the show. To rank the episodes, “Kryten” is the weakest, then “Queeg”, “Parallel Universe”, the episode-quality improves with “Thanks for the Memory”, “Stasis Leak”, and “Better Than Life”. That’s almost the order of how close these episodes are to how Red Dwarf is in series 3 to present.

And for the record, Ringo Starr is a great drummer.

A frame from the episode

Hello, Sister! (1933) Review

Stroheim’s favorite

Funny I was waiting for December to watch Christmas movies, yet this is one unbeknownst to me until I watched it. If you watched just the first third of Hello, Sister!, you might think it’s about Boots Mallory as Peggy and ZaSu Pitts as Millie. Both get a similar amount of screen time, though Millie is clearly to a degree comic relief. The opening is strong, focusing on the girls’ dynamic, which comes with lots of characterization. Millie wants a man and Peggy is more independent, wanting to buy her own dinners as an example. When Millie and Peggy meet two men, Peggy is uncomfortable and wants to leave while Millie pressures her to stay. These sorts of moments aren’t too forced and are baked into nice scenery and humor.

There’s nice stylized shots throughout the film. One is at Coney Island, another later when the camera is close to the ground looking up at two characters with a window and the ceiling as the background. Later, a character is walking in the dark with the legs of a handrail in-between him and the camera. This movie was originally directed by Erich von Stroheim, you can imagine his eye for good cinematography was left in. Sadly, much of the edge was aggressively sanded off, with hints of what the movie was left in. The plot is a painfully inoffensive love story. When you hear about Stroheim’s original vision, a lot of it makes more sense as that would give various moments more of a point and reason to be. The performers, especially Mallory and Terrance Ray as Mac, and especially, especially Pitts, manage to make something good out of what there is. Terrance Ray is such a creep that it’d seem impossible to like him, which is exactly what the point of his character is.

The absolute nadir of the changes is the drunkard. He doesn’t have a natural place in the story but instead essentially random-feeling moments of talking about his explosives that serve no function to the core story other than to throw in a climax. This in a sense proves how neutered the characters are, we can’t get the original ending which feeds off of the energy by the leads’ stories throughout. The best we can get is for them to have this action scene to prove themselves. There’s an unintended problem of many of the characters looking like terrible people due to them hearing about the drunkard’s explosives, but never doing anything to stop him.

ZaSu is great as always. When the story gets going, Millie is mostly uninvolved and not very comedic when she is. She gets too few moments to be dramatic, but she succeeds in being taken seriously, even when her character was established as silly. In the original version of the film, she was much more of a focal point. There are signs of this, like when we get a zoom on Millie as she reacts to something. Based on her minimal significance here, this is confusing, but that probably made sense in the original cut.

There’s some delightfully pre-code sex jokes, with Pitts getting the best lines. Peggy: “Well, I’m not going to flirt.” Millie: “I will!” Later, Mona: “Say, listen sister, these are hard times. No girl has a right to hoard. Give out!” Millie: “That’s right, Peggy, you know like they said during the war, give until it hurts.” “You will, too, won’t you, Millie?” “Oh sure, for something like that I wouldn’t mind a little pain.” Not to reveal the context, but someone says something to Millie and she replies, “To who?” in a gloriously delicate manner.

Minna Gombell as Mona dresses, acts, and even has similar hair to Thelma Todd. Imagine this movie as a ZaSu and Thelma vehicle? Apparently the earlier version of this film featured lesbian subtext between Peggy and Millie. Peggy, and much more so Millie, seem so hyper focused on men here that perhaps that was added to make them and the film seem as un-gay as possible. If the scenes of them interested in men were in that original version, that would be quite strange as, as an example, Millie doesn’t want “someone for her”, she wants a man for her. She’s always talking about men, not a partner. As an aside, that dog disappeared from the story. What happened to them? They could’ve been brought back for the climax, but alas not.

Erich von Stroheim’s The Girl Friends

SPOILERS

When Millie falls in a sewer a crowd of people form. Why would so many care that much? When Jimmy tries to enter Peggy’s room, she at first immediately tries to get him to leave, only for him to start talking. As their conversation progresses, Jimmy works his way in the room. He comes off as a little intimidating for how he doesn’t ask to come in and disregards that initial rejection. Admittedly, Peggy doesn’t ask him to leave once he’s inside and quickly likes him a lot. The scenes of Peggy and her love interest feel very Hollywood and sappy, as if it was almost love at first sight for them. “Ah gee, I’m happy.”, Jimmy says at one point. As expected, their romance could use more development.

Mac holds Peggy down over something that blows up her legs and thus her skirt up. Jimmy is fortunately upset with him for it. Mac forces a kiss on her later. Him doing it and her resisting paints him rightfully as very creepy and not excusable. He occasionally slid in lines or actions that made him seem sleazy. It can be appreciated that the trope of an unexpected kiss or wanting to marry someone on the first date is attributed to someone here that is so unlikable. After a pretty horrific scene where it seems Mac might rape Peggy, at least abusing her consent, she seems fine the next scene, as if nothing happened. That’s such a tonal whiplash.

The doctor not thinking it’s a big deal that Peggy is pregnant before marriage is another welcome bit of progressivism. The scene is a little out of place in this story. It might’ve made more sense in the earlier version. The fact that after their breakup the baby wasn’t mentioned suggests this plot point may have been forgotten about. There’s a scene where Jimmy tells Mona and Millie that he’s going to marry Peggy. Millie looks depressed by this, with the camera having a nice zoom on her face. This is never followed up on. If Millie is supposed to have a problem with their marriage, that’s not suggested later. In fact, when it seems she might’ve damaged their relationship, she is distraught by having done that.

A strangely morbid sequence comes when Mac tells Jimmy that Peggy is just using him. He doesn’t believe him, but still goes to Millie for reassurance. He inadvertently makes Millie feel bad about not having had much luck with dating, so she lies and says she’s had a lot of dates. Once again inadvertently, he makes her feel like someone who sleeps around too much while Peggy is innocent, so she lies and says Peggy has been with a similar amount of men as her. When Jimmy asks if Peggy’s been with a lot of men, he grabs Millie’s arm. Even beyond that, he constantly is doing things to belittle Millie (and later Peggy). The crux of this problem is that if Peggy had been with a lot of men, she’d be a bad person for doing so. Mona is with a lot of men. She seems happy with such a life, though at one point she gets in a physical fight with one of her lovers. This doesn’t seem like a moral gray area or a message, but more having the character act how they’re needed to even when it’d be better for them to be consistent. As an aside, Millie scolding Jimmy for how he’s treating her proves how great Pitts is at acting. She has so much fire in her. Why wasn’t Pitts the lead? Maybe someone thought she should be as she gets second billing and is the top woman billed, despite how little screen time she gets.

Jimmy finds Peggy in the rain and very viciously yells at her. Mallory gives a great performance, crying excessively, even when it’s sometimes hard to hear the two over the rain. Jimmy treats her horrifically in the scene, especially when he asks if Mac went up to her room. He doesn’t seem willing to get any of the specifics. While that is true, it’s not like she wanted him to. Jimmy makes himself look incredibly unreasonable. Even though he was given lies from Mac and Millie, he shouldn’t have just taken Millie’s word as the truth essentially and feel justified in yelling at Peggy. He was so mad it wouldn’t be surprising if Peggy there feared being hit. Boots Mallory is so great at playing Peggy so charged. She has gone through a lot and can’t handle herself. She is similarly good earlier when Mona wants her to go get more men when she doesn’t want to. A lot of her straightforward romance scenes portray her worse as there’s not much to get the teeth into. You can believe her crying was real here. While this sequence makes Jimmy impossible to root for, the acting is so sharp on the women’s parts and the dialogue so spicy and poignant that it’s the best sequence of the film.

Of course Millie just happened to find Jimmy right outside her place and right when she started looking for him. The explosion is the most random thing ever, feeling like an excessive and needless bit of action for the ending. One benefit of this is that it proves Jimmy was willing to die for Peggy. Also, the scene where the explosion first happens looks nice. There’s a line of dialogue where a firefighter says everyone got out safe. It makes sense that such a movie would want a happy ending, but that makes the explosion scene feel even cheaper. Also, no way no one died in that huge fire.

OVERVIEW

There’s a comic element to the fact that these apparently very rich characters were edited down to something very bland, saved only by some good performers. It’s a shame no one has made a movie about a movie where this very ironic thing happens. Mona and Mac don’t serve much of a purpose, it seems they probably did in the original version of the film. Minnie is also far more muted, but at least gets a little something out of what she has. As is, Hello, Sister! is honestly not anything. It’s not a comedy, it’s not a story, it’s not a Stroheim film, and if we are to be nice, it is a romance, but a very inessential one. Only recommended for fans of any of the actors or the most curious Stroheim enthusiasts.

Amusingly, the girls are asked on a date to Coney Island. Maybe this is a prequel to On the Loose, especially with Millie/ZaSu wanting to find a nice boyfriend in both films? Also, I got anxious when Peggy walked on some chairs and a table in heels.

His Musical Career (1914) Review // The Tramp #22

Mack Swain and Charlie Chaplin

His Musical Career is unfortunately more of the lesser Chaplin. There’s a lot of filler of the Tramp and Mack Swain goofing around. The two are essentially a comedy duo here. They do serviceably, but they don’t elevate the material. Chaplin and Jess Dandy in His New Profession were a better duo. As has been a common problem, their opening scenes seem like bottom of the barrel filler, with the jokes almost coming across as them improvising material that is a light chuckle at the very best. More could’ve been done with the main premise of this film. It’s not a story a lot could be taken from, but there is something here. Let’s mine it for all it’s worth! Let’s get really interesting supporting actors that can be funny. The Tramp is looking for work. That could’ve had some relevance later, like he runs into his old boss or at the end he is fired again and he mentions now once again needing employment. It’s funny to think he was fired from his restaurant job from Dough and Dynamite.

It seems the Tramp at one point decides to drink from a random container. The Tramp carrying a piano on his back suggests he’s very strong. That looks awfully painful. Later, the Tramp continues to push on the piano despite Mack telling him not to. Can he not hear Mack? What could’ve been the centerpiece of the film is when the Tramp has to get the piano up a long flight of stairs. So many things could’ve hilariously gone wrong, but the Tramp essentially just falls down a little and that’s it. As if no one understood how to resolve this scene, we awkwardly cut and are onto the next bit.

SPOILERS

The duo accidentally gave a piano to someone who wanted to get rid of one and took a piano from someone who wanted another one. There is a lot of potential there. There are nice absurdist jokes like the two addresses they have to go to being, “666 Prospect Street” and “999 Prospect Street”. The man intending to get rid of a piano doesn’t seem to mind receiving one. That makes for a fun character trait that could’ve been elaborated on more. As is, it is pretty much a plot hole. The fact one of the houses is rich and the other poor could’ve served as commentary. The Tramp and Mack getting around on a donkey wagon is also a brilliantly weird idea.

Mack drinks varnish and the Tramp runs around, at one point dumping a container on him for no reason, as if that will get rid of the varnish? An especially predictable and unnatural gag is when the Tramp accidentally sets a piano on Mack’s head. It’s unnatural because this wouldn’t sensibly have happened, but everyone has to just be dumb for this second in order for it to occur. One of the better moments is when the donkey is lifted in the air due to how heavy the piano is. The Tramp is amusing in trying to resituate things and continue on his way. He seems playful and not stupid or malicious.

Mack for some reason pushes down a man who tries to stop him from taking the piano. While it’s supposed to be funny he would do this, he’s just acting randomly here and thus it’s not engaging or amusing. This does lead to an interesting thought, why does Mack work, especially doing something so laborious? The answer is for money. He is so blinded and numbed by just wanting to do his job that he will not listen to his own customers telling him he’s making a mistake. He seemingly just sees them as something in his way, with them trying to stop him from what he thinks is him properly doing his job. The fact the poor man seemed happy to get a piano might imply he was only getting rid of it out of desperation for money. Mack knocking down a rich man in order to do his job and get paid is a step away from saying something. It’d be nice to see later Chaplin try this story out as there’s so much to explore.

Mack and the Tramp parked by the house. When they leave they start walking down a hill. Maybe their donkey walked away, but that wasn’t established? They don’t acknowledge its absence. I wonder if the reason they were riding a donkey in the first place is that that’s a reason for how their ride may have been absent at the end. After they begin falling, a man is in front of them. He disappears after a cut. After a little more sliding down, there’s a cut to them falling in a lake without us seeing it beforehand. It looks like they’re on a street and not anywhere close to a lake. It’s just thrown in. Hopefully there’s lost footage here because if this is how this sequence was edited, then it’s probably the worst moment of Chaplin editing so far.

OVERVIEW

I wonder if anyone was disappointed about not getting a short where the Tramp has a career as a musician, which the title implies. He doesn’t do anything musical here. The pianos could’ve been replaced with anything that’s big and would be hard to move around. There’s a few chuckles, but this one isn’t worthwhile. In fact, starting with the step forward that was The New Janitor, each short has been worse than the one before it, though there are good qualities that make them a little more interesting as documents of Chaplin’s progression. One is that the Tramp doesn’t do too bad a job at working this installment, though of course he does do a lot wrong. Also, Charley Chase has been progressively looking more and more like Charley Chase.

Gentlemen of Nerve (1914) Review // The Tramp #21

The imposing Mack Swain and Charlie Chaplin in the film

There is a certain question left on the tongue when viewing these later Keystone entries, was Chaplin generally alternating between a film with a stronger story, and one with a weaker story that was more reminiscent of the earlier installments of his series? Gentlemen of Nerve’s predecessor is certainly a stronger work. It doesn’t even seem there was much of an attempt to give Nerve a story. That isn’t a problem if the humor and performances are good… When Mack Swain is standing in front of an entrance, the Tramp hits him with his cane instead of simply asking him to move. Yet more of the Tramp being violent just because. A sound film would probably feature him verbally asking Mack to move, so this element is probably here so we can get a visual.

The Tramp and Mack are briefly friendly for no reason other than gags. If they wanted those moments, why have moments of them in conflict beforehand? Their jokes are decent enough, but they’re predictable to the point that many of these scenes could’ve been included in numerous other films. Imagine in The Property Man if Chaplin did with Joe Bordeaux and “Garlico” what he does with Swain here? Imagine if what he does in Property he instead does here? Jess Dandy and Swain both play the same types of characters and each could reasonably do the other’s role in a movie, though Dandy is less exaggerated by a little.

Mabel, jealous of a woman talking to her boyfriend, stomps her foot. Mabel has a light and playful performance, acting in a way like a female “the Tramp”. If the real Charlie Chaplin and Mabel Normand got married, you could imagine a series of comedies where they play a Trampish couple. Maybe Normand was too old? Here, Mabel and Chester Conklin play a couple. Of all Mabel’s wacky boyfriends, this might be the least believable one. He is more comical than the others, but seeing as he’s the Snub Pollard-role, it makes sense that the Tramp’s rival would have the main girl. The Tramp sprays a bottle of something through a wall. The direction it’s pointing in isn’t the direction it’s coming out of. The liquid also looks different depending on which side of the wall it is appearing in. At one point he steals a woman’s drink and she doesn’t seem to care. Amusingly, when he is preparing to have a fight, he hands his cane and jacket to a random woman behind him. Throughout the movie, she can be seen watching the Tramp’s shenanigans, sometimes smiling. There’s a moment where the Tramp’s hat falls off and she hands it to him.

Miscellaneous comments: Here Chaplin’s character is named “Mr. Wow-Wow”, while acting and dressing like the Tramp. Based on some Tramp films naming the character “Charlie”, perhaps the character’s full name is “Charlie Wow-Wow”? A cop is violent. Who is hiring these guys? I would say perhaps one of Chaplin’s characters, like Lord Helpus, is, but I think we could call it one way or another by tracing the lineage of those hiring the police now. Despite criticisms of “blandness”, there is an unexpected moment in the story.

SPOILERS

The Tramp appears to get a happy ending. Chester and Mack get arrested and the Tramp is forming a relationship with Mabel. He seemed to be about as silly and violent as the other two, so who knows why he was deserving of getting the girl, especially when he so often doesn’t? The Tramp is genuinely charming when talking to Mabel. You get the impression he is happier and more confident here than normally. Both have better chemistry than in the film where they were married, Mabel’s Married Life. Maybe this is a prequel to that?

OVERVIEW

The ending is the only particularly interesting part. It could’ve and probably should’ve been added to a different film. It’d be nice to see a whole movie that expands on that, playing up the romance angle.