About CHARLIE CHAPLIN short movies

It is my pleasure to present you 3 short films by Charlie Chaplin.
A few years ago, I found 3 old black and white 16 mm film reels in a forgotten attic. You can imagine my surprise when I discovered the first images of these movies from 1915 to 1917. It was 3 short films by Charlie Chaplin. This is especially moving for me because I also do short movies, and at that time, Charlie had a lot fewer resources than us, young directors. So I scanned these little masterpieces of humor, imagination, and tenderness too. And now i am happy to present them to you.
You'll have 6 minutes 30 of pure pleasure.

Movie Details

Language: Silent

Year of production: 1915

Length: 06:30

Country: United States

Original source

Filmmaker's Personal Web TV

Film Annex


  • Directors:
    Charlie Chaplin
  • Producers:
    Charlie Chaplin
  • Actors:
    Charlie Chaplin

Comments

  • John Farley on 06 April at 17:18

    In 1916, Mutual Film Corporation offered a young, still relatively obscure Charlie Chaplin $670,000 to create ten comedic shorts, after the enigmatic Englishman proved his worth in the arid no man’s land of budding Hollywood with director Mack Sennett. In this video we see clips from three of those shorts, including the highly lauded police romp Easy Street. While Chaplin would later humbly claim that he was undecided at the time of these shorts in regard to the direction of his actorial persona, it is immediately clear that young Chaplin had already mastered the art of performative contradiction. Chaplin here seems perfectly comfortable with his tramp’s oversized shoes and baggy clothing whilst playing the serious little vagabond, and he exhibits a clear vision for his character’s strange and elegant position as a tragic-comic figure. Pathetic as he is crafty, the tramp character embodies the full-weight of the human experience, leaving an audience empathetic with the innumerable unfortunate situations he finds himself in, while laughing both with and at him.

    No doubt, Chaplin’s responsive movements still manage to dazzle and charm. His attempts to outwit and escape two assailants through a sliding door nearly had me in tears. But imagine seeing these clips of Chaplin, not yet 30 years old, in the early 20th Century, and consider the greater implications of his directorial style. What you’re seeing is a man who perhaps more than anyone was beginning to understand the possibilities of the cut and movement within a space. As the tramp leaps from room to room, suddenly and inexplicably exchanging lampshade for derby hat, it is evident that Chaplin had already comprehended the cinema’s wondrous tendency to move beyond the gestures and limitations of the stage. And what’s more, it’s clear he knew that with his lanky body and casual, yet mighty dancer’s balance he was the right man to exhibit these possibilities.

    These clips, wrought from cinema’s Jurassic period, should inspire any aspiring filmmaker, and make anyone who’s ever shied away from filmmaking due to a perceived limitation of resources. For what is illuminated here, at least in terms of process, is the fact that there are always new doors to be opened (in Easy Street quite literally) through simple twists of camera and bodily movement—a whole new artistic world can be entered in the simple tug of a moustache.