Best of Chaplin, Vol. 2 (2016)

Chaplin's "Vagabound," "Fireman" and "Fatal Mallet"

Volume 2 of the "Best of Chaplin" brings together two of Charlie Chaplin's two-reelers for Mutual with a classic example of slapstick in the form of a one-reeler the comedian did for Keystone in his early years. If you are looking to show how far Chaplin had progressed from the early days to his time at Mutual, where he evolved the particular blend of comedy and pathos that he would then perfect in his feature films, this trio of comedies will do the trick.

In "The Vagabound" (Released July 10, 1916), the third of the Mutual two-reelers, the Tramp is a down on his luck violinist who ends up rescuing a girl (Edna Purviance) from a band of gypsies. Of course, he falls in love with her, but he has a rival in an artist (Lloyd Bacon), who wants the girl to pose for him. Eventually the artist's portrait is seen in a shop by the girl's real mother (Charlotte Mineau), who tracks her down and takes her back to the family mansion, leaving the Tramp alone. Eric Campbell plays the Gypsy chieftain in this one while Leo White gets to be both the Old Jew and Gypsy woman. "The Vagabound" is a fine example of Chaplin emphasizing pathos over comedy, and is by most standards the least funny of the Mutual comedies, but a key part of the development of the Tramp's character.

"The Fireman" (Released June 12, 1916) was Chaplin's second comedy at Mutual and emphasizes the slapstick. Edna Purviance is still the girl, but this time around Bacon plays her father, Campbell the foreman of the fire brigade, and White the owner of the burning house. This one begins with Charlie managing to sleep through a fire alarm while getting his butt kicked a lot and ends with him rescuing the girl after her father arranges for his house to burn down to get the insurance money. In terms of what Chaplin was doing at Mutual "The Fireman" is arguably the least funny of the bunch, but it does provide a sharp contrast with "The Vagabound."

"The Fatal Mallet" (Released June 1, 1914), was the fifteenth of the one-reel comedies Chaplin did for Keystone. Charlie is the Tramp, who spies a pretty girl (Mabel Normand), walking with her admirer (Mack Sennett). Charlie throws a brick, intended to hit the admirer, but hits the girl instead. While the two men are fighting it out, another rival (Mack Swain) shows up and pays attention to the girl, which means Charlie and Sennett gang up on him. However, eventually Sennett and Swain go after Charlie and he ends up in the lake, although not before he finds a boy (Gordon Griffith) he can beat up on. This is the only time Chaplin and Sennett confronted each other on screen, and "The Fatal Mallet" enjoys the distinction of being the crudest and most violent of the Chaplin Keystone comedies. But notice that each of the men has a different approach to violence: Chaplin likes to be sneaky, and usually attacks from the rear; Sennett prefers to making gestures rather than attack; and Mack actually ties to fight fair. So there really is some character driven slapstick in this one.

When I taught a unit on the comedies of Charlie Chaplin one of the things I did was show students a series of his works from each stop along his career. This meant starting with Keystone, then his work at Essanay, Mutual, First National, and then United Artists. Thus students could see the evolution of his comedy from the early one-reelers to the feature films. "The Fatal Mallet" was my Keystone comedy of choice, although for the Mutual period I always found "The Immigrant" to be the best of those dozen two-reelers. All of the Mutual comedies Chaplin did have been restored in recent years, so there are better versions of them out there on DVD, but this is a better copy of "The Fatal Mallet" than I owned previously. November 27, 2004

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