His Trysting Place

A two-reel offering in which Chaplin and Mabel and Ambrose appear. An interchange of overcoats leads to all sorts of family troubles in two homes. Chaplin does some particularly amusing stunts in this and the fun runs nigh through the entire two reels. This is eccentric comedy that should have wide appeal. - The Moving Picture World, November 14, 1914

Wedded bliss for Mabel and Charlie (?), but just as well Mabel spurned the Tramp-man's real-life advances, and chose not to be the first to enter Chaplin's harem. The resulting chaos would have much worse than anything Keystone could ever conjure up.

Mabel positively dotes on her screen baby, as she seemed to do in studio stills and private photos with other children. Keystone claimed that children absolutely adored Mabel and were instinctively drawn to her (wasn't everybody?). Notably, Mabel never had kids of her own and apparently never wanted them. It's doubtful that Miss Keystone would have trusted herself alone with them – she once said she loved to 'pinch babies and twist their legs'. She also found it amusing when she once switched a baby left in a pram for one of a different hue, causing the mother to collapse in hysterics on her return. In this film, however, when Mabel leaves the kitchen, big bad Chaplin sets the baby crying. On Mabel's return its eyes light up and an arm reaches out for her.

Charlie plays the disinterested father and Mabel the poor drudge of the usual Keystone type. After Charlie almost burns everyone, and gives the baby a gun to play with, he decides it best to depart and head for a 'greasy spoon' eating joint. Here he helps himself to an old man's bread, prior to wiping his hands on the aging fellow's Zee-Zee Top beard. He then runs into old Keystone adversary Mack Swain, and Mack quickly receives a bowl of soup in the face. Following the ensuing fight, during which 6 foot-four Mack gets a good whipping from 5 foot-four Charlie, terrified Mack flees the scene taking Charlie's coat by mistake. Charlie himself bolts back to the perceived safety of the family home, but unfortunately he has Mack's coat, which contains a letter alluding to a meeting with a lover. Mabel searches the coat pockets for baby's promised present, but finds the letter. There follows some classic Mabel changes of expression, before she hurls a bowl of water at Charlie, and follows up by splitting an ironing board over the Englisher's head. The ironing board is a typical Keystone lash- up, which almost falls apart before Mabel reaches her spouse. Charlie proceeds to throw the 99 lb Mabel to the floor, but thinks it best to flee the coop before she can give him a mouthful of knuckles.

Charlie is next seen at Hollenbeck Park, talking to himself and wondering what has happened. The usual series of Keystone capers occurs when the lorn betrayed Mabel, and babe in shawl, catches up with Charlie, and Mack reappears on the scene. The scene is complicated still further, as Mack's wife (Phyllis Allen) is also in the park, and Mabel tries to strangle the seemingly 'loose' woman. Eventually, Charlie and Mabel return to wedded bliss, while Mack and wife remain at loggerheads. In Mabel's Married Life it was the other way round.

Note: Continuity obviously counted for nothing at Keystone, as, for some reason, when Mabel departs the kitchen she takes her rolled pastry with her, but returns to find the same pastry attached to the baby's bottom. She had clearly forgotten that she'd walked out with this stuff earlier. The rolling pin Mabel's been using mysteriously disappears just before she leaves the kitchen, but miraculously reappears just prior to her return. Clearly a gag had been added after the original scene was filmed, but, film costing what it did, this was retained in the movie. Mabel's attempts at rolling pastry with one hand, while holding a baby in the other, are amusing, as are her attempts at ironing, which involves the use of water by the gallon. Fortunately, the real-life Mabel had a house-full of servants!

We're so accustomed to seeing Charlie Chaplin play a homeless tramp it's a little strange to see him in the role of respectable family man. In this Keystone comedy Charlie is a husband, homeowner and father. He's married to Mabel Normand, and they live with their baby son in a conventional middle-class home. Admittedly, it's not exactly a Father Knows Best-style household: within the first minute or so Charlie disrupts Mabel's work in the kitchen, they squabble, and an open flame on the stove nearly burns each of them in turn. Charlie carries his son by grabbing a fistful of his clothing, he gives the baby a pistol to play with, and at one point Mabel actually flings a horseshoe directly at her husband's head. Even so this looks like a fairly happy family by Keystone standards.

Soon, of course, complications arise. We meet another, somewhat older couple staying in a nearby hotel. They're played by Mack Swain and Phyllis Allen, two startling-looking performers who had no qualms about using their appearance to get laughs. (When I saw this film at a recent public screening the audience enjoyed the strenuous mugging of Swain and Allen as much as the antics of Charlie and Mabel.) As Mack exits through the lobby of their hotel he encounters a nice young lady who asks him to mail a letter for her. He agrees, unaware that it's a note to her lover setting up a meeting. Charlie, meanwhile, goes out to get his baby son a new bottle, buys one, and tucks it into his coat pocket. In the film's most memorable sequence Mack and Charlie meet up at a shabby little café where Mack's sloppy eating habits deeply annoy Charlie. Meals always seemed to inspire Chaplin's most memorable scenes, from these early comedies to the routine with the missing coin in The Immigrant, and all the way to the haywire feeding device in Modern Times. Here, the set-up is much simpler and the bit is comparatively brief, but Chaplin and Swain make an amusing visual contrast and somehow the sequence is funny from the moment Charlie sits down. Immediately, the two guys launch a competition for Most Vulgar Eating Habits award. Mack slurps his soup so grossly we can almost hear him, while Charlie gnaws a huge bone like a wolverine. Within moments they're fighting, and before you know it Charlie is wiping the floor with Mack and attacking everyone else in the place for good measure. It's a strangely exhilarating spectacle. Speaking of eating scenes, ten years later Mack would share a cabin with Charlie in the Yukon in The Gold Rush, where Charlie would dine on a boiled shoe and a delusional Mack would hallucinate that his roommate was a chicken!

Getting back to Keystone Land: when the combatants leave the café after duking it out they manage to mix up their overcoats. (The two men are sized so differently this seems unlikely, but why quibble?) Thus, Mack goes off with a baby bottle in his pocket while Charlie carries the letter setting up a rendezvous. Soon after Charlie returns home Mabel finds the letter in his coat, assumes the worst, and expresses her displeasure by breaking an ironing board over his head. Meanwhile, Mack and his wife meet up in the park. He's still boiling mad about the incident in the café and she is sympathetic until she finds the baby bottle in his pocket. Phyllis instantly assumes her husband is the father of a secret child, doubtless the result of an illicit relationship. Charlie, fleeing his wife's wrath, rushes to the park with Mabel in pursuit. The two couples encounter each other, a cop gets involved, and more mayhem results.

For me, the sequences that conclude the film are anti-climactic. His Trysting Place peaks when Mabel cracks that ironing board over her husband's noggin, and everything that follows is standard Keystone park shenanigans, overly familiar from so many other comedies of the period. Chaplin's unaccustomed role as Dad is the major novelty here, but he doesn't carry the whole comic burden on his shoulders. This is an ensemble piece, and it's nice to see Mabel, Mack and Phyllis each given a moment or two to shine.

Am a big fan of Charlie Chaplin, have been for over a decade now. Many films and shorts of his are very good to masterpiece, and like many others consider him a comedy genius and one of film's most important and influential directors.

He did do better than 'His Trysting Place', still made relatively early on in his career, generally a period where he was still finding his feet and not fully formed what he became famous for (though he is definitely more settled feeling here). Can understand why the Keystone period suffered from not being as best remembered or highly remembered than his later efforts, but they are mainly decent and important in their own right. 'His Trysting Place has a lot of nice things about it and is to me one of the best efforts in the 1914 Keystone batch and one of his best collaborations with Mabel Normand.

'His Trysting Place' is one of his funniest and most charming efforts from this period. Sure the production values are not as audacious. Appreciated the busier story than most from some other 1914 efforts of his, though occasionally it was a bit hard to follow and still a bit flimsy. 'His Trysting Place' for early Chaplin is pretty good and it showed that Chaplin was starting to settle. Mabel Normand is charming and she has a fun chemistry with Chaplin

While not audacious, the film hardly looks ugly, is more than competently directed and is appealingly played. Chaplin looks comfortable, with more shades than before of his distinctive style here, and shows his stage expertise while opening it up that it doesn't become stagy or repetitive shtick. There is more sympathy and emotion than most of his efforts from this period.

Although the humour, charm and emotion was done even better and became more refined later, 'His Trysting Place' is still very funny, cute and hard to dislike. It moves quickly and doesn't feel too long or short.

Overall, pretty good. 7/10 Bethany Cox