Arbeit

Izzy Wake (Charles Inslee) a paperhanger and his assistant (Charlie Chaplin) slowly make their way to the house of Billy Armstrong and Marta Golden where they are due to hang wall paper. After experiencing difficulty even getting to the house, once they get there things go from bad to worse.

This film made me laugh, a lot, but overall it was messy – much like the on screen action. I didn't really get any sense of who any of the characters were and to be honest apart from inhabiting the house at the centre of the story, Billy Armstrong and Marta Golden's characters weren't really necessary. They and Leo White were only really used during the films frenetic ending which is somewhere between a chase and a farce. That being said, there is still much to like about this Chaplin Essanay effort.

I liked the clever camera angle that Chaplin used to give the sense that he was pulling his bosses cart up a steep hill. It looked pretty good and added a bit of humour to a scene which was stagnating a bit. The cart pulling scene contained some good moments but dragged on too long for my liking. Chaplin wiping sweat from his forehead then ringing out an obviously pre soaked handkerchief was a highlight. When the action turns to the house there are many great moments. As you can imagine, Chaplin plus wallpaper paste creates some hilarious business. The film on the whole made me snigger in several places rather than laugh throughout and as I said previously the plot felt somewhat forgotten and was confusing. A confusing plot isn't something you want from a film that is under thirty minutes in length.

The romantic plot also took a bit of a back seat here and didn't really come to the fore until close to the end. Chaplin and Edna Purviance's Maid had a couple of cute scenes though. Overall this short is much more slapstick driven than plot driven and while funny in part, is slightly disappointing.

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This isn't a great short movie by Chaplin standards, though compared to many other slapstick films of the time, it's pretty good. In fact, the operative word for this film is "slapstick", as this movie has a larger than normal for Chaplin amount of pratfalls. Falling, hitting, exploding ovens and buckets of wallpaper paste getting tossed about is pretty much all this film is about from start to finish. This is funny, I guess, but it certainly doesn't look like a film about "the Little Tramp". And, now that I think about it, it looks like an early Chaplin film fused with a Three Stooges short. Kids will probably like it, but devoted fans of Chaplin will probably feel a tad disappointed.

Work is a rather messy Chaplin short but feels overlong as some of the situations drag on.

Chaplin plays a workman on his way to decorate a house, we see him pulling his boss on a cart who also whips him, there are several scenes where he crosses a train track just before the train passes through and then he struggles to get up a hill. In one scene the boss invites a friend to hop on the cart. You can see Chaplin is already taking a stand against exploitative capitalism already!

Once they arrive at the middle class house, there is all kinds of slapstick as they try to wallpaper the house, there is an exploding stove, Chaplin takes a shine to the maid, and the householder's wife is visited by her secret lover.

This is the first Chaplin short I have seen in some years, they just do not get repeated as often as they used to be on television. In Work Chaplin has not found his 'tramp' persona but there is some good skills used to for the slapstick but it gets too repetitive.

Charlie Chaplin, in what was probably his most anarchic phase, was now basing many of his short comedies around a normal, "straight" setting, into which his little tramp character could blunder, causing mayhem as he went. Work is probably the most carefully constructed and effective in this respect.

The picture begins with a couple of extremely regular shots establishing the house in which most of the action is going to take place, and introducing us to its prim middle-class residents. Everything appears very formal, all composed of straight lines and neat areas of black and white. We then suddenly cut to Charlie chugging down the street with his boss's cart behind him. Everything in this shot has to do with disorder, with wonky telegraph poles, extras cutting across the frame, not to mention the ramshackle contraption the tramp is pulling. When we arrive at the harmonious household, the camera set-ups from the opening shots remain the same, but gradually the tramp's chaos begins to spread. The neatness and formality disappear while the mess and clutter builds up as, one by one, the rooms (and their occupants) are thrown into disarray.

Of course, Chaplin's popularity was not just founded on his comical capers. His satirical streak, here in full swing, would have struck a chord with many in his audience. I have certainly had a fair few employers who take after Chaplin's boss, and it's great fun to see this kind of character lampooned. And as in most of Chaplin's shorts there is a heart amidst the havoc, here in the form of the "sad story" scene. Even then, Chaplin wisely keeps the comedy going and stops the moment from getting too serious and saccharine.

Work is by no means the most hilarious of the Essanays, and certainly not the best developed in storyline, but on its own terms it is a pure work of genius, and positive proof that Charlie Chaplin was not just a funny little man. When it came to film-making, he knew exactly what he was doing.

And last but not least, the all-important statistic – Number of kicks up the arse: 2 (2 against)

The first scene of Chaplin in this movie is of him drawing a carriage while his masters sit in the back as he tries to take them up a hill to amusing results. That's all you need to know to appreciate this treatise on work and the pains that man goes to achieve it. We all have to work to pay the bills, but the characters homes he visits in the movie don't have to work, the way he does, that is the hard labor of using one's hands and seem precarious of it. Chaplin loved to spoof the rich or the idle class as they are known. Maybe, he felt being born with a golden spoon is bad. There is nothing wrong with that. It's how one lives with such advantages and disposes of his willed upbringing that castigates the self. But not to Chaplin, who goes on to wreck havoc in a series of set pieces that ends with destruction and a wink to the camera; an act of farewell and goodbye. Is it farewell to work and a hooray for idleness, I cannot say but like a cartoon character who has preyed the deed, he takes us along and makes us laugh, even if I do not agree with his accusations.