Cruel, Cruel Love

I don't know if I should've put a question mark after "Great Man,"--I saw Chaplin and the "Gold Rush" and "The Kid" I think it was on TCM, years ago & thought it was extremely funny then had not watched for years.

Usually--unless it's Lon Chaney--or something dark & grisly, I'm not sure how to speak about a silent comedy; unless it's Buster Keaton & I don't think he's funny. I guess the only litmus test I can use is watching it again & laughing my posterior off, which I did with this film.

I can see many mixed reviews here, but the plot is so simple & screwy, I had to convulse. Chaplin seeing demons or karate-kicking everybody in his path had snot spilling from my nose, so obviously this man is legend. Look forward to more of these....

Cruel, Cruel Love works almost exactly like Romeo and Juliet. Well, with a happy ending, that is.

Charlie is a Lord wanting to marry a girl, but she thinks he's cheating with the maid. Charlie is so disappointed and unhappy he tries to poison himself. When the girl finds out nothing happened between the maid and Charlie she wants him back... so Charlie is calling the medics what to do next.

When he finds out he only drank some water (well, I think that's what it is) he is kicking some butts in the end just for the sake of it.

Early Chaplin short, in which he isn't the tramp for a change, has some moments but really isn't as funny as most of his work.

5/10.

Chaplin famously churned out an enormous number of short comedies for Keystone during his first year in the film-making business, and while the majority of them are pretty sad comparisons to the later films that he would become famous for, Cruel, Cruel Love definitely ranks as one of the less memorable. A lot of people complain about these early comedies, no doubt because Chaplin is known as one of the greatest filmmakers of all time and yet the films he made in 1914-1915 are most definitely not the greatest films of all time, but this one gives a clear look at what a lot of people are turned off by.

Chaplin does not play the tramp, but some sort of bizarre jerk with a hideous mustache and what appears to be an unenviable future. Like in many of Chaplin's early comedies, this one devolves into a widespread kicking and punching match by the end of the film. This has been going on for months by this point, and I believe that Chaplin was just giving his audience what they wanted at the time, but this is the first time that I have gotten the feeling that he is just running out of ideas.

I think Chaplin may have been progressing past what he would later refer to as the good old days when films could just be slapped together in a park, and so he tried to do something different, try on a slightly different characterization for a while, but unfortunately it just doesn't work. The film as a whole comes off as a bit of a disjointed mess, Chaplin makes some faces that I could have gone the rest of my life without ever having seen, and his heart is clearly not in it. Just his feet and his fists.

This was Chaplin's ninth film at Keystone and the third of four Chaplin films directed by George Nichols. It is important to note that this film was lost for a long time and only about 9 of the original 16 minutes has been found.

We can guess that most of the lost footage starts at around 3 minutes and 30 seconds just before we see Chaplin taking poison. What we don't see is his decision to take poison, his relationship with his butler, played by Edgar Kennedy, and the butler substituting a harmless drink for the poison. We can easily guess that all this was the content of the missing scenes based on the acting and actions in later scenes.

This film seems like it should be associated with Chaplin's first film, "Making a Living" as he wears the Gray waistcoat and top hat from that film and Minta Durfee who is also the love interest from that film is the love interest here.

Eva Nelson does a funny bit as the maid. She hurts her ankle and Chaplin helps her. Durfee does not see her hurting her ankle. This causes Durfee to mistakingly believe that Chaplin was trying to seduce her. Nelson's film career just started a few weeks before in Chaplin's "Tango Tangled." She appeared in 10 Keystone films in 1914. She then did nine more short films in 1915 and 1916, including six with Chaplin impersonator Billie Ritchie. That is all of her short film career.

William Hauber does a nice job as a gardener who convinces Durfee that Chaplin hasn't betrayed her with her maid. He appeared in some 75 Keystone films from 1912 to 1916 and then worked in some 30 Larry Semon films over the next 10 years.

This film contains the first Chaplin "Dream sequence." He imagines himself going to hell after drinking the poison. "The Bank," "The Kid," "Sunnyside" "The Gold Rush" and "Modern Times" are some other Chaplin films with dream sequences.

Chaplin's performance in this film looks ridiculous rather than funny; however, that is probably due to the missing scenes. If we had those scenes, we could see Chaplin's transition from despair to hysteria. We can only hope that someday, some way, the missing scenes may be found.

'Cruel, Cruel Love' is one of the better efforts of Chaplin's early Keystone works. It seems to me that those films where Chaplin wasn't playing The Tramp were usually better from that period. The story is a classic romantic fable - after a little misunderstanding, the Lord's (Charles Chaplin) fiancee (Minta Durfee) calls off the engagement. Broken-hearted, the Lord is about to commit suicide. The Lady's gardener explains what caused the misunderstanding, and she rushes to help her loved one. The Lord's butler watches that mess and gets a nice bellyful of laughs.

Although the film is simple and offers very little inventiveness, it is still funny enough, and as a viewer, it is easy to care about the characters and the story. Gags and stunts were barely above the average of that era's slapstick. Chaplin managed to show his true genius as an actor - when his character was thinking he will die and hallucinated about hell - those facial expressions when he realized that all the world is over for him. Amazing.

I also started to pay the attention to the sets they used and noticed how the homes of the characters look very similar. It is because they used the same set, but with little redecoration, they made it look like another location.

'Cruel, Cruel Love' is more than barely watchable - it is enjoyable.