Charlot, faquín

In His New Profession, Chaplin again reverts into drunken slapstick, what I think is his weakest effect, although I am sure it was very popular back in 1914. A man in a park is clearly very annoyed at having to care for his uncle, who is confined to a wheelchair, so he asks the Tramp to "push him around for a bit," while he goes off chasing some girl. He does, but soon passes a bar and wants to go inside and get a drink. When the uncle won't give him a dime on account, he steals money from a sleeping homeless man's tin cup, then places his cardboard sign on the uncle and heads for the bar, where Fatty Arbuckle is almost completely unnoticed as the bartender.

There are several moderately effective gags, but it seems that the film is trying to present more story than it can carry. There is a lot going on in the story, but very little of it is clear, and as is so common in these early films, it soon resorts to a lot of pushing and kicking. You can't really expect a whole lot more than that from these early comedies, but as it is, there is not much to make this one stand out from the rest of Chaplin's early work.

Even Chaplin himself begins and ends the film with a yawn!!!

I saw this Charlie Chaplin short under the title THE GOOD FOR NOTHING. It's very similar in tone to IN THE PARK, consisting of Chaplin and a few others goofing around in the great outdoors, although the setting this time around is a pier. I didn't like it as much as IN THE PARK, as the gag rate isn't as consistent, and much of the humour is lowbrow and repetitive.

Chaplin plays an idler who is tasked with looking after an invalid by fellow comedian Charley Chase. The guy is in a wheelchair so all manner of pain-focused gags arise from that situation. There are some very funny bits here, especially those involving the wheelchair being pushed around, although Chaplin doesn't seem quite on form and he has little of those character quirks I've seen elsewhere. Watch out for Fatty Arbuckle's cameo as the exasperated bartender.

This 16 minute flick is no where near his very best or indeed his keystone best but the film from a historical points out why Chaplin and his tramp became the greatest success in popular entertainment up to that time. Chaplin quickly mastered the new medium and here he circumvents normal morals by playing to the popular crowd which at the time was very the poor, the working class and the exploited so the little tramps cruelty seemed then to be not just funny but clever in a way that simply does play to modern manners. Chaplin was still learning his trade when this short was put to celluloid way back in 1914 but even then he knew what cinema and entertainment was all about. Today 100 and more years on it is clear that Chaplin was not only an artist but a genius and a pioneer and innovator of deserved legendary status.

An early Chaplin comedy from his days at Keystone, which means he's more aggressive than he was in later years. This early version of the Little Tramp thinks nothing of kicking the occupant of a wheelchair in the chest and stealing from a beggar. There are a few mild laughs - which is more than you can say for many of Chaplin's efforts for Keystone - but he's still far from the finished article.

If you've seen any of the comedies Charlie Chaplin made at Keystone during his first year in the movies you know that they're usually very fast-paced, sometimes chaotic (even when the print is in decent shape), and generally full of slapstick violence. Furthermore, Charlie himself is not the lovable Little Tramp of later days, but a more ruthless figure, often drunk and combative. Where the ladies are concerned he's playful but not exactly warm-hearted. Sometimes Charlie is an out-and-out villain, as in Mabel at the Wheel and Tillie's Punctured Romance, and in one Keystone, The Property Man, he's a bully who torments his elderly assistant.

In His New Profession, a one-reel comedy, Charlie is a scamp who hangs around at a seaside park reading The Police Gazette, an illustrated weekly full of sin and scandal that was the National Enquirer of its day. A young gent who is stuck pushing his wheelchair-bound uncle around the pier persuades Charlie to take on the job for a while, so he can go off with his girlfriend. Through devious means Charlie uses the old man to raise a little cash to buy himself beer, but when the nephew returns the situation quickly deteriorates into a brawl involving the police. In this film Charlie is more selfish and amoral than villainous; when a passing lady drops her handbag he almost pockets it, but quickly returns it when challenged. His strategy to earn himself beer money is rather amusing. Compared to other, more crazed Keystone shorts the knockabout violence in this one builds gradually, the way Laurel & Hardy would handle escalating hostilities in their best comedies later on. Still, the tone here is pretty raw. Charlie sits on eggs and wipes off the residue on the grass, a beggar pretends to be crippled, and the uncle's bandaged foot gets clobbered repeatedly -- of course. Refined it ain't, but nonetheless it's more enjoyable than some of the other Keystones. It's well paced, and despite the low comedy stuff the atmosphere is light-hearted. It's just a day at the seashore with the old gang.

A couple of notes on the cast: the dapper young man first seen pushing his uncle's wheelchair (and who comes to regret entrusting Charlie with this job) is played by a very young Charley Chase, who went on to a starring career of his own in the '20s and '30s. And during the sequence in the saloon you'll have to look fast to catch a glimpse of Roscoe Arbuckle as the bartender. This cameo role is so brief, and is presented so casually, one suspects an inside joke.