The Face on the Barroom Floor

Charles Chaplin was a genius, a master, a remarkable actor, an outstanding director and a legendary person. I watched all of his movies and read his autobiography and there's no need to say how much I admire this man - he will always be my number one actor and director of all times. Period.

Charlie started out his career very early and by the age of twelve already had an experience many grown-ups would be jealous of. So when the opportunity arose for him to make it big he took it and came to America in the early 1910s when the silent cinema was already blossoming. Charlie signed a contract with Mack Sennett's Keystone who produced farce and slapstick comedies and the rest is history; many of his early movies I dislike on the basis of them being just too silly, one-dimensional, at times unfunny and lacking that real "Chaplin" feel that he got famous for later. Everyone should start someplace and any place is a good start as long as you've got patience and enough talent to carry on.

The earliest of his movies that I consider a masterpiece is "The face on the barroom floor" (1914). Charlie had already a couple of dozen movies under his belt before this one came along; it still was a farce comedy but what differed this one from the rest was the presence of the soul in it. The movie was based on the poem of the same name and told a story of a broken-down person who fell in love but was left for somebody else. The intertitles in the movie are experts from the poem and Charlie brings it to life masterfully with his performance balancing between slapstick and drama the way only he could do it - brilliantly. "The face on the barroom floor" is only 11 minutes long but it showed all of Charlie's potential and talent to the world and has become his first of many successes in the world in cinema.

A very amusing burlesque on the famous poem that has been recited so many times. The poem itself is altered in places and the action is entirely of the low comedy sort. Chas. Chaplin wins new laurels in the leading part. This is bound to please. - The Moving Picture World, August 29, 1914

Let's be honest, 'The Face on the Barroom Floor' is not much of a comedy. That doesn't necessarily mean that it is a bad movie. No! It is more a tragic story with some nice visual gags. It stands above most of The Keystone's farcical slapsticks but not only because it is so different. Here we can see Chaplin shine without relying too much on heavy slapstick. The movie is based on the poem by Hugh Antoine d'Arcy 'The Face Upon the Barroom Floor', which I also recommend reading. The movie follows the story from the poem quite accurately. Of course, there are many different cuts out there and some of them are quite botched up so the story is disfigured and some scenes don't make any sense.

The low score here, in IMDb, is probably due to the fact, that people expected the usual early Chaplin farce, but instead, they got rather a thoughtful movie without any raunchy slapstick.

This early Charlie Chaplin short feature is mildly amusing, with a small touch of humanity. Charlie is an artist who loses his girl to a rich man who came to have his portrait painted. Then, in a bar, Charlie bemoans what has happened. There isn't too much comedy, just a few small laughs. Charlie does make us sympathize a little with the artist. It's worth watching once for anyone who likes Chaplin (as is almost anything that he did), but it's not up to the standard of most of his films.

You can read the poem upon which this film was based. I guess a lot of the satire is lost to our "blind" modern eyes. This is a rare chance to see early Chaplin doing some fairly straight acting.

Well, I've just been told that my comment isn't long enough. Good writing is succinct writing everywhere else.

But I'll plow on with more thoughts. It's interesting to see how much the tragedy in being a run-down bum is felt in this short. The Tramp is such a resourceful character in most shorts that feature him that there is no sense of his being really a loser in life. The poor who identified with his plight also enjoyed his ultimate victories and small defeats of the powerful, I will guess. If we looked at him today, we'd wonder why he couldn't fit into the models of success we hold dear: offices, stores, anything that requires conformation to behaviorial requirements -- must have been all that kicking!