Tillie's Punctured Romance

For today's audience there are two things that are striking about Tillie's Punctured Romance. The first is that Charlie Chaplin does not get first billing here. He was not yet the star he would become, he was just another of Mack Sennett's comedy stars. He does not play the tramp character yet though there are some tramp like aspects in who he does play.

The second is that this is a chance to see Marie Dressler a whole lot earlier in her career than we know her from sound films. Marie was a very big vaudeville star and her character her was a whole lot like her act on stage. The homely big boned girl who seems to be born a total klutz.

There's not really much to the outrageous plot of this 83 minutes of unadulterated slapstick. It seems like every other minute someone was either tripping or being kicked in the derrière. That was the way it was with Mack Sennett comedies.

Chaplin plays a city slicker who takes Marie off the farm and to the big city. But when he gets there his eye roves towards Mabel Normand. Mabel back in the day was a full figured girl herself and a bit more attractive than Marie.

But when news of her rich uncle falling off Mount Baldy makes her an heiress, Charlie finds his passion for Marie and her money rekindling. Kind of leaves Mabel the odd girl out. And in the climax the Keystone Kops are called in after a brawl develops at a society party that Marie is throwing to introduce herself to society.

Tillie's Punctured Romance could have told the story in half the screen time it takes. There's only so much pure slapstick you can take at one time. Still it's not a bad film and it does display the talents of Chaplin, Dressler, and Normand and a host of other comedy names from the Mack Sennett studio.