Charlot et le chronomètre

In 1914, Charlie Chaplin began making pictures. These were made for Mack Sennett (also known as "Keystone Studios") and were literally churned out in very rapid succession. The short comedies had very little structure and were completely ad libbed. As a result, the films, though popular in their day, were just awful by today's standards. Many of them bear a strong similarity to home movies featuring obnoxious relatives mugging for the camera. Many others show the characters wander in front of the camera and do pretty much nothing. And, regardless of the outcome, Keystone sent them straight to theaters. My assumption is that all movies at this time must have been pretty bad, as the Keystone films with Chaplin were very successful.

The Charlie Chaplin we know and love today only began to evolve later in Chaplin's career with Keystone. By 1915, he signed a new lucrative contract with Essenay Studios and the films improved dramatically with Chaplin as director. However, at times these films were still very rough and not especially memorable. No, Chaplin as the cute Little Tramp was still evolving. In 1916, when he switched to Mutual Studios, his films once again improved and he became the more recognizable nice guy--in many of the previous films he was just a jerk (either getting drunk a lot, beating up women, provoking fights with innocent people, etc.). The final evolution of his Little Tramp to classic status occurred in the 1920s as a result of his full-length films.

It's interesting that this film is called TWENTY MINUTES OF LOVE since the film only lasts about 10 minutes! Oh well. The plot, what little there is, involves the Little Tramp in the park. A couple wants to neck but inexplicably, Charlie insists on practically sitting on the couple's lap and really annoying them. I can't understand why and the short consists of Charlie wandering about the park annoying these people and some others later in the film. Perhaps he was looking for a threesome, I don't know. But the film lacks coherence and just isn't particularly funny--even when people start slapping each other and pushing each other in the lake. A typical poor effort before Chaplin began to give his character a plot and personality.

They only got ten minutes for that twenty minutes of love. 'Twenty Minutes of Love' is widely considered as Charles Chaplin's directorial debut, although many sources claim the director being Joseph Maddern. I don't know how big was Chaplin's creative input, but some sources claim that he took the responsibility to cover the financial losses if the film didn't make any profit. Well, the movie was a success, and all we know for sure that Chaplin went on with a highly successful and prolific director career.

This movie still doesn't show any signs of the true genius of its main star, writer, and (supposed) director. The story is simple and amusing but ends up with the usual Keystone-style slapstick violence where everyone gets their share. Chaplin's Tramp interrupts with two lovers courting on the park bench. He is chased-off by the angry boyfriend. The Tramp soon becomes entangled with the difficult relationship between another couple. Of course, he manages to disturb the third couple as well.

Entertaining, for sure, but only for those ten minutes. The movie is not very memorable and offers nothing inventive yet. The Tramp is still just a scoundrel who goes around just causing trouble. But I liked how the plot elements all came together at the end giving the viewer a satisfying and complete story.

hello. 20 minutes of love is very important as it was chaplins first time directing. for that reason alone is enough to make it historic. true, it is not classic chaplin. true, it is not a great comedy. not even for that era. but if you think that chaplin could, as he said something to the effect of give me a park, a pretty girl, and a cop and i can make a movie. well that is what he did. i feel it is so interesting to be able to watch is film acting and directing in it's infancy, and see how he progressed through the years. not many artists work can be seen in such an early stage as chaplins. i think i'll go watch it now. mac estelle

Charlie Chaplin's directorial debut casts him as a man who interrupts people's makeout sessions in a park. There were no feature films by this point, so it makes sense that the movie has a simple plot. It was still going to be a few years before Chaplin started incorporating political issues into his movies. Chaplin's early movies were all about physical comedy, and he makes good use of that here. Co-star Edgar Kennedy (the lover) later played the lemonade vendor in "Duck Soup", while Chester Conklin (the pickpocket) played a mechanic in "Modern Times".

It must've been weird for Charlie Chaplin, how he went from being a boy growing up in an orphanage to being an international superstar.

In Chaplin's first film as director, he doesn't come flying out of the gates, instantly showing that he will go on to be a great filmmaker. 20 Minutes of Love is not much different from the films that he made in the months before or after, although it is interesting to see one of the first of his mostly improvised films made in a park with some couples and a police officer and little else. Like so many of his other comedies this one turns into little more than a lot of kicking and punching and throwing the entire cast into a lake, but given the amount of short films almost identical to this one that Chaplin cranked out, it is clear that the audiences at the time were having a blast.

The plot itself is even more difficult to follow than they usually are in Chaplin's early work. It involves Charlie wandering around a park and making ridiculously overt passes at women who are sitting on park benches with their boyfriends or husbands, and then there is a stolen watch thrown into the mix and a subsequent conflict involving who owns it and who stole it. Probably the best moment in the film is when Charlie gives the watch away to a pretty girl and then is so proud that he is just beside himself. Pretty amusing, and a lot of the Tramp's characterization also comes through even in this very early film.

It should be noted that you should not expect to find tiny, forgotten gems of masterpiece comedy by looking at Chaplin's early work, because film was an emerging medium and Chaplin himself was an inexperienced filmmaker from any perspective, but unfortunately 20 Minutes of Love, even though it is Chaplin's first film as director and therefore a film-making landmark, is also clearly the work of someone who had little experience in film-making and was still not sure where his career as a filmmaker would take him.