Charlot à la plage

"By The Sea" is one of Charlie Chaplin's many short films, consisting mostly of simple slapstick comedy. In it, Charlie's tramp character visits the sea-side and gets involved in a series of mishaps with other vacationers.

Most of the comic elements are fairly routine: banana peels, melting ice cream, unstable park benches, and so forth. Chaplin does this kind of humor as well as anyone, so there are a couple of good laughs, but in this movie there is not any of the depth that he would display in his more memorable films.

This is a pretty routine short for Chaplin, but that's still not too bad by most standards.

By The Sea is one of Charlie Chaplin's very early short comedy skits, and while the plot is necessarily simple, the comedy is effective and the message is clear and fairly heartwarming.

The film concerns some guy on the beach who gets into a hilarious scuffle with another guy on the beach (Chaplin), because they both drop their hats (which, for some reason, are tied to themselves with pieces of string) and subsequently become entangled with one another as they try to get their hats back. Needless to say, they very soon start fighting, in the traditionally comical brawls that are commonplace in nearly all of Chaplin's films.

The plot actually thickens when a woman walks by and Charlie tries to act like he hasn't been fighting, holding his unconscious adversary up while he amusingly tips his hat (like no one else can) by pressing it against the pole that he is leaning on. This type of childishly charming acting is what Chaplin is most famous for and what he is best at, and it works very well here, too. Chaplin has come to be known for his presentations of different class levels in his films, but in By The Sea, one of the themes that is more prevalent is his dislike of authority figures (a standpoint that is shared by Alfred Hitchcock, who had a deathly fear of police officers). When he is fighting with the man on the beach, an officer comes up to break up the fight, accidentally gets knocked unconscious, and Charlie steps on him as he and the other man walk away, soon to agree to a truce.

Eventually, Charlie and the other guy become friends with each other, going out for ice cream. But it seems all the while that they are on the verge of breaking out into another fight – it is clear that they don't trust each other. Even while they are eating their ice cream (which, it turns out, neither is able to pay for), they are knocking each other down and exchanging blows.

Throughout the film, there is a subplot involving Charlie's amorous advances toward two different girls. One is involved with a huge brute of a man that we see in a quick shot early in the film, and one is involved with the man with whom Charlie spends the majority of the film fighting with. The film ends with all five of them sitting on a bench on the beach as Charlie woos one of them after another, not knowing that the two men are right beside him, and they all begin to fight, causing all of them to fall over backward on the bench. While it's true that Charlie encountered numerous hardships during this film, and that the ending wasn't necessarily happy for him, it is still an amusing comedy that serves the purpose that it was meant to serve. Films that are barely nine minutes long can only do so much, and By The Sea really accomplishes a lot.

By The Sea is a short film by Charlie Chaplin during his time at his 2nd film studio, Essanay. Apparently, it is the first film to have a man slip on a banana peel. So, surely that's enough reason to give this film a watch?

Unfortunately, it is nowhere near one of Chaplin's best, or even near an average Chaplin film. There are really only 2 comic moments. 1. When he slips on the banana peel. 2. The men's hats being flown around in the wind. There are a few other moments which may produce a giggle from audiences but nothing enough that will make you want to watch it again.

The story is very slim and not completely clear. Edna Purviance stars in a role that is not necessary. I can only see the point of her being there so that there's a bit more of a story to the non-existent plot. Any excuse to film at the beach! Chaplin is still in a stage where he did not worry about camera work, just as long as he could capture the whole scenario in one plain camera angle.

In Chaplin's early days he would sometimes make up the story as he went along, I feel it is likely that he did the same with this short. It is by no means awful, but it is one that you may think at the end 'hmm, that was decent', and then proceed to forget you ever watched it.

6/10!

This is a quick-moving farce, with Charlie getting involved in an altercation at the shore right off the bat. After he and his opponent (Billy Armstrong) agree to end hostilities, they get some ice cream, then start fighting again over who is going to pay for it (that's Snub Pollard behind the counter). Another man (Bud Jamison) gets hit with ice cream in the crossfire and more fisticuffs ensue. Meanwhile, Charlie flirts with Jamison's wife (Edna Purviance). Later, he flirts with Armstrong's wife (Margie Reiger).

Fun to watch, this movie is (thankfully) shorter and more to the point than some of Chaplin's other efforts.

For me this is one of the few Chaplin Essanay movies that contain any real laugh-out-loud moments - although they do come fairly early in the film, and nothing else in it compares to these two sequences. The first is the scene in which Chaplin and another man (Billy Armstrong) get their hats, which are attached to them by pieces of string, entwined and then proceed to repeatedly knock each other over as they try to disentangle themselves. The second is the moment in which Chaplin appears to be staring intently at something in the sand in order to get his adversary to lower his head enough to grasp it in a headlock. Chaplin's regular retinue – Purviance, Jamison, McGuire, etc – are all present in this one and offer solid support.