Charlot patine

The Rink (1916)

*** (out of 4)

Charles Chaplin plays a waiter who when he isn't causing destruction he passes time as a great skater. Everything leads up to him being invited to a party where he runs into a man that he had an issue with earlier.

THE RINK is a pretty darn good film from Chaplin who certainly gets to show off a lot of talent here. I think most people probably remember this film today because certain elements of it ended up being used in MODERN TIMES including some of the cafe gags as well as the skating. Speaking of the skating, man what a talent Chaplin was on the skates! His skating here is certainly the highlight of the picture and especially when you see how graceful he was on them. There are some nice laughs that happen inside the cafe as well.

I have and always will hold this short film in high regard. I don't recall when I first saw "The Rink", but I remember being taken aback by the graceful eloquence of Chaplin's skating. It has figured prominently in my memory since--especially in playing back the first moment when Chaplin rolls onto the rink. This must be what the French critics were referring to when they compared him to ballet dancer Vaslav Nijinksy. Chaplin skated again in "Modern Times" (1936), but for some reason, perhaps because there's so much more going on in that feature-length film, it hasn't had the same affect on me.

"The Rink" also reminds me of the earliest film I've seen of Chaplin's comedic forerunner and prominent influence Max Linder. In that very short film, of which no two sources seem to agree on the date or the exact title, Max skated on the ice, or, rather, attempted to skate; the humor supposedly being in the many pratfalls. There are plenty of pratfalls in Chaplin's film, but they're in addition to his elegant movements on the rink floor.

In "The Rink", the agile skating makes for a nice contrast to the knockabout slapstick that the film is otherwise. Chaplin, by now, had managed to balance these two contrasting styles, and it makes for a very entertaining short. The direction almost seems intended to point out the differences in the styles; there are, as common then, many jump cuts when Chaplin's causing mayhem at the restaurant, but when he's skating, there are flowing, seamless camera movements. The restaurant gags, for the most part, aren't bad, either. Edna Purviance, Eric Campbell and other regulars aid in the fun, including Henry Bergman in the oft done but still funny drag role.

Chaplin was almost always amusing but it occurred to me while watching this story of a waiter who woos a girl at a skating rink that in his earlier films he was more often the perp than the vic.

This was released in 1916 and Chaplin is a rude waiter who humiliates guests and steals money. If a stranger happens to be bending over and fastening a lady's roller skate, Chaplin can't help giving him a swift kick in the pants when he passes by. There's nothing here about "the little people." If the tramp is little, it's because that's his most comfortable social niche.

Ten years later, in "The Gold Rush," Chaplin had introduced humanity into his character, an innocent who is more sinned against than sinning.

Ten years after "The Gold Rush", he was sending social messages about worker alienation. (That's what happens when your work permits you to take no pride in having done it well. Anyone up for McDonald's Chicken Nuggets?) But in movies like "Modern Times," the milieu is only a peg from which to hang gags that are more hilarious than ever. And movies about poverty in 1936 were hardly uncommon anyway.

The gags here are sometimes spectacular, and always speedy. The tramp could certainly skate well.

This film is laugh out loud funny. Who knew Charlie Chaplin was so graceful (and funny) on roller skates? This short film is watchable by all ages, and despite being close to 90 years old, it is still downright funny. Lookout for a character called Mrs. Stout played by a man in drag.

The Rink, one of Chaplin's most charming early short comedies, starts out with the little tramp working as a waiter, and there is a hilarious short scene where a customer calls him over for his check, and Charlie comes over and writes up the bill based on the food that the guy has spilled all over himself. It seems to me that this was the film that inspired parts of Modern Times, especially the skating and the kitchen scenes. There are some wonderful uses of the IN and OUT doors leading to the kitchen, which do not seem repetitive even after I've seen Modern Times five or six times.

One of the most charming scenes in the whole movie is a short piece where Charlie goes behind the bar to mix someone a drink (shaken, not stirred…). It's one of the famous scenes from Chaplin's early career. When Charlie gets off work, he changes back into his famous outfit and heads out to the bus stop. While he is sitting on the bench next to a woman, he pulls off some truly vintage Chaplin behavior that is so spontaneous and so well acted that it makes me think of Chaplin just goofing off in real life. This is what I imagine he was really like a lot of the time.

With The Rink, it is easy to see that longer, and more genuine stories are slowly evolving in his early films. It is not a deep story by a long shot, and there is still plenty of high-action physical slapstick comedy, but there is much more here than at most of his previous films.

But most of all, the feature skit of the film is the skating scenes in the second half, which are outstanding. It's amazing to me how good Chaplin was on skates, and some of the skits he pulls off here (such as the bouncing up and down on the fat woman) are truly brilliant pieces of slapstick. I have to say that I wish I knew where exactly the film's closing shot was filmed, since it's an outdoor shot and I am always curious to know what parts of Los Angeles are being shown. Excellent show!