Charlot e le salsicce

Whenever you have both Mabel Normand and Charlie Chaplin in the cast, you can be fairly sure that there will be something worthwhile in the movie. While most of the material in "Mabel's Busy Day" isn't very imaginative, the two stars give it enough energy and personality to make it worth watching.

There really isn't much to the story, which has Mabel working as a hot dog vendor at a race track, and with lesser performers it probably would have worn thin pretty quickly. There's plenty of action, but not all of it makes sense, and sometimes the pace is a little too frantic for some of the gags to come off well. But it's not bad for its era, and to fans of the old silent comedies, this kind of silly but innocuous feature always has a certain charm.

The respectfully dressed but violent cad played by Chaplin would pare down in later movies with Normand to a dignified tramp capable of effective outbursts of combat although less so against Mack Swain or an inflated dummy from which he would protect Mabel. In Caught in a Cabaret he would rescue Mabel from an attacker in the ubiquitous park. Here not yet a Tramp the cad provides support with Conklin for the prima Mabel whose spinning haymakers are as wild as any at Keystone. Mabel attained the top box office attendance ever in Mickey to be exceeded by Snow White twenty years later. Here with Chaplin briefly on second fiddle is the most talented twosome Sennett had.

While this isn't an exceptional silent comedy in most ways, it is worth seeing just to catch a glimpse of the huge number of future stars in this short. While the film stars Mabel Normand and she was a bona fide star at the time (so much so that she also directed the film), Charlie Chaplin was a bit of a new-comer as 1914 was his first year in films AND there are still quite a few faces you can pick out from the crowd if you know to look. Mack Sennet (owner of Keystone Studios) himself in a small roles, as does Al St. John (Fatty Arbuckle's nephew and his frequent foil on film), Chester Conklin (with his trademark mustache), Edgar Kennedy (of Laurel and Hardy fame) and a very young Charley Chase (who had a significant career as a solo comedian in the 1920s and 30s).

As for the plot, Mabel sneaks in to the race track to sell hot dogs. However, once there, jerks keep stealing her hot dogs. Chaplin, who did NOT interact with Mabel for the first half of the film and just seem to wander about aimlessly, then came to help but the problem continued. There were a few decent slapstick scenes and the film has a lot more continuity than most Keystone films of 1914, but it is still far from great and more a film to see for historical purposes than aesthetic ones.

Am a big fan of Charlie Chaplin, have been for over a decade now. Many films and shorts of his are very good to masterpiece, and like many others consider him a comedy genius and one of film's most important and influential directors.

He did do better than 'The Knockout', still made very early on in his career where he was still finding his feet and not fully formed what he became famous for. Can understand why the Keystone period suffered from not being as best remembered or highly remembered than his later efforts, but they are mainly decent and important in their own right. 'Mabel's Busy Day' is a long way from a career high, but has a lot of nice things about it and is to me one of the better efforts in the 1914 Keystone batch and one of Chaplin and Mabel Normand's collaborations.

'Mabel's Busy Day' is not as hilarious, charming or touching as his later work and some other shorts in the same period. The story is flimsy and the production values not as audacious. Occasionally, things feel a little scrappy and confused.

For someone who was still relatively new to the film industry and had literally just moved on from their stage background, 'Mabel's Busy Day' is not bad at all.

While not audacious, the film hardly looks ugly, is more than competently directed and is appealingly played. Chaplin looks comfortable for so early on and shows his stage expertise while opening it up that it doesn't become stagy or repetitive shtick. Mabel Normand is charming and has good comic timing, working well with Chaplin.

Although the humour, charm and emotion was done even better and became more refined later, 'Mabel's Busy Day' is humorous, sweet and easy to like, though the emotion is not quite there. It moves quickly and doesn't feel too long or short.

Overall, far from one of Chaplin's best but pretty good and perhaps one of his better efforts from the early Keystone period. 7/10 Bethany Cox

Another funny short film by Charlie Chaplin. In this one, he gets to fight with Mabel Normand, the lady who sells hot-dogs! Quite different since he's not really the savior that he usually plays. In this one, he actually steels the hot-dogs from Mabel before fighting with her.

Out of 100, I gave it 76. That's **½ on a *** stars rating system.

Seen at home, in Welland, on November 21th, 2001. Marko Roy.