Charlot conte

Charlie and Eric Campbell are in top form is this very amusing short. Charlie plays a tailor's assistant and Campbell is his boss. They wind up by coincidence (!) at the same rich lady's party, where both compete for the daughter Miss Moneybags, played by Edna Purviance.

The plot is, of course, completely ridiculous, and the whole thing is totally silly and contrived--which is just how it should be. The highlight is a hilarious dance sequence, with Charlie at his acrobatic best. There is a lot of cake-throwing and bottom-kicking. The latter is such a standard device in Chaplin movies that I wonder if there might have been some kind of underlying S&M thing going on here.

Not one of his best, but standard Charlie is Grade A stuff. Still very very funny.

Charlie Chaplin's fifth film for Mutual is a somewhat simpler film than its immediate predecessors The Vagabond and One A.M. and is more reminiscent of his Essanay work, albeit it more sophisticated and slightly funnier. Chaplin plays an inept Tailor's assistant who gets fired for burning a Count's trousers. His boss (Eric Campbell) finds an invitation to a party at the house of Miss Moneybags (Edna Purviance) and decides to impersonate the rich Count in order to marry the attractive, rich girl. Chaplin is also at the party having snuck in through the back door and beats Campbell to the impersonation. All hell breaks lose though when the real Count arrives, along with the Police to chase out the impostors.

The Count features lots of funny moments but lacks the knockout blow of the likes of One A.M. or The Bank. It's testament to the quality of Chaplin's Mutual films that I felt disappointed by The Count even though it is far superior to a lot of his Essanay work.

Although there were no huge laughs to be found here I still chuckled a lot. For me the funniest scene was the opener in which Chaplin is taking a woman's measurements. First he measures her ears, then her lips before mistakenly giving her a five foot waste and finishing off by measuring one finger. It was totally bonkers. I also liked his embarrassment with regards to going near any of her more private areas and measured her bottom with a ruler from about four feet away. Another funny scene comes late on in the final chase. Here Chaplin is chased through a house and across a slippery dance floor in a very well choreographed sequence.

There are obvious comparisons to be made between this film and A Jitney Elopement in which Chaplin again impersonates a Count to gain Edna Purviance's affections. Chaplin is able to create humour in both films around the dinner table, a trait that continued into the rest of his career. Personally I prefer A Jitney Elopement to The Count but both films have their merits.

One final thing of note here is Eric Campbell's beard. It is simply extraordinary even by his standards. I've never seen anything like it before. Ridiculous facial hair is something that is evident in most of Chaplin's earlier films but I think it reaches new levels in The Count.

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Charlie Chaplin goes to a party and he pretends to be a certain count. He doesn't act like a count but they all believe he is one until the real count shows up.

This is another fine Charlie Chaplin movie where he does some nice satire on higher society. It starts a little slow but once they are on that party it gets very funny.

Another one of those mistaken-identities and chased-by-the-cops Chaplin short, but hell, that's always funny!

The story starts of with Charlie working in a tailor-shop. Great gags there while measuring a woman and destroying a jacket. Because he screws up he gets fired.

Him and Campbell both attend to the party of Edna's 20th birthday, while actually a count was invited. When exposed, Charlie gets chased around the place and finally leaves into the distant.

Pretty funny stuff from the master of slapstick. Not his best, but not his worst either. And a mediocre Chaplin still is way better than an average movie...

7/10.

There's not much subtlety in "The Count", but there is some pretty good slapstick. Chaplin regular Eric Campbell gets a big role in this one, and he and Charlie always make a good pair of comic rivals. The settings offer some good props and comic possibilities, and the story and the cast make pretty good use of them, as well as the kind of identity mix-up that Chaplin liked to use. There is pretty good detail in some of the settings as well, making them rather interesting in their own right, as a small look into the daily life of 1916.

Chaplin and Campbell have some good moments in their series of confrontations with one another, getting into a series of antics first in a tailor's shop and then at a formal dinner. The first part moves pretty slowly at times, but then things start to pick up, and there is a rather manic finale. Edna Purviance also appears, but she does not get a lot of material to work with this time.

It's not among the best of Chaplin's shorts, but it's still worthwhile. There are no especially imaginative or innovative ideas here, but there is enough funny slapstick to make it worth seeing.