Charlot avventuriero

Charlie Chaplin made a dozen short films for Mutual Films and this is one of them. It's a very good film, but also very odd because the Little Tramp is in this case the Little Jail Bird! Charlie playing an escaped prisoner is not that unusual in his early years, but those used to the sweeter character he played in his full-length films won't really recognize this characterization.

Despite being a wanted man, Charlie seems pretty decent as he helps several people who fall into the sea. As a result of his efforts, he is taken back to the home of one of the rich people he saved. When he awakens, he thinks, initially, he's in prison. But, once he realizes where he is, he relaxes and has a good time--until the police arrive and a series of mad dashes and chases occur--much like the very beginning of the film.

Cute, fun and, all in all, pretty insignificant fare from Chaplin.

All good things come to an end, and when that good thing was Charlie Chaplin's tenure at a studio, it tended to come to an end in style. This was Chaplin's last picture for Mutual, and his second studio finale to have the apt if disparaging theme of the little tramp's escape from the long arm of the law.

But really, the man-on-the-run angle is just a bit of trivial cheekiness. This is not one of Chaplin's great story pictures. Instead, he appears to be simply having a bit of fun with his last fling at Mutual. The Adventurer consists of a varied series of escapades, linked loosely by the narrative, but all of which could easily have come from another picture or even been expanded into a short in their own right. So we move from Charlie the fugitive to Charlie the rescuer of drowning women, to Charlie the party-crasher and so on. And yet The Adventurer is not vague or bitty. Instead this is perhaps Chaplin's most flowingly funny picture to date. The comic now had the professional ease of a seasoned acrobat, and here he reels off the gags with an almost casual comedic agility.

Supporting Charlie here are the usual familiar supporting players – Edna Purviance, John Rand, Albert Austin, Henry Bergman – all of whom would follow him to his next stable, First National. And yet these are all in relatively minor functional parts in the Adventurer. Chaplin's real partner here is Eric Campbell, who sadly would not follow the tramp on any more adventures. Campbell died several months after the picture's release. Here however you can see him at his best, as he seemingly relishes playing one of his most unforgivably mean characters. He exhibits a wonderful knowledge of what his job is in the comical scheme of things, brilliantly treading that line between authoritative ogre and buffoon.

And so we end again with that all-important statistic – Number of kicks up the arse: 8 (5 for, 3 against)

Not all the early Chaplin films are classics, but this one is. The best bits are the chasing scenes, especially at the beginning (Charlie escaping from prison) and in the middle. The way Chaplin makes excellent and varying use of a humble lampshade should put many modern filmmakers with their inflated budgets to shame.

When I was a young boy (about five years old), my parents couldn't afford a TV and, in order to give me entertainment, my dad bought a second hand silent cine projector and showed me some silent westerns (which I have all but forgotten) and - oh joy, oh bliss - the Essanay and Mutual Chaplin films. The greatest of these - by a long way, in my estimation is 'The Adventurer' indeed, it is one of the very few short films worthy of the term 'masterpiece'.

The Adventurer is a sonata on the number 3. There are three main locations - the beach, the pier and the house. The cliff location in the beach scene is triangular, Charlie and his two pursuers make an hilarious trio, with every combination of characters and apexes of the triangle being explored...

Then we go onto the pier... There we have three sub-locations - the top of the pier, the car and the sea. Charlie explores all of these and then moves onto the house.

Here we also have three locations - upstairs, downstairs and the terrace. You can see dozens of other 'threes' in the film, but the coda, in which Charlie is chased three times round the set is like the delirious coda to Mozart's 41st Symphony when the orchestra seem to take off. There is noting like it in all cinema.

Of course I had no idea about all this subtlety when I was a kid, I just looked and laughed in wonder and said with a pleading thrill in my voice.... 'Play it again, Dad.'

Without these wonderful Chaplin films, I doubt that I would have given my life to the cinema for the last fifty years.

Chaplin is a funny man that can do a lot with very little. His humour is slapstick and he is very good at it.

Here we follow a convict on the run through diverse escapades in which he amongst other things saves a woman's mother and steals the woman from her suitor.

His jokes are very simple and effective, that said they can be a bit repetitious and today obvious.

Funniest part is in the beginning when he bumps into police everywhere and repeats his mistakes all the time and also the bit with the sliding doors.