His Regeneration

This is not Charles Chaplin's comedy. It is not a comedy at all, it is quite serious a thoughtful movie. Chaplin only makes a brief cameo at the beginning of the movie when he chats with the girl in the lounge and then gets chased off by her boyfriend. That scene is not particularly funny nor does it add anything to the story. At that time Chaplin was a business associate with 'Broncho Billy' Anderson and he helped with the story.

The film is quite alright. The low score is probably by the people who were disappointed that it wasn't a Chaplin's comedy. Nonetheless, the film isn't great - it raises a good point but it does nothing to maximize it.

Its only worth is to those who want to see everything that Chaplin has ever made

Very mixed in genre, "His Regeneration" has some Charlie Chaplin comedy and some Gilbert "Broncho Billy" Anderson drama -- but there is nothing especially Western or cowboy-ish about this film.

The version I saw had no sound track, no added music, and there were no intertitles, but almost always a viewer could tell just what was going on and what the characters were doing and even thinking.

Anderson wrote the scenario, directed the film, and starred in it, and deserves huge plaudits for all three jobs.

I'd like to know more about this production, including how Anderson got Chaplin to appear without credit, and more about the other players.

Anderson shows in this short -- less than 15 minutes -- feature that he could act, that he could create a character and demonstrate ability in expressing action and emotion.

This is truly a remarkable production for 1915 and well deserving to be watched by motion picture fans and by, perhaps especially, students of motion picture history.

It's available at YouTube.

In this one-reel drama G.M. Anderson discards the "glad rags" which he has donned lately, and gets back into the old familiar togs. Once again he is an outlaw, and once again he meets the woman who accomplishes his reformation. The story is well told. Marguerite Clayton's embodiment of The Girl being a sufficient excuse for any man's breaking for the "straight and narrow." - The Moving Picture World, May 22, 1915

Although this movie is considered as a Western (not only in IMDb), I don't think it fits well the genre. If you consider it as a Western, anyway, it is probably the only film of that genre in which Chaplin has taken part. Besides the initial credits say that it was "slightly assisted by Charles Chaplin", Charlie has also played the Tramp in a funny but unimportant scene in the saloon, which is the only interesting scene in the whole film, which I consider very boring. One year afterwards Chaplin made a remake of this film, "Police", which is much better and is not a Western for sure. The story of the criminal redeemed by a beautiful blondie is basically the same, but having the Tramp as the thief and not only as a flirting customer in a bar makes everything different.

This works all right, although it could probably have been better. The story concerns a brutish criminal (Broncho Billy Anderson) who goes through some experiences that cause him to reconsider his way of life - the kind of story that was fairly common in the two-reel features of the era. One problem is that for quite a while it wavers inconsistently between tension and slapstick, so that it's hard to tell where it is going. It's interesting to see Charlie Chaplin in a couple of the scenes, but he's really just a sidelight.

The story itself has a worthwhile point, but would have been even more effective in more skilled hands. Someone like D.W. Griffith could have made it easier for the audience to overlook the crucial coincidences in the plot, and could have evoked more emotion in the climactic scenes. It's not a bad movie, though; it's just that there are obvious ways it could have been better.