Mabel's Married Life

A man (Charles Chaplin) can do little when a masher starts moving in on his wife Mabel. She buys a boxing dummy to toughen him up. Meanwhile, he's in a bar drinking his blues away. The masher shows up and taunts him. In a drunken state, he actually fights back and knocks everyone down. He goes home and mistakes the boxing dummy with a real person.

Chaplin fighting a dummy is pretty funny but not unexpected. The biggest laugh happens with Mabel doing a Tramp impersonation. I don't like the split second when Chaplin starts choking Mabel and the short should always end with the couple stumbling out of the room and crashing into the nosy neighbors.

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 'Mabel's Married Life', 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 Married Life' 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 Married Life' 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 Married Life' 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 Married Life' 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

This short feature is a nice chance to see Charlie Chaplin and Mabel Normand together, and it's a decent comedy as well. Charlie and Mabel play a married couple, with the wife receiving a lot of unwanted attention from an annoying brute played by Mack Swain. As you would expect, Mabel is charming, and Charlie is a rather ineffective but generally sympathetic husband. Some of the comedy is a bit routine, especially towards the beginning, but there is a very good sequence later on that gets good mileage out of some amusing props. Take a look if you like these old Keystone comedies.

This one's poor even by Keystone standards, with Chaplin struggling to wring any laughs from his encounters with Mack Swain and a clothing dummy. At least Mabel Normand looks cute in pyjamas.

It is surely a winner. It can't be described, but there is nothing at all offensive in it; it is all laughable, and a very desirable release. Charles Chapman and Mabel Normand are at their best and everyone knows what that means; better than most feature offerings from an exhibition viewpoint. This kind makes 'em come again soon. - The Moving Picture World, July 4, 1914