A Lover's Lost Control

Charley Chaplin's half-brother, Syd, who stars in this movie, had a considerable movie career on his own, although he was never too busy to help his brother negotiate a better contract. Like Charley, Syd was known to chase the ladies and his career was cut short when he had to leave the country when a young woman objected. Looking at this movie in which Syd -- or "Gussle" as his character was known -- is too fond of the ladies for his own good, brings that thought to mind.

You can tell Syd is Charley's relative right from the beginning. Whether it's because they are related, because they both worked in Fred Karno's pantomime troupe or because Syd was intended purely as a replacement for his brother, they move alike and do the same "interrupted line" gags.

This one is set in a department store, a natural site for a comedy, since the comics can exhaust the potential of one department and move on to the next. Much of it is set in the shoe department, a popular location for men to flirt with young ladies since Porter's THE GAY SHOE CLERK a dozen years earlier.

A LOVER'S LOST CONTROL is not a great Keystone comedy. By 1915 the studio had learned its business, figured out precisely what its audience wanted and knew how to give it to them via half a dozen plots stringing together the gags. However, in the hands of the highly skilled cast and crew, there are plenty of laughs for people who like their slapstick. It's certainly more than good enough.

A Lover's Lost Control (1915)

** 1/2 (out of 4)

Gussle (Syd Chaplin) takes the wife (Phyllis Allen) he hates to a department store where she shops while he causes a riot while trying to hit up on a pretty young woman there. Leave it to Keystone to come up with such a wild brand of comedy and everything the company is known for is on full display here. It's funny watching a film like this because it's clear in Keystone's world that nothing needs to make sense as long as someone is either falling over or getting punched in the nose. It's true Mack Sennett thought that as long as everything was fast enough and wild enough that no one would stop and ask questions. That might have been true but at 22-minutes this film has enough flat moments where you can stop and thinking about how nothing here makes any sense. This is far from a good movie but I think Chaplin makes it worth viewing because of how strange this little character of his is. You can see elements of his brother's Little Tramp but Gussle probably would have been better as a stalker. He at least gives us some funny scene including a physical one early on where he's sitting on a stool in between an annoying woman and his wife. This annoying woman gets some of the biggest jokes after Gussle puts a tail on her. A LOVER'S LOST CONTROL ends with about a ten-minute fight sequence that drags on in spots but it's the perfect example of Keystone.

Charlie's brother, Syd Chaplin, stars in this film as his frequent alter-ego, Gussle. In many ways, this character comes off as a sloppier and less subtle variant on Charlie's 'Little Tramp' but is a bit more of an annoying prankster. The film begins with Gussle tacking a slip on the back of a woman's skirt--and she walks about embarrassing herself until she discovers this. He also pours power on a man, gets into a slapping match, makes passes at a pretty girl and generally makes a HUGE mess of the department store in which the film was made--and culminating in a chase involving a very strange car. None of this is especially brilliant but it is an entertaining film--particularly if you love old silents. Full of slapstick and silliness but not a lot of depth, though I did like the fake leg bit...

By the way, unusually for a Keystone film, this one had a rather impressive budget--including destroying a car or two!