Shanghaied

"Shanghaied" has a plot that is rather complicated for such a short film, but as in most of Charlie Chaplin's earlier films, the emphasis is really on slapstick comedy.

The story involves a scheming ship owner and his roughneck captain, who tricks and "shanghais" a group of sailors, including Charlie, to form his crew. The ship owner's daughter is in love with Charlie, and comes along for the ride. It's a bit hard to catch everything in the plot, but the slapstick at sea is easy to follow. Chaplin gets decent mileage out of a few ideas using the shipboard setting, as he and the crew try to handle the cargo and work in the kitchen as the ship rocks back and forth.

While not one of Chaplin's best, there are still a few good laughs to be had in "Shanghaied".

A ship owner intends to scuttle his ship and asks his Captain to round up a crew. The Captain in turn hires a Tramp (Charlie Chaplin) to help him 'Shanghai' (forcibly conscript) some sailors. This backfires for the tramp though as he himself is Shanghaied. On board ship the Tramp attempts to help out with a variety of different tasks but unsurprisingly is useless at all of them. Meanwhile the ship owner's daughter (Edna Purviance) has stowed away aboard ship in an attempt to stop the crime of scuttling and save her lover, the Tramp.

After the wonderful highs of The Bank, this film was a huge come down. It is by far my least favourite Charlie Chaplin film to date although there are inevitably some good moments to be found.

The only joke that made me laugh out loud was Chaplin's ridiculous naval salute which was somewhere between blowing a raspberry and a high five. While that is hilarious, the rest of the film isn't. The only other joke that made me even smile was when Chaplin throws a rescue rope behind him by accident. The rest of the gags were mediocre. Chaplin was to find success with a nautical theme just a couple of years later in The Immigrant and you can see the workings of some of the jokes from that classic film during Shanghaied. The most notable of these was the dinner during choppy seas. In addition to one or two decent jokes there is also some nice close-up work, something which was rare for Chaplin at the time. In one scene the fuse of some dynamite is shown in very close zoom rather than the traditional wide shot of the whole set. This marks further development of Chaplin's ever expanding film craft. The one final aspect of the film that I enjoyed was Chaplin's incredible tray handling skills. This is something he revisited years later in Modern Times but while it is more spectacular there, it feels much more real here.

As well as The Immigrant the film also has shades of Buster Keaton's Steamboat Bill Jr in that both central characters are bumbling buffoons in love with a ship owner's daughter. Keaton's later film undoubtedly takes some elements from Shanghaied but adds much more and is a far superior film.

My main problems with this film were that the story felt under developed and there weren't enough jokes. It feels like Chaplin got an idea of 'the Tramp on a ship' and just made it up as he went along (something that was often the case in early Chaplin films). While this was sometimes very successful, here it is far less so.

www.attheback.blogspot.com

Charlie Chaplin and his Tramp character gets shanghaied by crooks.This means some harsh work on a ship.This all happens after a shipowner intends to scuttle his ship on its last voyage to get the insurance money.Charlie also happens to be in love with the shipowner's daughter.And she stows away to get to Charlie and gets on board of the ship, that is about to be exploded.Shanghaied (1915), which was shot largely on board of SS Vaquero, was Chaplin's 11th film for Essanay.Alongside Charlie we see who else but the lovely Edna Purviance, who plays Daughter of the Shipowner.Wesley Ruggles plays Shipowner.Bud Jamison is Second Mate, The Other Man.Billy Armstrong is First Shanghaied Seaman, while Paddy McGuire plays the second and Leo White plays the third.John Rand is Ship's Cook.Fred Goodwins is Cabin Boy in Coveralls and Lee Hill is Sailor in Rain Hat.Chaplin does his usual antics and makes people laugh.We see Charlie with a mallet, hitting a bunch of men in the head and therefore they get shanghaied, just like Charlie does a minute later.Charlie tries to serve food during the gale and he becomes seasick.And then Chaplin with the bomb...It's a riot!

This is another early Chaplin film made for the Essanay Studio, and while it has its moments it certainly isn't one of Chaplin's best. It's difficult to sympathise with his plight when he finds himself shanghaied into service on a boat because he was responsible for most of his equally reluctant shipmates being there as well. More important than this though, is the fact that it just isn't that funny, with too many gags running for far too long and therefore outliving the laughs they originally generate. There's also a curious lapse in spatial awareness when Chaplin is seen to exit left from one room then enter left into the next room. Given Chaplin's reputation for perfection, this might be down to the print I saw being made up of two prints spliced together with one unintentionally reversed. Or maybe I just imagined the whole thing – it was a couple of weeks ago…

While the Keystone pictures made Charlie Chaplin a star, the Essanays made him world famous. With such success comes great confidence. Shanghaied is a real confidence picture.

If you look at the first series of real gags, when Charlie is hitting his soon-to-be crewmates over the head one after the other, the whole thing is done in a single shot. And it is essentially just the same gag repeated several times. The comedy actually lies in the fact that we know exactly what is going to happen, we just don't know exactly when it will happen and how each man will react. For the final mallet blow, the moment leading up to it is stretched out as long as possible for maximum funniness. To be able to pull off a sequence like this, you need to have faith in your own ability to make people laugh, and this is something Chaplin now had.

Aiding and abetting Charlie are the usual rogues' gallery of supporting players. Among the notables here are Leo White, appearing without his usual "Frenchman" get-up, but still very funny, and John Rand as the ship's cook. This was Rand's second picture with Chaplin, and the way he brilliantly plays off the tramp without stealing the scene would earn him a long-term placement in the comic's stock company.

In fact throughout this picture, it is the other performers who actually do the most, while Charlie appears as a fairly insignificant figure amongst it all. And yet he always remains centre of attention. For example in the scene where he directs the crane which has inadvertently hooked the rest of the crew, he is orchestrating the chaos. To be able to pull this off again requires not only skill but overriding confidence in that skill.

And so, we come to the all important statistic – Number of kicks up the arse: 17(!) (3 for, 9 against and 5 other)