Carlitos no Estúdio

Charlie has various misadventures while working in the property department of a movie studio. For some reason, this film turned out to be the last of Chaplin's twelve Mutual shorts that I saw. I really looked forward to seeing it, thinking that Charlie would make the most of the studio location.

Sadly, if only because of my sense of anticipation, I was a bit disappointed. I didn't find it as funny as the bulk of the other Mutual shorts. Despite a location rich in potential, I found the funniest moments in this film to be some of the smallest – like Charlie trying to steal bites from Albert Austin's lunch. Still, the film retains interest as a behind the screen view of motion picture production circa 1916. (A superior and more concise view of the world of producing silent films can be found in 'Singing in the Rain' as Gene Kelly walks through a silent studio with the head of the studio.) To me, the most interesting thing about this film is Chaplin's hostile attitude toward the striking union workers. If he had made this film later in his career, the radical unionists might have been the good guys!

Charlie Chaplin sometimes repeated himself when it came to ideas for his comedy shorts, but only when his skill and technique had improved significantly in the meantime. Behind the Screen treads similar ground to Dough and Dynamite (made at Keystone) and His New Job (made at Essanay), being a comical expose on the film-making process itself, but it demonstrates all the development his style had made since those older pictures.

One major difference is the audacity and satiric bite of Chaplin's comedy by this point. Unlike the earlier examples, Behind the Screen bases most of its jokes on the artificiality of cinema, with "marble" pillars being shifted by hand, an "invisible" trapdoor that causes mayhem, and eventually the dramatic department having its dignity invaded by errant custard pies from a comedy set. He also has a sly dig at pompous directors and lazy stagehands. All this from an era before the majority of people in the audience wouldn't have really known exactly what went on behind the cameras. Still there is enough broad slapstick here to entertain the viewers who don't get the in-jokes.

Chaplin's management of the comedy is also now incredibly refined and to-the-point. In the earliest scenes, he shows how he can make himself the centre of attention without necessarily being in the foreground. Whilst everyone else on the set stays fairly still, Charlie bustles about all over the place leaving chaos in his wake. It's funnier this way because we see the little tramp upsetting the order of his environment.

The comedian had by now also accumulated a regular crew of supporting players – comic actors who were more buffoonish and ridiculous than funny in their own right, thus providing suitable antagonists for the little tramp. Eric Campbell is as usual the burly bully – the tyrant of a small pond who it is satisfying to see knocked down. Henry Bergman, in only his second of what would be many appearances with Chaplin is the perfect awkward fat man. He must have been a real find, and Charlie seems to take every opportunity to knock him down to get that undignified and helpless flailing of arms and legs that Bergman was the master of. And of course he now has Edna Purviance – by now often the only one allowed to be a completely straight actress. Her features are too feminine to be a convincing tomboy, but at least she gets the chance to be involved in some of the comedic action this time round.

Which leaves me only to give out the all-important statistic –

Number of kicks up the arse: 7 (5 for, 2 against)

"Behind the Screen" is an excellent Charlie Chaplin short feature, with plenty of good slapstick and much more. The setting, with Charlie working as a hired hand in a movie-making operation, lends itself to a lot of good comedy, and there are plenty of standard gags plus a lot of material that creatively uses the props and situations of the setting. It also works very well as a self-satire of the industry (as suggested by the title), making some subtle and other not so subtle points. Finally, there is some nice interplay between Charlie's character and his superiors, especially his burly, brutish immediate supervisor, played by Eric Campbell, an amusing actor who was one of Chaplin's best supporting players.

Most of these earlier Chaplin films (referring to 1914-1916, the years when he made the majority of his short features, making ten or more each year) do not get very high ratings. It's true that some of them are mostly routine slapstick, but there are also a few gems like this one that combine slapstick with substance. Most of the movies from these years can be rather hard to watch, because the film often survives in poor condition, and so it's understandable that even the best ones might not always stand out as clearly from the rest. But this one is a fine film, and definitely recommended for Chaplin fans.

David is an assistant to stagehand Goliath in a movie studio. A young woman wanting to be an actress sneaks into the studio dressed as a boy but David discovers her. However he has enough problems with a lazy boss and an aptitude for causing trouble.

I suggest that this short has a plot but in reality the whole girl disguised as boy thing just appears to be in there to allow Chaplin to get a sneaking kiss from Purviance! However what is in the film is plenty of very funny routines including a trap door, a falling pillar and the traditional custard pie fight. These are all very funny and well designed. In fact at the time of production Chaplin took so long over each scene that Mutual Films had to apologise to it's exhibiters for the delay in release.

Chaplin himself is good as the put upon little man who gets up to mischief and the rest are basically fall guys who overact really well as you need to do in a short. Like I said, why Purviance was in this for is anyone's guess – contractual reasons? Chaplin's choice?

Despite this it is very funny with lots of enjoyable set-ups in a short time. Only the supposed romantic sub plot spoils thing slightly.

Behind the Screen stars Charlie Chaplin as a stagehand on a movie set. Chaplin is overworked and under-appreciated and his boss (Eric Campbell) spends most of the time asleep, leaving Chaplin to do the heavy lifting. Meanwhile a young woman (Edna Purviance) is trying to get her big break as an actress but is turned down so dresses up as a male stagehand in order to have at least some involvement in the movies. At the same time the fellow stagehands go on strike for being woken up by a studio boss and plot their revenge… This isn't one of the funniest Mutual shorts but it certainly has one of the better plots. It's multi layered and features side plot as well as the main narrative. It is also an opportunity to see behind the scenes of an early movie set in much the same way as His New Job, Chaplin's first film for Essanay a year earlier. What the film is most famous for now though is its forthright joke about homosexuality, a subject which was barely mentioned in cinema for another fifty years.

The scene in question comes late on when Chaplin discovers that the new stagehand is actually a woman. In a cute scene, Chaplin sneaks a couple of pecks on the lips. The start of a romantic relationship is interrupted though by the appearance of Eric Campbell who not knowing Edna Purviance is a woman, believes the two hands to be gay men. He starts prancing around in an effeminate way which today feels quite offensive. The fact that homosexuality was even mentioned though, no matter how insignificantly, was very bold. The same scene also features probably the defining image of the film, Chaplin's and Purviance's faces squished together, looking forward towards the camera, Chaplin with a trademark cheeky grin.

In terms of comedy, the film is a little short. There are of course funny moments which include a use of a trap door and a pie throwing finale. For me the funniest scene came when the stagehands were eating lunch. Chaplin was sat next to a man eating onions and to escape the smell put on a knights helmet, lifting the visor briefly to stuff bread into his mouth. During the same meal Chaplin tries to steal the meat which the same man is eating and when discovered, pretends to be a begging dog. There is plenty of slapstick to be found here also with large props producing most of the laughs. One fantastic act sees Chaplin pick up about eleven chairs and sling each one over his arm, giving him the appearance of a hedgehog or porcupine. This isn't enough for the poor stagehand as in his other arm he also carries a prop piano. It's very clever and looks incredibly difficult. The scene felt familiar to me but I don't know if that's because Chaplin repeated the stunt for a later film or because I've seen that clip before.

One interesting thing about Behind the Screen is getting a glimpse of an old movie set. A surprising aspect of this is finding two separate productions sharing the same stage. As noise made little difference to what the final picture looked like it was possible to have multiple movies being filmed in close proximity. Here Chaplin works on a set of what appears to be a medieval palace which is right next to a farcical comedy set in a police station. As you can probably guess, Chaplin ends up interrupting both at various times before completely destroying both towards the end. The final shot itself is also surprising in its violence. Although no blood, body parts or death was seen, it was still not what I was expecting to end a short comedy.

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