Idle Eyes

My first encounter with Ben Turpin was as Charlie Chaplin's fellow reveler in "A Night Out" (1915). I liked Chaplin as a drunk, and Turpin was in a lot of ways his equal. Thirteen years later, a 59-year-old Turpin turns up, with gray at the temples, in "Idle Eyes," from Weiss Brothers Artclass. If you're a fan of short silent Comedy – and I'm not talking "oh, Chaplin, pathos, lesser effort, ladeda" – you should enjoy this one.

Ben Turpin is Benjamin Turps, a vagrant who desperately wants food. A nurse passes in a park pulling a crib with a three-year-old Billy Barty sitting with a lot of fruit. Ben coaxes the child to throw the fruit back to him, and it all turned out to be rubber… except for the banana he gives to a teenager to have a laugh.

Later, while eating, he flirts with the nurse while the baby is tossing food at her. She thinks it is Ben. Everyone thinks Ben has done something, and everyone chases Ben. But Ben needs food. And money.

After someone who looks a lot like Mack Sennett refuses to help a driver who is stuck in the mud, Ben is willing to take the dollar and help him out. Mack Sennett honks his truck horn a few times to distract, laughs, and then disappears from the film. Ben screws it up and is not paid, so he lobs a brick at the man's car, breaking it. A police officer walks over to the man; they notice in the paper that Ben was a scion of wealth who disappeared as a baby. There is a reward for his discovery, so the policeman suggests that they catch him and split it.

Ben gets a job in a beauty parlor, shrinks a dog, gets involved a flinging goop, and convinces a homely woman that he's made her beautiful Everyone is angry at Ben, everyone chases Ben, and they all wind up in the pond. (The pond resembles Mack Sennett's pond, the one into which everyone ended up at the finale of Chaplin's Park shorts for Keystone.) Eventually, the homely woman is seated on a bench. She tells him that with his money and her beauty, they can be great. Ben jumps in the pound. The End.

Now, this description is far from complete, but I went through it to give you an idea of the manic nature of this short. So many things happen to the man in such a short space of time, so many plots converge, all for the purpose of putting Ben Turpin in Charlie Chaplin's pond in 1928. In that year, Chaplin was filming "The Circus," and there are miles between the two. Perhaps it was clinging to a bygone era, which is irrelevant at this point, as both eras have long since gone by. If I had to compare it to anything, it might be a Harold Lloyd short with Snub Pollard from 1919. Of course, without Harold Lloyd. If these films make you laugh, though, this one will.

Cross-eyed comic Ben Turpin finds himself upstaged by a toddler in this second-string comedy. A couple of funny moments, but mostly comprised of stuff you've seen a thousand times before.

Had this film been made a decade earlier, I would have scored it higher. That's because this sort of semi-plot less film would have worked better during the glory days of the Mack Sennett's studio. At Keystone, slapstick was king--and lowbrow laughs like tossing mud or face cream was popular. But by 1928, humor was more sophisticated--and more story-driven.

The film begins with Ben Turpin looking for some food. He's a hobo and is resorting to trying to steal food from a baby. That 'baby' is actually four year-old midget, Billy Barty. After spending some time in the park mooching, the film changes locales--to a beauty salon. Ben's now working there and once again, there isn't a lot of plot. And, eventually it degenerates to everyone throwing globs of face cream and Ben runs out the door. Then, he's chased by folks who think he's a missing heir to a fortune. As you can see, no real theme in this one--just Ben bouncing about and a few decent gags and some very old ones as well.

My advice is after seeing this one, see some of Laurel & Hardy's silents from the same era--they are light-years apart in quality.