Charlot à l'hôtel

Mabel's Strange Predicament is the second film in which Charlie Chaplin dresses in costume as The Little Tramp (the first being Kid Auto Races in Venice). In here, he's just a drunk who's infatuated with the title character played by Ms. Normand. She's a lady who has a dog that she takes with her to the hotel room where, after dressing in her pajamas, gets locked out of with dog still inside. After Charlie chases her upstairs, she goes to another room where an elderly man lives and hides under his bed. Also mixed up in this are her suitor and the elderly man's wife. Most of the highlights are from Mabel's under-bed hiding and the slapstick that ensues when she's found out as well as some of Chaplin's falls from either being hit or just simply staggering. Should be amusing enough for fans of early silent comedy and the two stars especially very curious Chaplin enthusiasts.

A drunken Tramp (Charles Chaplin) causes havoc in a high class hotel lobby. Mabel and her dog cause too much noise for her neighbor who complain to the desk. Mabel gets accidentally locked out of her room in her sleepwear. To her embarrassment, the drunken Tramp tries to help.

This is the first time Chaplin constructed and played the Tramp. It's a work in progress and it's definitely not the Tramp that we're all familiar with. He's drunk and looks a bit ugly. The story doesn't make sense. A guy like that would either be kicked out or forced to sleep it off in his own room. It's interesting to see his first attempt. He shows off his physical humor. It's cinematic history. It's also not that good but one can see the goodness within it.

Walt Disney stated that his prime inspiration for creating Mickey Mouse was Chaplin's Tramp character. However, the Mickey seen in 'Plane Crazy (1928)' and 'Steamboat Willie (1928)' bears little resemblance to the gallant hopeless-romantic whom Chaplin made famous in 'The Kid (1921)' and other classic features. Instead, the early "evil" Mickey Mouse probably took a few leaves from the book of Chaplin's early "evil" tramp, who is here portrayed as a drunken scumbag who tries to take advantage of a pajama-clad Mabel Normand. 'Mabel's Strange Predicament (1914)' was, in fact, the birth of Chaplin's Little Tramp character, though 'Kid Auto Races at Venice (1914)' was released two days earlier. As the title suggests, the star of the film is actually Normand, who was a leading comedienne in her day, and this was the first film in a series of collaborations for the pair.

In a hotel lobby, an intoxicated tramp sloppily flirts with Mabel, somehow deciding that yanking on her dog's tail is a surefire way of attracting the girl's attention. Mabel huffily storms off to her room, but later runs into Chaplin in the hallway, after having locked herself out of her room wearing only pajamas. What follows is an amusing farce that resembles something the Marx Brothers would have cooked up, as Mabel evades the Tramp by taking cover under the bed of another man, whose wife arrives home and comes to the natural conclusion. This isn't high-class comedy, but Chaplin is clearly the shining light of the film: he staggers drunkenly from room to room, with an exasperated sneer beneath his moustache, and every time he falls down it is actually uproariously funny. Don't ask me how he did it, but nobody (except maybe Buster Keaton) could ever take a tumble like Chaplin could.

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 in acting than 'Mabel's Strange Predicament', which is not also one of his and Mabel's better collaborations. 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 Strange Predicament' is a long way from a career high, but does have historical significance for obvious reasons.

'Mabel's Strange Predicament' is not as hilarious, charming or touching as his later work and a good deal of other shorts in the same period. The story is flimsy and the production values not as audacious. The comedy, though more frequent and knockabout, is amusing really at best and not enough to be hilarious.

For someone who was new to the film industry and had literally just moved on from their stage background, 'Mabel's Strange Predicament' 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, though his style and Tramp character was still evolving and not properly found or settled yet (the promise is big though), and shows his stage expertise while opening it up that it doesn't become stagy or repetitive shtick. Mabel's acting and directing contribution is more than competent and she holds her own.

Although the humour, charm and emotion was done better and became more refined later, 'Mabel's Strange Predicament' does have moments where it is very humorous, sweet and easy to like, though the emotion is not quite there. It moves quickly and doesn't feel too long or short.

In conclusion, interesting and worthwhile but not one that makes one leap out of their chair. 6/10 Bethany Cox

While it's true that not all of Chaplin's short films are as stunningly brilliant as so many of the films for which he later became famous, it is also true that there is a distinct difference in quality between the early films in which he acted as well as directed, and those in which he was directed as an actor by someone else. Mabel's Strange Predicament is one of the ones in which he only acted; he was directed by Mabel Normand, with whom he did not have the most friendly relationship when the film was made.

The first unusual thing about this film is that it is in French – at least, the film is intertitled in French. Charlie plays the part of a drunken man at a hotel who comes across Mabel in an upstairs hallway, after having locked herself out of her room in her pajamas while chasing after a ball with which she was playing with her dog. When Charlie arrives and the two of them are embarrassed and amused, it seems that this is the strange predicament to which the title refers, but then Charlie chases her down the hall, and she ultimately winds up hiding from his drunken, amorous advances under the bed in a neighbor's room across the hall.

There is a lot of confusing action in Mabel's Strange Predicament, such as the well dressed man who bears a striking resemblance to Marlon Brando (Marlon Brando 1972, not Marlon Brando 2001) who comes into the room and seems exceedingly upset about Mabel and her dog under the bed (wasn't the dog locked in the room across the hall?), as well as the film's conclusion, which consisted of a huge amount of confusion and anger and fighting in the hallway.

Clearly, there is room for plenty of Chaplin's characteristic slapstick comedy with this type of film. The film starts off with him downstairs falling over various chairs and getting into brief brawls with the waiters, and there are also things like the scene where he is chasing Mabel down the hallway and accidentally winds up kissing a man after she evades him. Charlie Chaplin's and Mabel Normand's volatile relationship seems to have played a role in Charlie's character in this film, because he is little more than a drunk who gets out of hand and causes a lot of trouble. He is a mere nuisance on the restaurant level of the hotel, and at the end, his character has the grand exit of staggering off down the hallway, seemingly too drunk to even realize what is going on. In this way, this is a disappointment for Chaplin fans, but it is a curiosity piece to see what results when he works under a different, and far less talented, director.