La Folle Aventure de Charlot et de Lolotte

Charles Chaplin plays The City Guy, who sees his opportunity to get rich when he meets a big-sized girl named Tillie Banks (Marie Dressler).He wants to elope with her so he could have the fortune of her father (Mack Swain).Mabel Normand plays The Other Girl, beautiful and villainous.Mack Sennett's Tillie's Punctured Romance (1914) was the first feature-length comedy.It was made in the time when Chaplin was just a new-comer in the field of comedy and was only looking for his style.Nevertheless this is a good comedy, even though it's not near Chaplin's best stuff.Other actors aren't left in Chaplin's shadow.That goes especially for Marie Dressler.She's truly funny in this movie.This movie has some great moments.For the silent movie fans this is a little treat.

What a treat that this 1914 feature-length comedy still exists. Historically important as the first feature comedy, it also boasts three great stars: Charlie Chaplin, Marie Dressler, and Mabel Normand. Directed by legendary Mack Sennett, this broad comedy was adapted from Dressler's stage hit. It's rough, with missing pieces, but enough exists to showcase the comedy talents of this trio of stars. The story is trite but Dressler and Chaplin are so funny, you forget the plot and laugh along with the mugging and pratfalls. So far as I know, Dressler and Chaplin never worked together again. What a shame. Dressler adapted to talkies (winning an Oscar for Min and Bill) so much better than Chaplin did. Normand died before the advent of talkies. Anyway, certainly worth a look. Co-stars Chester Conklin, Charles Murray, Minta Durfee, Edgar Kennedy, Charley Chase, Mack Swain, and possibly Milton Berle as the newsboy. Berle always said he played it. Edna Purviance may be the leading lady in the film Chaplin and Normand go to see. I love this film.

A city con-man leaves for the country where he meets a young country girl. In order to get her father's money, he proposes to her and they run off to the city with the money. Once there he abandons her for his own love, Mabel and Tillie is locked up for vagrancy. However one all to her millionaire Uncle and she's free. The con-man is happy until he reads Tillie's Uncle has been killed in a climbing accident and that Tillie is set to inherit the lot. He goes back to her but things are never that simple in love and money.

Best known for being the first ever full length comedy feature made and also for setting Chaplin on his way to greater things, this is a well plotting amusing comedy. Based on a Broadway who the plot stands up well and uses some nice devices (like the movie within the movie) to tell the story. The comedy is less routines than little touches added to the narrative – only the climax with the keystone cops feels like a well worked routine.

This may be it's weakness to some who expect more physical comedy from Chaplin, but he still does plenty of that as well. He is good here and it's one of the more morally bankrupt characters that I've seen him play. Dressler is good as Tillie but she is so ugly for a female lead that I assumed I must have mixed her up with the other actress. But once over the superficial things she is very good and matches Chaplin for times.

The main weakness of the film was a fault of the copy. On top of the soundtrack was a voice over that talked you through the action as if I was too stupid to work it out for myself!

Mack Sennett, head of Keystone Studios, decided to take the plunge and produce a big budgeted feature film based on the Broadway comedy "Tillie's Nightmare." He was able to entice the play's star, Marie Dressler, for at that time one of her rare movie performances (she had previously appeared in two shorts). Augmenting her would be the studio's main stars, Mabel Normand and Charlie Chaplin. Sennett would spend a hefty $50,000 ($1.2 million in today's figures) for production, an enormous departure from his studio's trademark quickie, cheap movies.

Released in December 1914, "Tillie's Punctured Romance" became an instant hit with movie audiences. Chaplin discards his Tramp outfit to play a shyster intent on swindling the father of Dressler's life savings. Normand's role as Chaplin's girlfriend adds humor to the plot.

Critics were equally admirable in their reviews of "Tillie's," with one writing, "The film's final reel is a comedic crescendo, building from a brief pie fight to mayhem caused by Tillie firing a pistol indiscriminately, culminating with a farcical chase on a pier featuring the Keystone Cops on land and sea." "Tillie's" would be one of 500 movies nominated by American Film Institute for its Best 100 All-Time Film Comedies.

"Tillie's" was cinema's first feature film comedy. On a personal level, the movie would be Chaplin's last motion picture with Keystone as well as his final movie he neither wrote nor directed in his long film career. Sennett directed "Tillie's" and co-wrote the script.

Dressler would star in three more "Tillie" movies in the next three years, all produced by different studios. She returned to the stage and vaudeville after the last "Tillie," and wouldn't return to the screen until the late 1920's, making a successful transition to sound soon after. She won the Academy Award for Best Actress in 1930 in "Min and Bill," and received a nomination in the same category two years later in "Emma."

Chaplin, seeing his star rising during his year at Keystone, wanted more money when his contract with the studio expired at the end of 1914. Sennett claimed he couldn't afford the comedian's salary demand of $1,000 per week. Essanay Film Manufacturing Company knocked on Chaplin's door and offered $1,250 per week with a $10,000 signing bonus, guaranteeing greater artistic freedom for the actor. He took the studio's offer. He headed for Chicago, the headquarters for Essanay, to begin working on his first film for the company. Yet, Chaplin later reflected emotionally he couldn't personally say farewell to his buddies he had developed friendships with at Keystone when it was time to depart. "It was a wrench leaving Keystone, for I had grown fond of Sennett and everyone there. I never said goodby, I couldn't."

For today's audience there are two things that are striking about Tillie's Punctured Romance. The first is that Charlie Chaplin does not get first billing here. He was not yet the star he would become, he was just another of Mack Sennett's comedy stars. He does not play the tramp character yet though there are some tramp like aspects in who he does play.

The second is that this is a chance to see Marie Dressler a whole lot earlier in her career than we know her from sound films. Marie was a very big vaudeville star and her character her was a whole lot like her act on stage. The homely big boned girl who seems to be born a total klutz.

There's not really much to the outrageous plot of this 83 minutes of unadulterated slapstick. It seems like every other minute someone was either tripping or being kicked in the derrière. That was the way it was with Mack Sennett comedies.

Chaplin plays a city slicker who takes Marie off the farm and to the big city. But when he gets there his eye roves towards Mabel Normand. Mabel back in the day was a full figured girl herself and a bit more attractive than Marie.

But when news of her rich uncle falling off Mount Baldy makes her an heiress, Charlie finds his passion for Marie and her money rekindling. Kind of leaves Mabel the odd girl out. And in the climax the Keystone Kops are called in after a brawl develops at a society party that Marie is throwing to introduce herself to society.

Tillie's Punctured Romance could have told the story in half the screen time it takes. There's only so much pure slapstick you can take at one time. Still it's not a bad film and it does display the talents of Chaplin, Dressler, and Normand and a host of other comedy names from the Mack Sennett studio.