Charlot à la plage

This is a quick-moving farce, with Charlie getting involved in an altercation at the shore right off the bat. After he and his opponent (Billy Armstrong) agree to end hostilities, they get some ice cream, then start fighting again over who is going to pay for it (that's Snub Pollard behind the counter). Another man (Bud Jamison) gets hit with ice cream in the crossfire and more fisticuffs ensue. Meanwhile, Charlie flirts with Jamison's wife (Edna Purviance). Later, he flirts with Armstrong's wife (Margie Reiger).

Fun to watch, this movie is (thankfully) shorter and more to the point than some of Chaplin's other efforts.

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.

From his Essanay period after leaving Keystone, 'By the Sea' is not one of his very best or even among the best of this particular period. It shows a noticeable step up in quality though from his Keystone period, where he was still evolving and in the infancy of his long career, from 1914, The Essanay period is something of Chaplin's adolescence period where his style had been found and starting to settle. Something that can be seen in the more than worthwhile 'By the Sea'.

'By the Sea' is not one of his all-time funniest or most memorable, other efforts also have more pathos and a balance of that and the comedy. The story is still a little flimsy, there are times where it struggles to sustain the short length, and could have had more variety and less more of the same repeition.

On the other hand, 'By the Sea' looks pretty good, not incredible but it was obvious that Chaplin was taking more time with his work (even when deadlines were still tight) and not churning out as many countless shorts in the same year of very variable success like he did with Keystone. Appreciate the importance of his Keystone period and there is some good stuff he did there, but the more mature and careful quality seen here and later on is obvious.

While not one of his funniest or original, 'By the Sea' is still very entertaining with some clever, entertaining and well-timed slapstick. It moves quickly and there is no dullness in sight.

Chaplin directs more than competently, if not quite cinematic genius standard yet. He also, as usual, gives an amusing and expressive performance and at clear ease with the physicality of the role. The supporting cast acquit themselves well.

Just as Chaplin was starting to broaden his films with more structure and storyline in works such as A Jitney Elopement and The Tramp, he appears to have a taken a small step backwards. By the Sea is perhaps the last of his films to hark back to the simple frolics of his days at Keystone.

While it is fairly simplistic in its arrangement of gags, By the Sea does at least show Chaplin's well-developed use of space. Rather than simply stepping into the frame, the little tramp approaches the camera as he strolls along the street, giving his character presence in what was by now his trademark entrance. When he and the straw hat man begin tussling, they start framed quite close to the camera, but Chaplin opens out the space as things become more exaggerated, giving the two men all that room on the beach to run around in without breaking the shot. Then, when the other man begins to throttle Charlie, he brings him forward – a much smoother manoeuvre than actually cutting to a closer shot. There are still one or two problems – for example when the tramp flirts with Edna, Miss Purviance is shown in profile, and the match up of shots is a bit awkward. By the time he was at Mutual studios Chaplin would have learnt to set the angles a bit better to make this kind of shot more natural.

Charlie's sparring partner here is Billy Armstrong, who was something of a replacement for the scene-stealing Ben Turpin, Chaplin's co-star in his first three Essanay pictures. Armstrong is very good, fulfilling his roll as a Chaplin-counterfoil by, basically, falling over funnily. But Chaplin makes the same mistake as he did with Turpin, giving him too large a part so that the pair of them become almost a double-act. More than anything else, it is this tendency towards ensemble comedy that makes By the Sea look like a relic of the Keystone era. This was territory Chaplin did not revisit, and from now on he would concentrate on building up and defining his little tramp character.

And so, we come to the all-important statistic – Number of kicks up the arse: 3 (2 for, 1 against)

"By The Sea" is one of Charlie Chaplin's many short films, consisting mostly of simple slapstick comedy. In it, Charlie's tramp character visits the sea-side and gets involved in a series of mishaps with other vacationers.

Most of the comic elements are fairly routine: banana peels, melting ice cream, unstable park benches, and so forth. Chaplin does this kind of humor as well as anyone, so there are a couple of good laughs, but in this movie there is not any of the depth that he would display in his more memorable films.

This is a pretty routine short for Chaplin, but that's still not too bad by most standards.

For me this is one of the few Chaplin Essanay movies that contain any real laugh-out-loud moments - although they do come fairly early in the film, and nothing else in it compares to these two sequences. The first is the scene in which Chaplin and another man (Billy Armstrong) get their hats, which are attached to them by pieces of string, entwined and then proceed to repeatedly knock each other over as they try to disentangle themselves. The second is the moment in which Chaplin appears to be staring intently at something in the sand in order to get his adversary to lower his head enough to grasp it in a headlock. Chaplin's regular retinue – Purviance, Jamison, McGuire, etc – are all present in this one and offer solid support.