Charlot marquis

Cruel, Cruel Love (1914)

*** (out of 4)

Charles Chaplin short from the Keystone Studios has him playing a broken man who decides to kill himself after his girlfriend breaks up with him. Minutes after taking the poison he receives a letter from her saying she wants him back. This is an early Chaplin film so naturally he hadn't perfected his skill as a comedian but he turns in an interesting performance here. While the film isn't fall down hilarious it does offer up enough good scenes to make it worth viewing. One of the better scenes in the film has Chaplin seeing his future with suicide and going to Hell where two devil keep messes with him in the flames. Another nice sequence has Chaplin trying to fight the doctors trying to save him at the end of the film. Edgar Kennedy has a brief role as the butler.

Chaplin famously churned out an enormous number of short comedies for Keystone during his first year in the film-making business, and while the majority of them are pretty sad comparisons to the later films that he would become famous for, Cruel, Cruel Love definitely ranks as one of the less memorable. A lot of people complain about these early comedies, no doubt because Chaplin is known as one of the greatest filmmakers of all time and yet the films he made in 1914-1915 are most definitely not the greatest films of all time, but this one gives a clear look at what a lot of people are turned off by.

Chaplin does not play the tramp, but some sort of bizarre jerk with a hideous mustache and what appears to be an unenviable future. Like in many of Chaplin's early comedies, this one devolves into a widespread kicking and punching match by the end of the film. This has been going on for months by this point, and I believe that Chaplin was just giving his audience what they wanted at the time, but this is the first time that I have gotten the feeling that he is just running out of ideas.

I think Chaplin may have been progressing past what he would later refer to as the good old days when films could just be slapped together in a park, and so he tried to do something different, try on a slightly different characterization for a while, but unfortunately it just doesn't work. The film as a whole comes off as a bit of a disjointed mess, Chaplin makes some faces that I could have gone the rest of my life without ever having seen, and his heart is clearly not in it. Just his feet and his fists.

In 1914, Charlie Chaplin began making pictures. These were made for Mack Sennett (also known as "Keystone Studios") and were literally churned out in very rapid succession. The short comedies had very little structure and were completely ad libbed. As a result, the films, though popular in their day, were just awful by today's standards. Many of them bear a strong similarity to home movies featuring obnoxious relatives mugging for the camera. Many others show the characters wander in front of the camera and do pretty much nothing. And, regardless of the outcome, Keystone sent them straight to theaters. My assumption is that all movies at this time must have been pretty bad, as the Keystone films with Chaplin were very successful.

The Charlie Chaplin we know and love today only began to evolve later in Chaplin's career with Keystone. By 1915, he signed a new lucrative contract with Essenay Studios and the films improved dramatically with Chaplin as director. However, at times these films were still very rough and not especially memorable. No, Chaplin as the cute Little Tramp was still evolving. In 1916, when he switched to Mutual Studios, his films once again improved and he became the more recognizable nice guy--in many of the previous films he was just a jerk (either getting drunk a lot, beating up women, provoking fights with innocent people, etc.). The final evolution of his Little Tramp to classic status occurred in the 1920s as a result of his full-length films.

This short features Chaplin but not as the Little Tramp--his mustache is different and he looks a little more like a dandy. Charlie has a girlfriend, but she catches him with the maid so she breaks up with him. He is so despondent that he takes what he thinks is poison--at which time he goes through the most over-acted death scene in history while some annoying guy laughs hysterically again and again and again and again and again because the poison is actually just water. The ambulance arrives and tell him he's fine and his ex-girlfriend runs back and professes her love. This short DOES have a bit more coherence and plot than most early Chaplin shorts from Keystone, so it merits a 3. Only a 3 because it is terribly over-done and not especially funny.

Cruel Cruel Love might be one of Chaplin's funniest Keystone comedies, even though he doesn't play The Tramp! Instead, he plays a variation of the character he played in his debut, Making a Living -- or at least he wears the same costume.

This film lets Chaplin go completely crazy, hamming and mugging mericilessly. This is not the subtle or graceful Chaplin of later years. This is a manic Chaplin, and while this could well have made Cruel Cruel Love into a disaster, instead it makes this film drop-dead hilarious.

Chaplin plays a bigwig who is jilted by his girlfriend. He decides to take poison and kill himself, but his butler gives him water instead, and then laughs his head off as his boss goes through some of the strangest, most convoluted "death throes" ever seen.

This film includes some surprisingly good (for 1914) special effects - namely a dream sequence in which Chaplin hallucinates that he has gone to Hell. At one point, Chaplin actually turns the comedy into horror by adopting a rather bizarre "death face" that actually is a little disturbing to see. For a moment I thought I was watching a Lon Chaney film.

Of the first dozen or so Chaplin comedies for Keystone, this is definitely one of the best, and well worth seeking out.

Cruel, Cruel Love works almost exactly like Romeo and Juliet. Well, with a happy ending, that is.

Charlie is a Lord wanting to marry a girl, but she thinks he's cheating with the maid. Charlie is so disappointed and unhappy he tries to poison himself. When the girl finds out nothing happened between the maid and Charlie she wants him back... so Charlie is calling the medics what to do next.

When he finds out he only drank some water (well, I think that's what it is) he is kicking some butts in the end just for the sake of it.

Early Chaplin short, in which he isn't the tramp for a change, has some moments but really isn't as funny as most of his work.

5/10.