Charlot artiste peintre

This early Charlie Chaplin short feature is mildly amusing, with a small touch of humanity. Charlie is an artist who loses his girl to a rich man who came to have his portrait painted. Then, in a bar, Charlie bemoans what has happened. There isn't too much comedy, just a few small laughs. Charlie does make us sympathize a little with the artist. It's worth watching once for anyone who likes Chaplin (as is almost anything that he did), but it's not up to the standard of most of his films.

Let's be honest, 'The Face on the Barroom Floor' is not much of a comedy. That doesn't necessarily mean that it is a bad movie. No! It is more a tragic story with some nice visual gags. It stands above most of The Keystone's farcical slapsticks but not only because it is so different. Here we can see Chaplin shine without relying too much on heavy slapstick. The movie is based on the poem by Hugh Antoine d'Arcy 'The Face Upon the Barroom Floor', which I also recommend reading. The movie follows the story from the poem quite accurately. Of course, there are many different cuts out there and some of them are quite botched up so the story is disfigured and some scenes don't make any sense.

The low score here, in IMDb, is probably due to the fact, that people expected the usual early Chaplin farce, but instead, they got rather a thoughtful movie without any raunchy slapstick.

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 than 'The Face on the Barroom Floor', still made very early on in his career where he was still finding his feet and not fully formed what he became famous for. 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. 'The Face on the Barroom Floor' is a long way from a career high, but has a lot of nice things about it and is to me one of the better efforts in the 1914 Keystone batch.

'The Face on the Barroom Floor' is not as hilarious, charming or touching as his later work and some other shorts in the same period. The story is flimsy and the production values not as audacious. Occasionally, things feel a little scrappy and confused and the more satirical elements are not quite sharp enough.

For someone who was still relatively new to the film industry and had literally just moved on from their stage background, 'The Face on the Barroom Floor' is not bad at all and there are flashes of his distinctive style, meaning that he was showing signs of evolving.

While not audacious, the film hardly looks ugly, is more than competently directed and is appealingly played. Chaplin looks comfortable for so early on and shows his stage expertise while opening it up that it doesn't become stagy or repetitive shtick. He plays it straight too and it is effective.

Although the humour, charm and emotion was done even better and became more refined later, 'The Face on the Barroom Floor' is humorous, sweet and easy to like. It is one of Chaplin's earliest attempts at pathos, and it doesn't get too sappy, while not inducing sobs some may find themselves misty-eyed. It moves quickly and doesn't feel too long or short.

Overall, pretty decent. 6/10 Bethany Cox

A very amusing burlesque on the famous poem that has been recited so many times. The poem itself is altered in places and the action is entirely of the low comedy sort. Chas. Chaplin wins new laurels in the leading part. This is bound to please. - The Moving Picture World, August 29, 1914

Charles Chaplin was a genius, a master, a remarkable actor, an outstanding director and a legendary person. I watched all of his movies and read his autobiography and there's no need to say how much I admire this man - he will always be my number one actor and director of all times. Period.

Charlie started out his career very early and by the age of twelve already had an experience many grown-ups would be jealous of. So when the opportunity arose for him to make it big he took it and came to America in the early 1910s when the silent cinema was already blossoming. Charlie signed a contract with Mack Sennett's Keystone who produced farce and slapstick comedies and the rest is history; many of his early movies I dislike on the basis of them being just too silly, one-dimensional, at times unfunny and lacking that real "Chaplin" feel that he got famous for later. Everyone should start someplace and any place is a good start as long as you've got patience and enough talent to carry on.

The earliest of his movies that I consider a masterpiece is "The face on the barroom floor" (1914). Charlie had already a couple of dozen movies under his belt before this one came along; it still was a farce comedy but what differed this one from the rest was the presence of the soul in it. The movie was based on the poem of the same name and told a story of a broken-down person who fell in love but was left for somebody else. The intertitles in the movie are experts from the poem and Charlie brings it to life masterfully with his performance balancing between slapstick and drama the way only he could do it - brilliantly. "The face on the barroom floor" is only 11 minutes long but it showed all of Charlie's potential and talent to the world and has become his first of many successes in the world in cinema.