Those Love Pangs

This is pretty poor material, in keeping with most of Chaplin's work during his Keystone days. His rival here is Chester Conklin, a walrus-moustached comic who has a lot more luck with the ladies than Charlie's tramp which means that Chaplin must resort to underhanded tactics in order to get his own back.

This is Chaplin's tramp when he was still the unfinished article - in fact, he had hardly begun to be moulded into a character by Chaplin - and he's an unlikeable, mean-spirited boor. It's quite obvious that everybody is making it up as they go along, which means that many scenes go on too long and conclude without a punchline. Unless you're a major fan of Chaplin I wouldn't bother seeking this one out.

I've seen quite a few Chaplin shorts from early in his career and I've noticed that his early stuff (done for Keystone Studios) is pretty dreadful stuff. Unlike his wonderful full-length films from the 20s and 30s, the films from 1914-1915 are incredibly poorly made--having no script but only vague instructions from the director. In most cases, the films had almost no plot and degenerated to people punching and kicking each other.

This film has a modest amount of plot, but really the film can be summed up as "punching, slapping and bonking on the head while chasing women". This isn't exactly deep or rewarding to watch as a result. My advice is try watching a later Chaplin short or one of his full-length films.

In The Rival Mashers, Chaplin is in full Tramp form and with plenty of kicking and punching and yanking people around with his cane, although I have to say that there are at least a few things that make this film stand out among the huge number that he was churning out for Keystone in 1914. First of all, it contains what has to be Charlie's most stylish cigarette lighting ever, it's classic. He oozes hilarious confidence, he's almost like a mobster. Also, it is one of the few films where a woman passes by him and stops to check him out, rather than the other way around.

I also found it interesting that Chester Conklin seems to be trying to copy Charlie's outfit. He appears in pants which are wildly too big for him and hang limply off his hips, an outrageously tiny shirt and tie and an ill-fitting jacket, a little too similar to Chaplin's classic outfit not to notice. It should be noted, however, that Conklin ultimately performed in nearly 300 films, almost four times as many as Chaplin, but there is clearly no question about who was the more talented filmmaker and/or actor.

At any rate, The Rival Mashers, also known as Those Love Pangs (this was still back when all of Chaplin's films had a whole list of different names, mostly due to callous re-editing and re-releasing), is one of his lesser man-woman-cop-in-the-park comedies, as very little happens other than a few mildly amusing gags and a few appearances of what would become Chaplin's unmistakable style. Expectations were much lower back then for these films (as they should remain today when watching them), but Chaplin had done much better before.

During his first year in the movies Charlie Chaplin appeared in some thirty-five films at Mack Sennett's Keystone Studio, usually in the leading role. Most of these were single reel comedies lasting about 10 minutes apiece, but there were a number of two-reel shorts along the way as well as one feature film under Sennett's direction, Tillie's Punctured Romance, in which Chaplin played the villain. Chaplin's apprenticeship for Sennett taught him the fundamentals of film-making, but some of these comedies don't hold up terribly well today. Of course if you're a Chaplin buff even his weakest films are of interest, but the casual viewer who stumbles across the Keystones looking for old-time movie chuckles may be disappointed, especially if viewing them on a TV screen. The films come to life with an audience, but Chaplin seems to lose part of his essence when seen on video.

Those Love Pangs, a one-reel short which co-stars Charlie with Chester Conklin, is neither the best nor the worst of the Keystone series. Like most of them it looks improvised from scene to scene, and the humor is pretty crude, but it also has a handful of moments in which we can see Chaplin's special talent emerging. The story is based loosely on Charlie's rivalry with Chester over various women, and begins with a low comedy routine involving the guys alternately sticking each other in the butt with a fork through a curtain. Even here Charlie finds an unexpected gag: when Chester confronts him, Charlie assumes an innocent expression as he holds the fork to his teeth and tries to pass it off as a "mouth-harp." This is followed by more physical comedy between the guys, rather well choreographed, and not as frenzied as the grappling found in some of the other Keystones.

Once they leave their boarding house Charlie & Chester encounter two attractive young women in a nearby park, a brunette and a blonde. In his book The Chaplin Encyclopedia author Glenn Mitchell wonders if it's being suggested here that the ladies are prostitutes; certainly there are clues pointing in that direction. My interpretation is that Charlie initially assumes the brunette is a prostitute (when she flirts with him, he checks his money supply), but that he's mistaken. When her boyfriend arrives and finds them together, and asks who Charlie is, the girl defends herself by indicating something like 'I don't know this guy, and he's annoying me.' The boyfriend is hostile towards Charlie thereafter. The blonde woman, however, does seem to be a hooker, and to be "Chester's girl" at that, as demonstrated by her slavish behavior towards him. In their first scene together she excitedly greets him by name, lavishes him with affection, and even kneels before him. And then-- Ah-Ha! --she reaches into her shoe, takes out a fat wad of bills, and hands it over. Their relationship is clear.

Charlie, meanwhile, has a mildly comic scene with a policeman and then engages in more knockabout with Chester and the brunette's boyfriend. He winds up with both of the ladies in a nearby cinema. There we're treated to a nice shot of Charlie sitting between the two woman, one under each arm, as he blissfully kicks his feet in the air. But the bliss can't last forever, for soon his two rivals show up and actually hurl him through the movie screen! Those Love Pangs is not one of Chaplin's finest achievements, just another one-reel comedy he cranked out while learning his craft, but there are a few funny bits. For some viewers the most interesting element here may be the issue of how the two ladies earn a living.

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 'Those Love Pangs', 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. 'Those Love Pangs' is a long way from a career high (nor is it a misfire), but has good efforts and one of the average/middling efforts in the 1914 Keystone batch.

'Those Love Pangs' 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, the content is not particularly inspired and some of it is on the repetitive side.

For someone who was still relatively new to the film industry and had literally just moved on from their stage background, 'Those Love Pangs' 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 and shows his stage expertise while opening it up that it doesn't become stagy.

Although the humour, charm and emotion was done even better and became more refined later, 'Those Love Pangs' is amusing and hard to dislike. It moves quickly and doesn't feel too long or short.

Overall, average but far from a bad effort. 5/10 Bethany Cox