Movie Night

When I see a Charley Chase film I always wonder why on earth this great comedian is forgotten today. His natural sense of timing was perfect; and he never needed to make a big fuss around a funny situation - it just came naturally. Maybe that's the reason that most people can't understand his films nowadays- they are too subtle for a today audience which is used to a noisy, clumsy comedy stile.

"Movie Night" is one of the best silent shorts I know. I don't know many other films Mr Chase appeared in - but ALL of those those few I know are among the best comedies ever made.

It is time to rediscover this gentle and subtle comedian!

Many comedians from the golden age of film made some kind of parody or spoof about the movies. Chaplin made THOSE LOVE PANGS, THE MASQUERADER and BEHIND THE SCREEN, Keaton released SHERLOCK JR., Harold Lloyd, as Lonesome Luke, filmed LUKE'S MOVIE MUDDLE and Mack Sennett released several short subjects that poked fun at the art of movie making. So it was only a matter of time before Charley Chase took a stab at this subject and in MOVIE NIGHT, he really hit the high mark. By 1929, Hollywood and the rest of the world had resigned itself to the fact that the talking motion picture was here to stay. Although he knew that his silent film making days were numbered, Charley Chase gave the world one last classic two reeler that seemed to sum up his long and wonderful career. In Movie Night, Charley uses the visual medium to "show" sound and proves, if for only a fleeting moment in the waning days of the silents, that the art that the world had come to know and understand was in no desperate need of being abandoned. His running gag about the hazards of having the hiccups is pure silent comedy, despite its fundamental roots of sound. The basic plot concerns Charley and his family going to the local movie house and enjoying the weekly show. From the preparation of leaving the house, getting in line for the tickets, finding a seat, to the final flickering image on the theater screen, this film shows any audience from any age that nothing has really changed. However, as it's Charley Chase going to the movies, anything that can happen, does happen. This silent swan song is one of the funniest parodies any clown ever made. Although he would have continued popularity in the new sound era, Charley Chase's silents, especially the two reelers from 1925 to 1929, are the best examples of this all too forgotten comic genius.

"Movie Night" is an amusing silent slapstick short from comedian Charley Chase, penned by Leo McCarey for Hal Roach's studio, about a family going to the movies. Such reflexive constructions may become quite intricate in their abstractions, such as a film with a message for the spectator outside the film delivered in a film-within-the-film to the surrogate spectator on screen. Here, however, we don't see the film that the Chase family is viewing. We only see the stage after the movie when a lottery is performed. Otherwise, we're watching our exaggerated doubles watching an (by us) unseen movie. It's a relatively simple schematic; fortunately, it's funny.

I would hate to actually watch a movie with the Chase family--Charley and his daughter's hiccuping (an interesting suggestion of sound in a "silent" film, by the way) causing havoc even before a fowl flies loose in the theatre. But, it's a fun short to watch them having a movie night by them being in the movie. The spectacle remains on screen and not outside it.

This short was one of four shorts preceding Charlie Chaplin's "The Kid" at the Silent Movie Theatre, a last-of-its-kind theatre remodeled through major investors and located on Fairfax Avenue in Hollywood, California. I should add that this movie theatre always has a highly- accomplished live pianist/organist who accompanies the shorts and features, live burleske acts and silent era trivia contests. All of this puts you in a great mood to begin with.

Live music always adds to the pleasure of a silent film. Plus the fact this theatre has its own sets of original reels of movies means the shorts are going to be close to DVD quality.

Never have I laughed as hard as I did at this memorable short.

I'm convinced that one critic's post here certainly did not see this short and probably confused it with another lesser work by Chase about the movies. The comedic timing is impeccable. His bladder-conscious little girl kicking everyone in the head as he carries her out of and back into his row inside the movie theatre is the best I've seen that shtick done. The hiccups his little girl catches ... precious and hysterical. His waistrel brother-in-law he tries to pass off as "under-12" for discounted movie tickets is funny.

I rarely give such a high score, but a 10 out of 10.