In the Park

IN THE PARK is a short, 14 minute silent comedy that comes to us courtesy of star and director Charlie Chaplin. I'm slightly ashamed to say that this is my first experience of Chaplin, and it's a generally good one, although I understand that a quickie production like this wasn't one of his best efforts.

The action is centred in and around a park where various characters interact. Chaplin is in his famous 'little tramp' persona and has a lot of fun with his props, particularly his walking stick which he uses to commit petty crime. The emphasis here is on slapstick humour and pratfalls, with characters being kicked in the backside and pushed over frequently.

It's a relatively enjoyable short effort that offers up a couple of laugh out loud scenes and plenty of wry smiles during its brief running time. My favourite character is the hot dog vendor although there's plenty of mileage in a stolen handbag too. Inevitably a policeman ends up being the butt of some of the jokes although a romancing couple are mercilessly ribbed as well. It's good, old-fashioned fun.

This short feature was apparently thrown together pretty quickly, or at least more quickly than were most of Chaplin's features at this point in his career, and it shows. "In the Park" is generally muddled, and despite a couple of good moments, overall it is rather mediocre or at best only fair.

The story, such as it is, has Chaplin wandering around in the park and getting involved in a series of scrapes with a variety of characters, including a policeman and some romantic couples. While most of it is connected together in one way or another, however implausibly, too much of the action makes little sense, and it just looks kind of clumsy. There was enough basic material to work with here, and they might have been able to make a better picture if they had taken more time on it. As it is, there are only a couple of real highlights. It's worth watching for these, but overall it's just not all that good.

Since we're most used to seeing Charlie Chaplin addressing class issues and mocking Hitler, his early work might seem low-key. "In the Park" depicts a series of antics in a city park. Funny stuff, but nothing spectacular.

IN THE PARK feature's Chaplin's tramp in a virtually plot-free romp that revolves around a couple of lovers and a pickpocket in a park filled with tramps, thieves, brawlers and vagabonds. A lot of the stuff here seems to have simply been thrown together, as if Chaplin was devising the sketches as they were filming. Sadly, it doesn't really gel, and we are left with a disjointed piece of work that distracts from the meagre laughs to be found in the tramp's exploits. Edna Purviance and Bud Jamison offer solid support as always, but there's very little of worth in this effort. In fact it's so unremarkable I'm having trouble coming up with the required ten lines of text…

The latest one-reel Charlie Chaplin release. Many of its moments are made irresistibly comic by Chaplin's antics; at all times the fun is amusing. For one brief moment, Mr. Chaplin offends good taste. With his uncommon comic gift, a gift as distinct and as valuable as that possessed by the late John Sleeper Clark, he does not need to resort to coarseness of any description. - The Moving Picture World, April 3, 1915