This movie follows the rules of a screwball comedy, a bunch of odd-ball characters in a setting acting foolishly and building to a riotous crescendo. The movie when two men at the seaside collide and entangle themselves a string around their legs. Their petty fights go on to involve a woman, her suitor, a young wife, an icecream stand, a couple of policemen and all this set on the windy day of the sandy beaches. If the aim is to show the happenings at the beach, such as a Jacques Tati comedy which are character study comedies, it fails. But I do not think that is the intention, for no one exists on the beach beyond the characters we are watching. I do remember seeing a man in the background running towards the water. No, this movie wants to make you laugh, and so it does as the pettiness of the characters scramble you into the issues of pettiness that have been blown up into a mountain by you and in this cries out the laughs of this movie. Well-done and acted. Not as technical as other Chaplin shorts but funny as hell.
Review of By the Sea
