This is among Chaplin's most successful shorts and is certainly one of the funniest. There's no sense in describing any of the gags, I don't suppose, because for instance how can you describe an exquisitely choreographed pratfall in print? A visual medium like film loses something in translation into language, just as written works lose in translation to film.
Humor in silent films must be difficult to begin with. Because speech is conveyed only by a handful of title cards, the situations we see must be universally understood before gags can be built on them. Chaplin was a genius at showing us a situation and then turning it funny.
I'll have to add a couple of more specific notes though. One is that there is a scene in which Eric Campbell, the huge guy with the gout, is rolled too quickly in his wheelchair and when it suddenly jerks to a halt he falls out of it and goes head first down a well that is barely wide enough to accommodate him. The figure isn't Campbell's. It's a stunt man, who instructed the crew to keep filming as long as his legs were kicking out of the well. When they stopped kicking, the stunt man was quickly retrieved.
Another point is that Chaplin's work has been chopped up over the years and reassembled as if by the drunken character he plays here. Most available tapes are fuzzy and incomplete, but the DVD, Chaplin's Mutuals, is crisp and clear and about as good as it's likely to get.
Another is Chaplin's astonishing nimbleness. Portraying a drunk in a silent movie is much harder than actually BEING drunk. The revolving door scene shows him at his most adroit. He tries drunkenly to enter the building through a revolving door, whirls around 360 degrees, and emerges at the same spot he entered. A few more staggering steps while he looks curiously around, apparently pleased at what the building looks like from the inside.
Well, see, it does lose in the translation. See it if you can.
Humor in silent films must be difficult to begin with. Because speech is conveyed only by a handful of title cards, the situations we see must be universally understood before gags can be built on them. Chaplin was a genius at showing us a situation and then turning it funny.
I'll have to add a couple of more specific notes though. One is that there is a scene in which Eric Campbell, the huge guy with the gout, is rolled too quickly in his wheelchair and when it suddenly jerks to a halt he falls out of it and goes head first down a well that is barely wide enough to accommodate him. The figure isn't Campbell's. It's a stunt man, who instructed the crew to keep filming as long as his legs were kicking out of the well. When they stopped kicking, the stunt man was quickly retrieved.
Another point is that Chaplin's work has been chopped up over the years and reassembled as if by the drunken character he plays here. Most available tapes are fuzzy and incomplete, but the DVD, Chaplin's Mutuals, is crisp and clear and about as good as it's likely to get.
Another is Chaplin's astonishing nimbleness. Portraying a drunk in a silent movie is much harder than actually BEING drunk. The revolving door scene shows him at his most adroit. He tries drunkenly to enter the building through a revolving door, whirls around 360 degrees, and emerges at the same spot he entered. A few more staggering steps while he looks curiously around, apparently pleased at what the building looks like from the inside.
Well, see, it does lose in the translation. See it if you can.