The Cure (1917)

Best movie of this year hands down!

Fantastic!

Excellent adaptation.

The story-telling is good with flashbacks.The film is both funny and heartbreaking. You smile in a scene and get a soulcrushing revelation in the next.

"The Cure" has Chaplin arriving tipsy to a health clinic to supposedly dry out, but he shows up with a trunk full of booze. This film has some memorable scenes but the premise of it is very funny. There are plenty of run-ins with Eric Campbell's character with the foot cast. Campbell is also Chaplin's rival for the girl as well, although, poor girl, has to(?) choose between an ogre and a recovering alcoholic who is failing miserably at the recovering part.Outside of the hotel is some sort of little fountain or well that has a stone terrace around it and stone benches. Mostly women it seems sit around the 'ol water cure hole and drink. At some point in the movie, a dude that Charlie had been rough with earlier comes back. The man goes into Chaplin's hotel room and throws every last bottle of booze (that is the ones that the crazy long-bearded old bellhop didn't drink) directly into the water hole below. So much for health clinic security! Before long, the entire hotel is trashed.There's a good sequence when Chaplin goes into the spa for a massage with a large guy who looks like he's practicing wrestling moves on people. "The Cure" seems to lack a number of good sequences but makes up for it a bit with the overall funny factor. It still doesn't appear to be his best of the Mutual period (this was the 10th film for Mutual, 45th time directing and 67th overall)

Before Chaplin got into films, he was well known on the English stage for his roles playing a drunk, yet these roles are undeniably the weakest performances of his early film career. The movie opens with him stumbling all over himself as an exasperated bellhop tries in vain to lead him into a hotel. There is the obligatory mayhem involved in getting through a revolving door, which goes on for as long as it can. Chaplin seems to have an almost prophetic knack for milking a gag until there's nothing left! Once inside, what seemed like just another drunk movie turns delightfully into something else.Charlie reprimands a bellhop about to light a cigarette, and wags his finger at him, reminding him that smoking is bad for you health, and then casually opens a suitcase packed to the brim with every kind of alcohol imaginable. Needless to say, soon the bellhop doesn't seem to smoke much anymore, but spends most of his remaining screen time falling over drunk off of booze that he apparently "borrowed" from Charlie's suitcase. And by the way, seeing all of those bottles of 1917 alcohol reminds me of a long standing wish that I could have tasted Coca-Cola back in the old days, when it lived up to its name…Soon Charlie checks into one of those establishments where you go to relax in the pool, spa, sauna, or get a massage, etc. I'm not sure what they're called in English, but I know that in Chinese it translates to "bath house." It's interesting to me to see what the place was like, because when I lived in America I never really spent much time in them, although I have been to some astonishingly nice ones in Colombia and China. It may be the third world, but I guess when a sizable portion of the population has no shower at home, public bathing spots are big business. There's an amusing scene involving a swimming pool and then a frighteningly vicious massage, which appears to be a mandatory experience in this particular bath house, and the massive masseuse chases Charlie all over the place, ultimately flat out fighting with him. But the best part of the film is that Charlie doesn't just play a drunk, we see him the next morning, and his actual dependency on alcohol is brilliantly portrayed. There is a scene where he charms a young woman off her feet, and she offers him a drink which at first he refuses, given that he's still recovering from the night before. But he takes a sip anyway, and then downs the rest of the glass and pours himself another, eventually taking the whole jug and drinking it down in front of the young lady, who is unimpressed. It mirrors the end of the film, which quite literally illustrates the message of the movie, which is that too much alcohol will lead to your life falling "in the drink."

Very simply the most hysterical of all his Mutuals! Charlie is not only inebriated throughout his stay in rehab but makes sure everyone in the place gets crocked too! A masterpiece! A riot! You'll laugh until you wet your pants!

Out of all of Chaplin's short films, this is the one I could watch over and over again. Chaplin is at his absolute best as a reluctant guest at a spa. His daring escape from a massage, and the funniest use I have ever seen of an escalator are the highlights of this gem.