One A.M. (1916)

Story: It's very simple but honestly that is fine.

By the time the dramatic fireworks start popping off, each one feels earned.

It's the kind of movie you'll want to see a second time with someone who hasn't seen it yet, to remember what it was like to watch it for the first time.

It's simply great fun, a winsome film and an occasionally over-the-top luxury fantasy that never flags.

Except the train driver right at the beginning, this short film "One A.M.", which will be 100 years old in 3 years, is a complete one-man show by Charlie Chaplin. And while I can't deny, he delivers all his comedic talent, expresses his actions as clear as it gets and shows the world what a great entertainer he is, I still was a bit disappointed as the humor worked only once in a while for me. I love my Chaplin the most with a female playing his sweetheart or at least with an antagonist, who's two heads taller than Chaplin. When he interacts with these characters, that's when he's at his funniest for me.Here, he returns home after a night at the pub and faces all kinds of struggles when all he wants is get ready for bed. Oh poor Charlie. maybe you should just have laid down on the floor the moment you entered the door. He runs a.o. into slippery doormats, (allegedly) stuffed animals a giant pendulum straight from hell and finally the most stubborn bed I've ever witnessed. I'd recommend to watch the first five minutes maybe and then decide if you want to keep going. The humor is pretty much the same for the remaining 15 minutes. I personally think there's better Chaplin shorts out there.

Chaplin playing drunk characters are his weakest roles, and for much of the time I was watching One A.M. I got the feeling that he went in to work and didn't have any ideas, so just decided to play a drunk guy coming home from a big night on the town. The plot is virtually nonexistent, it really does start with him coming home drunk, and his only purpose from beginning to end is to get upstairs and go to bed. He stumbles out of a taxi and, after accidentally paying the driver with a cigarette butt instead of the fifty cent fare, he climbs through a window to get into his house, stepping in the fishbowl on the way in. There is a series of mildly amusing sight gags involving things like an extremely slippery throw rug, a spinning table (which was one of the more amusing gags, despite making no sense at all), a stuffed cougar (or some other scary animal of the cat family), a coat rack, and a staircase with some insufficiently attached carpeting. The set that the movie is filmed on is a little strange, with two staircases on either side, both leading up to the second floor, which apparently contains just one door to the bedroom and a clock with a wildly over-sized pendulum. I'm struck by how unrealistic the set is, with those two staircases (it seems like something Sarah Winchester would build in her house), but then again, that clock's pendulum swings long and fast, directly across the path of the door to the bedroom, so it's clear that the set was designed with physical comedy in mind, not architectural efficiency. Chaplin does, after all, ultimately decide to climb that coat rack, twice, rather than use either of the staircases.The best part of the movie, however, is definitely the bed, which Charlie has to deal with when he eventually does make it upstairs. The mechanics of the bed make no sense at all, as it flips around every which way and seems to have a personality of it's own. And apparently it doesn't like being slept on! There is an interesting contraption at the end that I found a little curious. There's a thing that looks like a ladder in the bathroom, but it turns out that it's a shower that sprays water out of all of the rungs. I wonder if this was kind of a new and innovative showering idea that just never really caught on. At any rate, after losing his battle with the bed, Charlie ultimately falls asleep in the bathtub and the movie ends. It's a clever little comedy, but it's basically just physical comedy and nothing else. Even back in 1916 Chaplin was making much better films than this.

The plot for this comedy short is pretty simple. Chaplin, the lovable Tramp is drunk and trying to find his way to his bed. From walking through the front door of his house, to the foot of his bed is a giant challenge. For about 15 minutes, Chaplin dazzles the audience by trying to get from point A to point B. For 1916, the laughs never end. A simple task of getting oneself to bed is made into a hilarious journey from the first floor, to the second. Impossible for Buster Keaton, Chaplin fins himself climbing up his coat rack and dangling from the second floor balcony in order to find his bed. A simple, yet very clever idea, One A.M. takes place at...you guessed it, 1:00 AM as the Tramp arrives home, drunk, and very tired.

Chaplin plays a drunk who spends the entire film trying to get into his house and go to bed. In a comedic experiment, Chaplin appears alone in this film, aside from Albert Austin, who briefly appears at the beginning as a cab driver. Chaplin draws the humor from his interaction with various objects around the house, most humorously with a hostile Murphy bed. Is this comic experiment successful? Yes, for the most part. It is a funny short, but, in my opinion, nowhere near his funniest. Still, one must admire Chaplin's boldness. When one watches this film, one sees a talented film maker testing the limits of skills. Bravo.