In the Park (1915)

This story has more twists and turns than a second-rate soap opera.

This is a coming of age storyline that you've seen in one form or another for decades. It takes a truly unique voice to make yet another one worth watching.

It’s not bad or unwatchable but despite the amplitude of the spectacle, the end result is underwhelming.

It’s sentimental, ridiculously long and only occasionally funny

During my childhood in the sixties and seventies, I was surprisingly familiar with the silent comedies made by the likes of Charlie Chaplin, Ben Turpin, Harold Lloyd, Buster Keaton and the Keystone Kops, as these films were still regularly shown on television at this period. Although I and some of my friends used to enjoy them, I don't think that they were mainly aimed at children. The target audience were probably older people of my grandparents' generation who would have had nostalgic memories of such films from their own youth in the 1910s and 1920s, and it is probably the passing of that generation which has been responsible for their virtual disappearance from terrestrial television. Even on specialist movie channels they only turn up rarely, although the internet now offers new possibilities for watching them."In the Park" is an early Chaplin short from 1915, which not only stars the great man but was also written and directed by him. I don't think that Charlie is supposed to be a tramp in this film but he wears the costume- bowler hat, walking stick, baggy trousers and toothbrush moustache- which were associated with his "Little Tramp" character. As the title suggests, the action all takes place in a park. There isn't really a good deal of plot, just a series of visual gags revolving around Charlie, a remarkably incompetent pickpocket, a hot dog vendor, a policeman, a courting couple and a nursemaid (played by Edna Purviance, one of the silver screen's first sex symbols).I call them "gags", although actually there is nothing particularly funny about any of them. Indeed, what struck me most forcibly about the film is just how unfunny and mean-spirited the attempts at humour are. Chaplin obviously assumed that the best way to get laughs was to kick someone, throw a brick at them or to push them into a pond. When he isn't committing criminal assault on his victims he is trying to steal their property. Why my grandparents' generation found this sort of thing funny is a mystery; I can only assume that in 1915 the cinema was such a novelty that people would flock to whatever was on offer, regardless of quality. Chaplin could do much better than this.

Charlie as the tramp is having a stroll to the park, where he meets some interesting characters. There are 2 couples, a policeman, a sausage seller and a pickpocket. Furthermore, there are stones laying around to be thrown and some butts to be kicked. You know, the usual. There are some great scenes in this early short, in particular when Charlie tries to eat sausages dangling from his chest pocket and Charlie kicking a (drunk?) guy into the water. That scene is hilarious. Come to think of it: is there anyone out there who can kick a butt as well as Charlie?A good, fun Chaplin to be seen by all his fans, though people not really into Charlie probably should start elsewhere to get to know his work better.

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.

***SPOILERS*** ***SPOILERS*** In The Park starts off with a scene that is very similar to one of Chaplin's other short films, By The Sea, where Charlie comes across a woman who is involved with another man. In this scene, Charlie approaches her and flirts with her while her oafish husband is temporarily away, and when he comes back, an argument ensues that ends with Charlie getting knocked backwards over a park bench. After this, however, the remainder of the film takes place in the apartment building where all three people live, even right across the hall from each other (seems strange that they don't know each other).The thing that really takes away from this film is that there is so much that happens during the film that does not make much sense and is not explained, even in the limited way that is available in a silent film. For example, after having encountered the couple in the beach and after they have stormed off, Charlie staggers back home as though he is drunk, but we never see him drink, other than in an amusing attempt to drink from a water fountain in the park at the beginning of the film. When he gets to the hallway (which can be recognized as the exact same hallway as was seen in another of Chaplin's short comedies, called The Rounders), he accidentally wanders into the wrong room, thinking it's his (maybe it's because that was his room in The Rounders?), and continues with his unexplained drunken behavior. He picks up a bottle, pours something out of it onto his hat, combs his hat briefly, and then drinks from the bottle. Clearly, this is something that is not uncommon to see Chaplin do in one of his films, but we have no idea why he is acting like that.Charlie eventually finds his way back to his own room, undresses at length, and crawls into bed, even though it could not have been more than half an hour since he was in the park, at which point it was broad daylight. As he is about to go to sleep, the other man's wife sleepwalks into his bed, and the better segment of the film follows. It is hilarious to watch Charlie trying to get this man's wife back into her own room without her husband finding out, and the scenes in which this happens are much better than the film as a whole, even though this also leads to more confusion as to what exactly is happening. The police wind up getting involved, and the film seems to end right in the middle of the final conflict. While it's obvious that In The Park does not compare to the high quality of the majority of Chaplin's early silent comedies, the style and the skill are unmistakable. Even though this movie has more than it's share of unfortunate shortcomings, Chaplin's presence alone makes it a very entertaining film.