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Surely Dreiser rolled in the aisles before writing An American Tragedy. Tillie (Marie Dressler) is "the pride of Yokeltown," the thrown brick meant to be fetched by her pooch instead knocks down the urban sharpie (Charlie Chaplin), she's in love. The gigolo asks her out after noticing her wallet, the first whiff of "the fetid atmosphere" is recalled by Murnau more than a decade later, streetcar and all. He filches her money and leaves her spinning drunk in the restaurant, the getaway with his partner (Mabel Normand) gets interrupted by a trip to the movie theater—a little drama of betrayal is playing, the screen within the screen floats above the duo like a heavy conscience (cf. Griffith's Those Awful Hats). Mack Sennett doesn't direct his comic cyclones so much as referee them, his frames are static yet the agitation inside them is cranked up to combustion. Nobody walks when they can stumble, nobody waves when they can slap. The motion is primeval and free-flowing, and, when it leads Sennett into a dead end, he simply decides that the elephantine maiden is a moneyed heiress, brings back the scoundrel and his accomplice, and starts over. Immemorial gags (the waiter pulling the chair from under the customer, the soapy floor claiming victim after victim) in long-shot chunks, like extinct specimens caught in amber. Dressler's dismantling of the mansion upon learning of her beau's perfidy is the scorned fury Congreve wrote about, Chaplin showcases the raw malignancy Monsieur Verdoux would wrap in velvet (his sly backwards punt is here a mule kick to the chest). The Keystone Kops push the chase into the ocean, the heroine emerges sadder but wetter. May has the great analysis in A New Leaf. With Mack Swain, Charles Bennett, and Chester Conklin. In black and white.
--- Fernando F. Croce |