Wonderful Movie

It is a performances centric movie

Very good movie overall, highly recommended. Most of the negative reviews don't have any merit and are all pollitically based. Give this movie a chance at least, and it might give you a different perspective.

It is an exhilarating, distressing, funny and profound film, with one of the more memorable film scores in years,

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.

Chaplin's first one reel farce for Essanay is set in a park. A lady has her handbag stolen by a thief who then attempts to steal Chaplin's sausages. Chaplin ends up with the bag and it goes from person to person with each usually ending up with a brick to the face or foot to the bottom until one man tries to kill himself and another ends up in Police custody.For such a short film In the Park has a surprisingly large cast. Chaplin regulars such as Edna Purviance, Leo White and Bud Jamison all appear along with three or four other bit players. Considering the film is only fourteen minutes long it feels like a lot happens and is more reminiscent of Chaplin's Keystone pictures rather than say The Champion which was released just a week earlier than this.As usual for Chaplin's films of the time there are plenty of mistaken punches and kicks, doffing of hats and general thievery and nuisance but the highlight is when Chaplin steals a string of sausages which he places in his breast pocket and then swings his body from side to side in order to get them into his mouth. It's little things like this which show Chaplin's promise and set him apart from his contemporaries.The film's pacing helps to make it seem perhaps better than it actually is. There is little originality in it and although it is better than Chaplin's first two Essanay films, it's still not quite as good as The Champion.www.attheback.blogspot.com

This one-reeler from Charlie Chaplin's Essanay era harks back to his Keystone days in terms of setting and set-up, being a cheeky romantic farce taking place in a park, as so much of the Keystone output did. However in terms of pacing, gags and shooting style it shows off the development he has made since then.In the Park opens with a handful of shots introducing the supporting players before the tramp himself even comes on the scene. This is Edna Purviance's most well-defined role so far. From her costume we can guess she is a maid (and therefore unmarried and from a working-class background), and the book she is reading quickly gives us a clue as to her personality. You didn't get that level of characterisation in a Keystone picture. Chaplin allows the comedy to build with various routines in long takes, before stepping up the pace of the editing as things become more chaotic in the last few minutes.In the Park doesn't really have a plot as such, being simply a series of gags as Charlie wanders around playing off one character after another. Chaplin would make only one more single reel comedy (By the Sea), and would from now on concentrate on building up more sophisticated story lines for his tramp character. Still, this is an entertaining little effort, certainly good for a giggle.And lastly, that all-important statistic – Number of kicks up the arse: 8 (3 for, 5 against)

At one point in the 1930s, a period when Charles Chaplin would spend years making a single feature film, he remarked to a friend that in his early days all he needed was a cop, a park bench, and a pretty girl, and -- Presto! -- he and his crew could crank out a new comedy in a day or two. And indeed, he made so many films that way in 1914 (his year of apprenticeship with Keystone) they're practically interchangeable. Unfortunately, however, he had no control over the handling of these films after he left the company, and most were re-edited, retitled, and mixed up in dizzying ways by distributors out to make a buck. Thus, there are two Chaplin movies known as "In the Park." One is a reissue of a 1914 Keystone comedy originally titled Caught in the Rain, and the other is an Essanay release of the following year. Very little of the Keystone film actually takes place in a park: it's a marital farce involving sleepwalking and drunken bedroom-hopping, set mostly in a hotel. The "real" In the Park is appropriately named, for it has no interior scenes at all.In his films of 1915 Chaplin begins to demonstrate a little more finesse, and his Tramp character is more sympathetic. Even in such a brief and simple film as the Essanay version of In the Park we find a coherent through-line (albeit no plot as such), touches of whimsy, and some cleanly executed physical comedy. The tempo is fairly relaxed and slapstick violence is kept to a minimum, at least compared to the earlier films. While the Tramp is of course the central character, Chaplin also deftly choreographs the movements of his supporting players: a nursemaid, a thief, courting couples, a cop, etc. Charlie has plenty of colorful characters to react to, flirt with, or fight, as the occasion demands.I love Charlie's first scene with Edna the nursemaid, the way he leers at her, plays with his hat, and casually (Harpo-like) plops his leg into her lap. Along with the Keystone style brick-hurling and head-bopping we have Charlie playing with a string of sausages just for the fun of it, while portly Bud Jamison skips about the park like Baby Huey. I like the fact that Edna is given a brief comic moment of her own: she is first seen sitting on a bench, reading a book mysteriously titled "Why They Married." (Well hey, why not?) The other players still wear heavy makeup and emote vigorously, but Chaplin himself is more nuanced and self-assured as a performer, and less frenzied than in some of the earlier films. In the Park is no masterwork, but it does serve to showcase Chaplin's development from diamond-in-the-rough to the supreme comic artist and filmmaker he would soon become.