Sick Product of a Sick System

Redundant and unnecessary.

Easily the biggest piece of Right wing non sense propaganda I ever saw.

True to its essence, the characters remain on the same line and manage to entertain the viewer, each highlighting their own distinctive qualities or touches.

THE CURE (Mutual Studios, 1917), Written, directed and starring Charlie Chaplin, his tenth comedy short (20 minutes) for the Mutual studio, is one of his all time greats. For a title that indicates one to be set in a hospital with Charlie as an unruly patient who flirts with the nurses and drives his doctors crazy, in essence, it takes place in a sanitarium that wherever Charlie goes, trouble follows. For THE CURE, Chaplin breaks away from his traditional tramp character with derby and cane for straw hat, white suit and cane retained, stirring as much trouble as he can, intentionally or not, to those around him.The story opens at a resort with an assortment of female gossips gathered together seated around the health spring where enters the new resident, the drunken Charlie (Charlie Chaplin), arriving for a rest cure, to nearly fall into the water well on the ground. After being escorted to his room by a frail and thin bellboy, Charlie opens his crate that reveals an assortment of liquor bottles. Once the bottles are discovered with the bearded bellboy found drunk in Charlie's room, the superintendent (Frank J. Coleman) orders the bottles thrown out. The attendant (Albert Austin) takes him literally and throws the bottles out the window where they end up inside the water spring below. In the meantime, Charlie makes his rounds about the resort, encountering an attractive woman (Edna Purviance) being annoyed by the burly gout (Eric Campbell), thus, saving the day by becoming a big annoyance for the big man and hero to the girl. Later at the massage parlor, Charlie begins to have second thoughts of treatment when witnessing how the sadistic masseur (Henry Bergman) works on one of his customers. Following a series of unforeseen circumstances, Edna, whose about to meet with Charlie, discovers, to her disbelief, the refined residents and attendants having way too much fun for themselves in the lobby without knowing the reason why. And if that isn't enough!!!While there's not much plot nor character background development to go around, THE CURE is non-stop comedy, pure and simple. The carefully planned-out gags are enough to guarantee solid laughs with Chaplin stock character types in their proper roles for background support. As much as Chaplin is the sole attraction when it comes to both character and gags, Eric Campbell should not go unnoticed for his achievement in villainous comedy. Campbell, better known in later years as "Chaplin's Goliath," partakes in some of the greatest sight gags imaginable, including the revolving door, his reaction towards Charlie's misconducts involving his bandaged foot, his involvement with Charlie in both lobby and massage parlor, his trip down the stairs in a wheelchair, among others. Aside from Edna Purviance as Chaplin's frequent female co-star, other members of the cast include James T. Kelly, John Rand, Janet Miller Sully and Loyal Underwood.In the well documented three-part 1983 documentary, "Unknown Chaplin," there are some detailed moments capturing behind the scenes preparation for THE CURE, with Chaplin directing various sequences that were rehearsed and filmed, but not making it to the final print, and how changes to THE CURE developed into what has become one of Chaplin's finest gems, especially when properly scored on the musical soundtrack.When presented on public television in the sixties and seventies, this and other Chaplin's Mutual comedies (1916-17) were broadcast with sound effects and musical score taken from 1930s reissue prints. For THE CURE, underscoring consisted of current hit tunes of the day ranging from "Happy Feet" to "Happy Days Are Here Again." These reissue prints later became part of the Blackhawk/ Republic Home Video package dating back to the 1980s. In latter years, Chaplin's Mutual comedies were restored to accurate silent projection speed (25 minutes) with new orchestral score from KINO Video, the prints that have played on Turner Classic Movies (TCM premiere: December 6, 1999). After listening to different scores from various distributors, nothing comes off better than those orchestrated ones from Blackhawk for that bad scoring takes away the impact for such a fine comedy, considering how these twelve Chaplin shorts for Mutual are simply the cure for what ales you. (****)

Charlie Chaplin's 24-minute short "The Cure", written directed and produced by the master himself as always, takes him playing an alcoholic to a health spa this time. It has his usual companions Eric Campbell, very bearded and wearing a cylinder, and Edna Purviance. Early on, we get some mindless revolving door fun, which gets a bit repetitive quickly and afterward inside the spa, as always all kinds of hilarious complications ensue, especially for Campbell's character, when Chaplin displays his usual devastating routine. He turns away Campbell's chair the the moment he wants to sit on it, so the colossus lands on his his giant butt. He jokingly kicks Campbell's plastered leg and many more. I don't think it's as funny as Chaplin's best, but if you're a fan of his, you'll probably like it. Also, besides Chaplin's comedic efforts, it includes a nice message for audiences almost 100 years ago about how devastating alcohol can be to the extent that it can possibly destroy your life and doesn't make you exactly attractive to women (Purviance here) either.

"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)

This is among Chaplin's most successful shorts and is certainly one of the funniest. There's no sense in describing any of the gags, I don't suppose, because for instance how can you describe an exquisitely choreographed pratfall in print? A visual medium like film loses something in translation into language, just as written works lose in translation to film.Humor in silent films must be difficult to begin with. Because speech is conveyed only by a handful of title cards, the situations we see must be universally understood before gags can be built on them. Chaplin was a genius at showing us a situation and then turning it funny.I'll have to add a couple of more specific notes though. One is that there is a scene in which Eric Campbell, the huge guy with the gout, is rolled too quickly in his wheelchair and when it suddenly jerks to a halt he falls out of it and goes head first down a well that is barely wide enough to accommodate him. The figure isn't Campbell's. It's a stunt man, who instructed the crew to keep filming as long as his legs were kicking out of the well. When they stopped kicking, the stunt man was quickly retrieved.Another point is that Chaplin's work has been chopped up over the years and reassembled as if by the drunken character he plays here. Most available tapes are fuzzy and incomplete, but the DVD, Chaplin's Mutuals, is crisp and clear and about as good as it's likely to get. Another is Chaplin's astonishing nimbleness. Portraying a drunk in a silent movie is much harder than actually BEING drunk. The revolving door scene shows him at his most adroit. He tries drunkenly to enter the building through a revolving door, whirls around 360 degrees, and emerges at the same spot he entered. A few more staggering steps while he looks curiously around, apparently pleased at what the building looks like from the inside.Well, see, it does lose in the translation. See it if you can.