What a waste of my time!!!

Highly Overrated But Still Good

Good start, but then it gets ruined

Amazing worth wacthing. So good. Biased but well made with many good points.

IN THE PARK is a short, 14 minute silent comedy that comes to us courtesy of star and director Charlie Chaplin. I'm slightly ashamed to say that this is my first experience of Chaplin, and it's a generally good one, although I understand that a quickie production like this wasn't one of his best efforts.The action is centred in and around a park where various characters interact. Chaplin is in his famous 'little tramp' persona and has a lot of fun with his props, particularly his walking stick which he uses to commit petty crime. The emphasis here is on slapstick humour and pratfalls, with characters being kicked in the backside and pushed over frequently.It's a relatively enjoyable short effort that offers up a couple of laugh out loud scenes and plenty of wry smiles during its brief running time. My favourite character is the hot dog vendor although there's plenty of mileage in a stolen handbag too. Inevitably a policeman ends up being the butt of some of the jokes although a romancing couple are mercilessly ribbed as well. It's good, old-fashioned fun.

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)

It is easy to dismiss IN THE PARK as yet another footnote in Chaplin's admittedly long list of rather casual products early on in his career; the comedian himself would probably be the first one to do so. Indeed, the apparent reversion to the Keystone-days (days which were in fact not so far behind at this time) is not accidental. The film had more or less been forced upon Chaplin, in order to meet the demands of schedule as he had, in the eyes of the Essanay Company, spent an intolerable amount of time on his previous effort. Like the later film BY THE SEA, this not quite coherent chronology of fast-paced gags serves as little more than a so-called "program-filler," even if added into a cavalcade of Chaplin-shorts. That being said, IN THE PARK has its moments --moments within a moment, you may say-- and does undeniably possess potential as a fun flick.Without time to develop his character, the occasional glimpses of complexity that Chaplin had attributed the Tramp (I suppose it's that way around?) in some previous Essanay-films are here non-existent. Charlie is brought back to his carefree days, when he regarded anything and everything as intuitive and mechanical as himself (and it usually was). He is not very appealing, in other words; he intervenes in the affairs of two lovers, throws bricks at innocent by-passers, and makes awful grimaces at leading lady Edna Purviance for no apparent reason whatsoever. When Charlie helps a man to commit suicide by kicking him out in a lake, whereupon he gallantly lifts his hat and leaves, we are presented with an obvious but nonetheless fascinating contrast to the Tramp's far more likable personality of the mature years; how different would he not react when a certain drunken millionaire tried the same thing in CITY LIGHTS?In short, the best advice I can give anyone eager to enjoy this comedy is to stay as neutral as possible, and try to avoid any comparison to Chaplin's later work. Just lean back and wait for the good bits to turn up. Charlie's slick, impulsive satyr dance following Edna's granted kiss is often referred to, but my favorite moment occurs early on: a rather dazzling-looking pickpocket searches Charlie's pockets, unaware that the victim has noticed him and does in fact search HIS pockets in the meantime. Quite matter-of-factly, Charlie snaps a cigarette out of the thief's pocket and lights it with finesse. While in high school, I 'borrowed' this bit into a stage act in which I performed and received belly laughs. While comic performers usually feel most satisfied when they get applause for their own material, I must admit I found it just as thrilling to earn laughs for a gag taken from a Chaplin-film, proving (once again) that his comedy lives on; and no less so when taken from such an obscure and neglected piece as IN THE PARK.