Review of Tillie's Punctured Romance (1928) by Arshi R — 27 Apr 2010

Chaplin arrived in Hollywood in 1914, to work for Keystone studios under the direction of Mack Sennett. In less than a year he already had creative control of his productions, writing, staring and directing.

But 1914 saw him do a series of 1 or 2 reel short-films, as well as this one, a 6 reeler (credited as the first ever full-length comedy), also Chaplin's first full length film and the last thing he ever done without himself directing.

This 73 minute first ever comedy film in the history of cinema sees a Chaplin (without his tramp persona) as a no-good scoundrel (with a pencil moustache!), who seduces a very fat and very ugly mannish Marie Dressler (a known theatre actress at the time and who won a best actress Oscar in 1931).

He convinces her to steal her rich fatherâ??s money and elope with him to the city. Once in the city, he ditches her for Keystoneâ??s regular (and much prettier) Mabel Normand, and keeps the money too!, leaving Dressler poor and forced to get a job as a waitress.

When an uncle of Dressler's supposedly dies and leaves her all his money, Chaplin goes again to seduce her and convinces her to marry him, and so they do. This constitutes the first four reels or so.

The topic is dark, but it is always given lightly. Chaplin and Mabel feel remorse in a funny scene at a movie house when they are seated next to a cop, and Dressler only little seems to care what has happened to her.

Even so, for forty minutes of film, the gags are few and average really... the eventual something hitting the face, Chaplin slipping up and walking funny, Dressler drunk. Few great comical moments. The movie gains stride in the last two reels, at the marriage party in the new mansion, when Mabel seeks to gain Chaplin back, he is not unwelcome to her advances, Dressler finds out the truth and runs mad with a loaded gun, and the uncle comes back not dead.

This is trouble enough for a classical Keystone large chase scene through the house, upstairs, downstairs, in the ball room, in the garden, with everybody chasing and running away from everybody else.

The glorious Keystone Cops obviously make an appearance also in the mad climatic chase. For the first comedy movie ever, it is not really that funny. Dressler is very much awkward, she may have been a great dramatic actress but just does not have the profile for silent comedies.

Yet her contrast to small Chaplin is well achieved. Chaplin, off course, is as great as he is allowed to be, but one sees that he was not allowed much. His tramp is very much missed here. The story is interesting, but unable to become dark as it is a comedy.

But for that, visual gags are very few, and only the chase scene is really worth watching. Even so, this movie is a piece of history, and for just 73 min it may be worth checking out, although there are other Keystone ventures much more delightful.

One may excuse some lack of quality by saying that this is the first of the first, and even the great comedy skills of Keystone were not sharp enough yet, used as they were to the limited structure of the one or two reel formula.