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THE TRAGIC MASK 125
ing desire to attract her attention, he wiggles it lustily. Meanwhile the decks are cleared, all the preparations for the paperhanging are over, and the boss merely sits down at the piano and diverts himself with the young wife, whose appearance throughout the film provides an inexplicable commentary on the necessity of complicating a plot which will become far too complicated to be followed with any exactitude. The work of paperhanging at last begins.
The boss, who bears an unhappy resemblance to Flaubert, becomes the prey of Charlie's wildest fancies. Charlie trips him up, catches him on the head with a board, and knocks him clean out with a bucket of paste when the servant-girl enters the room and Charlie's attention is distracted. Paste is everywhere. Charlie has one horrified glance at the girl and then throws water all over the boss in the hope of removing the great smears of paste in which he is choking. The scene where Charlie frantically attempts at the same time to revive the boss and to drown him is accomplished with wonderful finesse, and the boss, sitting on the floor, only his eyes visible, looking for all the world like a more robust image of Charlie himself, shaking water and paste out of his ears and nose, is an image of the slapstick tradition at its best. Charlie's giggling ineptitude as he throws the buckets of water on his enemy, the way he slips in the puddles and leers at his own efforts, his complaisant and humble devotion to the task of cleaning up the mess while at the same time further increasing it belong to high comedy; and the mood, once established, is maintained through the three following scenes.
We see Charlie at work alone. All the ambiguities which result from concerted effort are put away. Charlie will paper the wall by his own unaided efforts. No one shall interfere. He calmly surveys a roll of paper, unwinds it, jabs it with paste, sticks it on the wall. Part of the paper sticks to his hand. In an effort to disentangle himself he manages to wrap himself up in the wallpaper. The maid-servant enters at the