Charlie Chaplin (1951)

the Chaplin-Keystone films (1914) 41 Begun in April 1914, the picture took fourteen weeks to shoot. With sumptuous staging and the support of the whole Keystone troupe, "Tillie's Punctured Romance" was a decided hit. Robust, aimed at a wide audience, healthily vulgar, filled with earthy American humor, it entertained millions, though with today's diminished appetite for kicks and falls it may seem overexuberant. Even some contemporary critics objected to it as a mere Keystone anthology. They counted "at least seventeen punctures in Tillie's Romance." But it is more than mere slapstick. It is a smart take-off of the old city slickercountry maiden cliche, adding some pointed thrusts at the "high society" of the period. The beginning of the picture betrays its stage origin, but it becomes more cinematic toward the end. At times the lips move in simulated "soliloquies" and "asides" that are actually pantomimed to the audience. Along about the middle of 1914, this device — a hangover from the stage and until then common in Sennett's and some other films — disappeared as the actors developed techniques more appropriate to the silent medium. Later it may be noticed that Chaplin seldom moves his mouth, relying on pantomime and action alone. Marie Dressler's acting is extremely broad as compared with her later work — and she was never noted as a restrained performer. This, again, may be laid to her stage training. But such qualities were then in vogue; her gyrations and grimaces brought down the house. (Parenthetically it may be noted that Marie Dressier, in spite of sequels to this picture made for other companies, never again attained outstanding success until "Anna Christie," the talkie of 1930. Then she became one of the top attractions of all time.) "Tillie's Punctured Romance" opens with Charlie, a city slicker, sporting a genuine "villain" mustache of two