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the classic Mutual comedies 73
ruption of the tailor's noisy ingurgitation of soup long enough to hear Miss Moneybags' questions, his parlor magic with the tailor's disappearing spaghetti, cascades of stolen silver when he is slapped on the back, and his quick recovery by a peek under the tailor's vest and administering a scolding to him. Other comic business follows on the slippery dance floor, including splits and elevations from the floor after a fall by hooking his cane on the chandelier, undercover exchanges of kicks with his obese rival, coyly flirting his cane at a harem-costumed girl with a wiggling rear, then spearing, instead, a roast fowl which he forward-passes to the butler, and "driving" gobs of icing off a large cake upon the other guests.
The comedy reaches its climax with the arrival of the genuine Count Broko. In the ensuing chase Charlie slides among the dancers, where his feet churn in one spot like a stalled locomotive. It winds up in the arrest of the tailor, and Charlie's escape and fadeout running up a sidewalk.
"The Pawnshop," which followed "The Count," is a little masterpiece. It contains all of Chaplin's choicest ingredients: irony, pity, fantasy, and comic transpositions. Chaplin demonstrates his genius for comic invention by overcoming the handicaps of the restricted locale and extracting humor out of everything in it. The slapstick world obliquely reflects life but makes no attempt at realism. Here Charlie takes advantage of the suspension of reality for some marvelously imaginative touches, by fantastic distortion of the familiar.
The story is simple. Its humor turns on a comic rivalry with another clerk, encounters with eccentric customers, and the foiling of a robbery. The comic business used in their development is extraordinary.
With his rival helpless between two steps of the stepladder they are carrying, Charlie "boxes" him. When a