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fight. Curiously enough, its (perfectly logical) happy ending — along with the omission of the cane — keeps "A Dog's Life" from being the most typical of Chaplin's pictures.
The gags and comedy routines in "A Dog's Life" are classic. The scene in the employment office, with Charlie always missing out, is pure ballet and extraordinary for its precision. Hilarious and beautifully timed, also, is the surreptitious cake-devouring scene at the lunch stand. Sidney Chaplin's pantomime here, as the proprietor, equals his brother's. The "puppet" sequence where Chaplin from behind a curtain, by deft manipulations of his hands under the arms of a knocked-out crook, continues negotiations with his partner, is outstanding. Incidentally, this gag has been much imitated. Harold Lloyd worked a variation of it in "The Freshman" (1925) and years later Laurel and Hardy repeated it in "Chumps at Oxford" (1940). Whether Chaplin invented it or it originated in circus clowning, this was its first screen use — and its most effective use, the camera facilitating its closest and most intimate presentation.
"A Dog's Life" has not been seen for many years. All Chaplin's films made since 1918 are his property and are revived at his choice and he has withheld this one. Duped prints cannot be shown legally. A few shots from this little gem of 1918 were used in King Vidor's "Cynara" (1932) with Ronald Colman, in a sequence showing theatregoers in England during World War I being entertained by Chaplin.
As the sun rises over the city, we see a tramp asleep beside a fence in a vacant lot. It is cold in the dawn breeze, and to stop the "draught" he stuffs a handkerchief in a knot-hole. "Scraps," a "thoroughbred mongrel," leading a similarly vagrant existence, is asleep in a basket by an ashcan. A hot-dog vendor sets up his stand on the other side of the fence. The smell awakens