Arriving on the back of his first great film The Kid, Charlie Chaplin’s The Idle Class feels weak and thin in
comparison. The writer in Chaplin was struggling for ideas before he got the
spark for The Kid and it almost feels
as though he is back to square one while writing the two reel The Idle Class. A Tramp (Chaplin) gets
off a train, and not how you’d expect him to, before heading for a day at the golf
course. Meanwhile a wealthy wife (Edna Purviance) also disembarks expecting her
well to do husband (also Chaplin) to meet her at the station but he is drunk at
home. Following some hi jinks at the golf course there is a case of mistaken
identity at a ball at which Edna takes the Tramp for her husband.
For me The Idle Class
lacks the depth which made The Kid
great and also lacks the direction and laughs that are found in the likes of A Dog's Life or Shoulder Arms. It occasionally takes a more dramatic route but this
often fails to match even Sunnyside
for dramatic narrative. The film is saved by a middle act on the golf course
which is brilliantly inventive and funny but is unfortunately bookended by a
beginning and end which did little for me.
The film opens with a shot of a train speeding towards the
camera which appears to be almost the exact same shot that Buster Keaton used
in his classic The Goat a few months
earlier. From there we see Chaplin disembark the train in his usual Tramp guise
and attempt to get onto the back of a car for a ride to the course. Unusually
for a Chaplin film I didn’t laugh until over four minutes in. I thought this
may have been just because he was building anticipation or creating the story
but it turned into a sign of things to come. The film is not without its
moments though. There is a very funny scene in which the well to do Chaplin has
lost his trousers and uses a cleverly placed set of prop curtains to hide his embarrassment
before a newspaper and bended legs help him escape people’s glare. There is a
brilliant gag later which features a cocktail shaker. I actually rewound this
one and replayed it to my girlfriend who was busy in the kitchen because I
thought it was so great. Most of the laughs though come on the golf course. You
can almost see Chaplin’s mind working when he is out on the course with the
single idea ‘The Tramp on a golf course.’ There are some very humorous
slapstick moments involving lost balls, sleeping men, fights and general
confusion and this sequence is the highlight of the film for me.
The main theme of the short is mistaken identity. This
extends even to whose golf ball is whose on the course but also returns when
the Tramp is confused for a pickpocket (a common occurrence in Chaplin’s work)
and finally when he mistakenly turns up at a costume ball only to be thought
the husband of Edna Purviance. The sequence is shamefully low on laughs and
appears to be written in a more dramatic way but it fails to deliver. Chaplin
produces a clever trick to avoid having both versions of himself on screen at
once but then towards the end does indeed show both faces. I couldn’t work out
whether a lookalike or double exposure was used but either way it is very
impressive. One thing that was of interest to me is that Chaplin chose to play
both roles in the first place. In an era where ‘The Charlie Chaplin’ was the
most popular choice at fancy dress parties, he would have had no trouble
finding a suitable double for the upper class role but chose to play it
himself. Perhaps this is an example of his hands on, perfectionist personality.Another interesting fact is that Chaplin's future wife Lita Grey features in a cameo as a party guest. This shows that although 13 years old, she was still hanging around the Chaplin Studios following her turn in The Kid. (For my brief thoughts on that relationship see my review of that film).
In the end The Idle Class comes as a let down after his
first feature and first truly great film and it would be another two years
before Chaplin made another feature. The film is not without its moments and
has a strong central act but overall it feels rushed, messy and disjointed.
6/10
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