Charlie Chaplin’s 13th Essanay film is loosely
based on Georges Bizet’s famous opera Carmen
and stars Chaplin as Darn Hosiery, a Spanish Officer on watch at a popular
smuggling point. Local barman Lillas Pastia (Jack Henderson) persuades an
attractive gypsy girl, Carmen (Edna Purviance) to distract the guard while they
smuggle their goods. Despite having no interest in the man Carmen uses her
charms to distract Hosiery who ends up in a love quartet for the gypsy’s heart.
Burlesque on Carmen is
an above average Essanay picture and features some nice subtle comedy as well
as the usual trips, kicks and pokes. It also features the first noticeably
decent performance from Chaplin regular Edna Purviance.
A janitor in a bank (Charlie Chaplin) has a crush on a
secretary (Edna Purviance) who is in love with cashier (Carl Stockdale). Chaplin
mistakes a present sent from Purviance to Stockdale as being for him and when
his advances towards Purviance are laughed away he becomes depressed. Despite
being a terrible janitor, Chaplin becomes the hero (or does he?) when he foils
a bank robbery.
This film took me a little bit by surprise. I was expecting
a slapstick affair with Chaplin getting into the sort of trouble that Buster
Keaton did in his film The Haunted House but
this is a much more rounded piece than pretty much anything Chaplin had done
before. Chaplin spends more time off screen than in any of his previous Essanay films and instead of being in front of the camera, fooling around, allows his
characters and story to propel the film along. That isn’t to say that Chaplin
is a side character or not funny. He is still the central character and
produces some great comedic turns.
