Easy Street
This classic comedy short has a great opening shot–a curled Chaplin at the steps of Hope Mission. From there, it unfolds in that typical comedy short stream-of-conscious fashion with the character bouncing around from situation to barely-connected situation so that comedy can happen. Here, a tramp (but not necessarily the Little Tramp) becomes a police officer and helps rid a neighborhood of crime.
There’s great physical comedy and action sequences, but I’m most impressed with Chaplin’s acting here. He does some beautiful and modern things here, and it’s amazing that he’s doing it in 1917 and that he’d only been doing it for a few years.
A funny bottle gag, Eric Campbell tossing around police officers and one hilarious police officer dummy, a weaponized lamppost that led to a Chaplin injury, and a great use of limited space in a climactic chase/fight sequence. It all shows that Chaplin, when given complete control, was world’s better than anybody else working at the time.
This movie also shows the powers of drug use similarly to a scene taking place in prison in Modern Times. Chaplin seemed to revisit his ideas quite a bit actually. But why not when the ideas are this XCXCing good?
