Only a couple of months after the release of "Sunnyside" Chaplin presented his another masterpiece - "A day's pleasure" which is only 17 minutes long but every second of it is pure entertainment. As with "One A. M." this movie is almost entirely one funny situation after another: a family of four is having a day off and they spend their time on the excursion ferry. Naturally because of the rocking everyone gets seasick and that's only the beginning; the scene where Charlie tried to assemble a chair was an absolute gem of comedy and I laughed so hard on this one and many other scenes.
The story doesn't bring anything new to the table because Charles was already full speed ahead in making his first feature length at the time and this movie was supposed to be just a filler to please First National to which he still owed a couple of movies but it wasn't just that. With every movie Chaplin always added something new and unseen before: a scene where a jazz player puts a slide of his trombone under Charlie's nose while playing was copied in many parody movies and another scene where Charlie gets stuck in tar and does the first "anti-gravity lean" could have easily influenced Michael Jackson to perform his own in the music video for "Smooth criminal" some 70 years later. That could be far-fetched but I'd like to think that Chaplin is the man to thank for so many things that we have now in the world in cinematography, obviously not without a reason.
Little Jackie Coogan was one of his on-screen sons in this feature and he went on to co-lead star in Charlie's next masterpiece...
The story doesn't bring anything new to the table because Charles was already full speed ahead in making his first feature length at the time and this movie was supposed to be just a filler to please First National to which he still owed a couple of movies but it wasn't just that. With every movie Chaplin always added something new and unseen before: a scene where a jazz player puts a slide of his trombone under Charlie's nose while playing was copied in many parody movies and another scene where Charlie gets stuck in tar and does the first "anti-gravity lean" could have easily influenced Michael Jackson to perform his own in the music video for "Smooth criminal" some 70 years later. That could be far-fetched but I'd like to think that Chaplin is the man to thank for so many things that we have now in the world in cinematography, obviously not without a reason.
Little Jackie Coogan was one of his on-screen sons in this feature and he went on to co-lead star in Charlie's next masterpiece...