Studio: Essanay. Director: Charlie Chaplin. Writer: Charlie Chaplin. Cast: Charlie Chaplin, Edna Purviance. Leo White, Jack Henderson, John Rand, May White, Ben Turpin, Wesley Ruggles. Cinematographer: Harry Ensign.
In my opinion, A Burlesque on Carmen is one of Charlie Chaplin's most underrated films.
AS you can probably tell by the title, this film is a parody of Carmen (both the novella and the Cecil B. DeMille movie). Charlie stars as Darn Hosiery (instead of Don Jose), an honest guard, who is lead astray by the seductive gypsy Carmen (Edna Purviance, Chaplin's main female co-star at this time, starring in over 30 films with him).
Charlie had made this short and intended it to be a two-reel comedy. This two-reel version is a fast moving and funny short that also shows Charlie's growth as a filmmaker and how he could have been a serious actor. This version was screened briefly in December of 1915 for critics. The Essanay Studio quickly withdrew the film not long afterwards. When Charlie left the Essanay studio, he had left behind cut footage from this movie. The studio decided to take this footage and create a four-reel version of the picture, so that they could still make money off the Charlie Chaplin name. This version of the movie would not only use footage cut out from Chaplin's version but also new footage featuring cross-eyed comedian Ben Turpin. Charlie hated this new version stating, "I was so impressed with [Cecil B. DeMille’s movie version of] Carmen that I made a two-reel burlesque of it, my last film with Essanay. After I had left, they put in all the cut-outs and extended it to four reels, which prostrated me and sent me to bed for two days. Although this was a dishonest act, it rendered a service for thereafter I had it stipulated in ever contract that there should be no mutilating, extending or interfering with my finished work." Charlie even tried to sue over this but lost the case.
Unfortunately, after this four-reel version was released the studio found little use for the two-reel version. For decades no one was able to see what Chaplin's version might have been like. Because of this many movie fans, have dismissed this film due to the messiness of the longer version. However in 1999, film preservationist David Shepard worked to help create the closest thing to Charlie's original intent. Shepard would say about restoring this movie, "The version I prepared in 1999 attempts to reconstruct the two-reel version of A Burlesque on Carmen, based upon an affidavit from the lawsuit provided by the Chaplin archives in which Charlie details his intended two-reel version. It was impossible to be guided exactly by Chaplin’s testimony. Some of Chaplin’s original shots were removed in the process of editing the four-reel expansion, which now seems to survive only with reissue intertitles from 1928. A few 1916 shots are retained for continuity in this version and most of the intertitles derive from DeMille, but we hope it captures Chaplin’s intention. For those familiar with DeMille’s production, the two-reel A Burlesque on Carmen is actually one of the better Essanay-Chaplin comedies."
The Moving Picture World, 1920
Moving Picture News, 1920
Motion Picture News, 1919
While the Ben Turpin material added for the four-reel version is terrible (and I am saying this as someone who normally likes Ben Turpin), everything featuring Charlie Chaplin is truly wonderful.
At the time he made this film, Charlie Chaplin had not yet evolved into the artist, who would comedy and drama. Nor had he shed off the type of pure slapstick that he had done at Keystone a year earlier. Here is Charlie Chaplin the pure slapstick comedian who would kick someone in the pants just because he could. Yet that does not mean that the humor here is crude or primitive. By this time, he had refined the execution of this humor to near perfection. Each gag is timed perfectly and delivered in such a way to give the greatest comedic effect. Because of this, even with how much I love Charlie's Keystone films, I must admit these very similar jokes are definitely funnier here.
As this film parodies a very elaborate movie, it required more elaborate filmmaking than the average slapstick comedy short. As such this short not only shows Charlie's growth as a comedian but also as a filmmaker. Never before had Charlie made a film that looked as wonderful as this. The attention to detail and the more sophisticated filmmaking makes this truly stand out among the other films he made for Essany. If you find a good restoration of this short, you can see how wonderful this film truly looks. Anyone familiar with the Cecil B. DeMille film will especially love the care that went into capturing the feel of that movie for this parody. While much of the elaborate look of this film comes from the material the short is parodying, this short feels like a look ahead at the even more elaborate and daring feature films, Charlie would later make.
Below are two versions of this wonderful film. The first is closer to Charlie's original plan for the film and the second features the Ben Turpin subplot.
Resources Used
The Chaplin Encyclopedia by Glenn Mitchell
https://chaplinfilmbyfilm.wordpress.com/2015/12/18/burlesque-on-carmen-18-december-1915/
No comments:
Post a Comment