Touches You

Sadly Over-hyped

Powerful

Beautiful, moving film.

Except the train driver right at the beginning, this short film "One A.M.", which will be 100 years old in 3 years, is a complete one-man show by Charlie Chaplin. And while I can't deny, he delivers all his comedic talent, expresses his actions as clear as it gets and shows the world what a great entertainer he is, I still was a bit disappointed as the humor worked only once in a while for me. I love my Chaplin the most with a female playing his sweetheart or at least with an antagonist, who's two heads taller than Chaplin. When he interacts with these characters, that's when he's at his funniest for me.Here, he returns home after a night at the pub and faces all kinds of struggles when all he wants is get ready for bed. Oh poor Charlie. maybe you should just have laid down on the floor the moment you entered the door. He runs a.o. into slippery doormats, (allegedly) stuffed animals a giant pendulum straight from hell and finally the most stubborn bed I've ever witnessed. I'd recommend to watch the first five minutes maybe and then decide if you want to keep going. The humor is pretty much the same for the remaining 15 minutes. I personally think there's better Chaplin shorts out there.

Charlie Chaplin's forth film for the Mutual Film Company is a unique two reeler in which he is almost the only person on screen for the film's entirety. Apart from an establishing scene featuring Albert Austin as a disgruntled cab driver, Chaplin has the film to himself as he struggles to get up to bed whilst drunk. Chaplin arrives home at 1am to find numerous inanimate objects in his way in his quest for a nights sleep.In this twenty-six minute short a drunken Chaplin is scared by stuffed animals, baffled by a revolving table, constantly defeated by a flight of stairs before being bested by a fold away bed. Chaplin takes inspiration from the drunken character that made him famous in England with the Fred Karno Company, the very same character that drew the attention of Mack Sennett and gave him his break in the movie industry.The genius of this film comes from Chaplin's ability to keep on finding objects to hamper his attempts to get to bed when you think he won't be able to find anything else. Sometimes you will think he has done all he can with a particular object before going back to it several minutes later. This is the case with the revolving table in the middle of the room. Having chased his whisky around it early on in the film, the actor comes back to it later on in a brilliant scene in which he climbs upon the table and chases after the oil lamp hanging from the ceiling in order to light his cigarette. This was an excellent idea which actually made me feel a little dizzy. Another item which Chaplin constantly goes back to is the stairs. It takes him around ten or so attempts to actually get upstairs, each time being thrown back down due to loss of balance or bumping into something. The way he finally gets up is wonderfully surreal and clever.One thing I noticed about the stairs was how cushioned they looked. It was obvious that there was a lot of padding beneath the carpet and the rug at the bottom also resembled more of a crash mat than thin rug. It's not surprising that Chaplin chose to give himself a little padding given the number of times he came cascading down the stairs and I wouldn't be surprised if he wasn't more than a little bruised by the end of filming. In a later scene I actually flinched when a bed stand came crashing down close to his head at high speed. One small misjudgement in positioning and he could have been seriously injured. Although Buster Keaton gets a lot of credit as being the daredevil of the silent comedians, this film shows that Chaplin wasn't afraid to perform dangerous stunts himself.My favourite scene in the film came late on when Chaplin finally finds his bed. This scene typifies Chaplin's comedy for me. While most comedians may be able to find one or two funny things to do with a collapsing bed, Chaplin takes over five minutes to play around with ideas, each one funnier than the last. Every time he did something new I thought to myself "Right, well that's it. There's nothing more that can be done with that", but each time I was wrong until we get to a fantastic payoff at the end. I loved the collapsing bed scene so much that I actually got my girlfriend (someone who likes Chaplin films when she sees them but otherwise isn't too fussed) to watch it with me a second time. In the end I actually showed her about two thirds of the film and she laughed even more than I did. I even heard her cry "Oh no, his hat!" Then she went back to watching Britain's Next Top Model though so you win some, you lose some.One A.M. is a film that really surprised me. I was unsure how this one man show could keep the laughs coming but if anything it gets funnier as it goes along. While it doesn't contain the depth of his later work or even the proceeding film The Vagabond, it is a master class in comic timing and also shows off Chaplin's underrated stunt skills.www.attheback.blogspot.com

At Mutual, Chaplin had more freedom, and the result was the funniest and most entertaining short films he ever made. 'One A.M.' is one of his most experimental Mutual shorts: how many laughs can he get from a 20-some-minutes drunken solo, where, for the most part, he only interacts with inanimate objects (although the Murphy bed seems very alive). He got many from me.Chaplin did a hilarious drunk act--that's evident in many of his other films, as well: 'The Rounders' (1914), a Keystone short costarring an equally funny 'Fatty' Arbuckle, comes to mind, as does another of his Mutual shorts, 'The Cure' (1917). Moreover, Chaplin's tendency to portray a dandy as a drunk, rather than a tramp, which could cause the humour to lose out to melancholic social commentary, was prudent. Making fun of the tacky and ridiculous possessions of an overly dressed bachelor is more of sure thing. Chaplin's dandy--even his tramp personae--owes plenty to Max Linder, too, as Chaplin himself often cited.Another influence worth mentioning here is his background in Fred Karno's Fun Factory troupe. The only filmmakers other than Chaplin who are provided with much to do in 'One A.M.' it seems are those in care of the props and setting. 'One A.M.' could have as easily have been a music hall act as a short film. Nevertheless, all of this does make for a unique film in Chaplin's canon. By now, it's clear that Chaplin had matured from the rapid-paced, knockabout style of Keystone for a more graceful pantomime. That's not to say there aren't pratfalls and other tried-and-true gags here, but the temperament is radically different.

The only way you can tell this film is meant to be a comedy, is that it is done in the style of a comedy. Continuity errors become all the more obvious when there is nothing funny to laugh at.