“Along
the sunny shores of Spain, where men do the dishes- and women smoke cigars
there dwelt a band who put the GYP in gypsy.”
If you know anything about Charlie Chaplin’s films and their
stories there is usually a bit of series masked largely by comedy. You can look
at a lot of his works such as The
Immigrant, The Great Dictator,
and City Lights to see there is a
message, a sadness, and a seriousness lurking underneath his comedy. In 1915
Chaplin took to parodying the dramatic seriousness of the famous story and
opera Carmen. There is no social
message like his original material but none the less it is a great take on a
silly dramatic story.
A group of pirates wants to come ashore and sell their
goods. They unfortunately cannot get into the city unless they can get through
one of the guarded entrances into the city of Sevilla. They send the gorgeous
seductress Carmen to convince the head guard to let them him.
Chaplin plays the one guard Don Jose. In true Chaplin
style Don Jose is anything but suave and stoic. He stumbles repeatedly over a
rock and tells his guards to kill the bug on the ground. Carmen comes to the
guards and all the men are immediately enchanted by her including Don Jose.
Other things happen in between the time Carmen comes to
camp and when she starts a brawl at the tobacco factory she works at. Don Jose
is supposed to arrest her but instead because he loves her he lets her go. At
the local the same day he gets into a fight with another officer and kills him.
Now that Don Jose is a killer he leaves Sevilla and joins the gang of smugglers
from the beginning of the film. He travels with them to another city where he
finds Carmen is to be married to a bull fighter. In jealousy he appears to kill
her but again in true Charlie Chaplin style, the knife is fake and both he and
Edna Purviance look at the camera and smile.
A Burlesque on
Carmen was not bad it definitely is not one of Charlie Chaplin’s best
films. In researching the story for this review apparently the version I watched
is one that was extended by Essanay and was not the original one Chaplin had
released some time previously. Essanay released a version that added a whole
other story that did not need to be in the film and provided no continuity and the
pacing is not that great. The version of A
Burlesque on Carmen on YouTube lasted forty-three minutes but with the slow
pacing it felt a little longer. Even though this is not the best Charlie
Chaplin film I am not going to say to not watch it especially if you are a fan
of his films in anyway. There were some good moments between the slow ones and
his style of parody was great.
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