His
Trysting Place is a usual comedy of errors and
misunderstandings. Normally I am not a fan of the plot of errors where one
thing goes wrong and everyone misunderstands each other but in this silent film
it is used very well for a great amount of laughs.
Clarence (Charlie Chaplin) sits in the kitchen trying to
read the paper while his wife Mabel (Mabel Normand) takes care of their baby
and make dinner. A small fire breaks out on the stove causing Clarence to catch
his foot on fire and become annoyed. He is more annoyed when Mabel tells him to
bring the baby into the living room. Clarence grabs the baby by handful of
clothing and brings it into the living room and gives it a pistol to play with.
Mabel sends Clarence out to get a bottle for the baby. It
is obvious that Clarence is still annoyed and in no way wants to go out but he
does. He buys a bottle and instead of going straight home he stops off at a
dinner. He manages to get a man to move out of his seat where his food has just
been placed in front of him so he can get a free meal. Ambrose, the man sitting
next to Clarence, is a loud sloppy eater. It is yet another thing that annoys
Clarence to no end so he starts a fight with Ambrose. After the skirmish Clarence
rushes out but grabs Ambrose’s coat by mistake. In Ambrose’s coat is a letter
he had told his secretary he would drop off to her lover. At the bottom it is
signed “Love, Clarice”.
At home Mabel has been trying to take care of the baby
and do the ironing. When Clarence comes back Mabel looks in his coat pocket for
the bottle. What she instead finds is the love letter. Mabel throws a fit over
the letter and the ironing at Clarence. He leaves the house and heads to the
park. Ambrose is in the park with his wife. He gets up and walks away. The wife
looks in his jacket pocket and finds the baby bottle. She now thinks that he
has a secret love child.
Mabel comes storming into the park with the baby. She
hands the baby over to Clarence and she keeps on yelling at him. Hits and
punches are thrown and kicks are kicked as Mabel, Clarence, and Ambrose duke it
out in anger and frustration.
Eventually everything is resolved and Clarence and Mabel
and their son are a happy family once more.
I liked His
Trysting Place. I liked the whole misunderstanding bit because Clarence and
Ambrose were blundering fools. Their foolishness/stupidity made the whole
misunderstanding hilarious. I was laughing when Mabel was beating Clarence up
with the ironing board and then proceeded with her abuse in the park. The
fighting scene in the park was great. It was interesting to see Charlie Chaplin
in a character that was not a homeless man or his typical characters. He played
a husband and father who, presumably, has a job based on the nice house.
Despite not truly playing his tramp character Chaplin still wore his signature
costume. His Trysting Place is a nice short silent film running for twenty minutes.
It was one of the funniest and entertaining twenty minutes I spent watching a
film.
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