Im Park (Short 1915)

Im Park: Directed by Charles Chaplin. With Charles Chaplin, Leona Anderson, Billy Armstrong, Lloyd Bacon. A tramp steals a girl’s handbag, but when he tries to pick Charlie’s pocket loses his cigarettes and matches. He rescues a hot dog man from a thug, but takes a few with his walking stick. When the thief tries to take some of Charlie’s sausages, Charlie gets the handbag. The handbag makes its way from person to person to its owner, who is angry with her boyfriend who didn’t protect her in the first place. The boyfriend goes to throw himself in the lake in despair. Charlies helps him.

“This short feature was apparently thrown together pretty quickly, or at least more quickly than were most of Chaplinu0026#39;s features at this point in his career, and it shows. u0026quot;In the Parku0026quot; is generally muddled, and despite a couple of good moments, overall it is rather mediocre or at best only fair.u003cbr/u003eu003cbr/u003eThe story, such as it is, has Chaplin wandering around in the park and getting involved in a series of scrapes with a variety of characters, including a policeman and some romantic couples. While most of it is connected together in one way or another, however implausibly, too much of the action makes little sense, and it just looks kind of clumsy. There was enough basic material to work with here, and they might have been able to make a better picture if they had taken more time on it. As it is, there are only a couple of real highlights. Itu0026#39;s worth watching for these, but overall itu0026#39;s just not all that good.”