This film, directed and edited by Chaplin moves quickly like most of his self-involved films do. Chaplin is a painter whose girl is wooed away by a man with more means. He bemoans this by scolding the portrait he had apparently painted of the man earlier on and then getting drunk and angry in a bar, tossing out patrons. Then he supposedly runs into his girl later on, unrecognized by her, with her and her growing family. This film is notable for a couple of reasons. The first is it's one of Chaplin's first films where he plays a relatively straight role throughout the film, and the second reason is it contains perhaps his first real attempt at pathos in his films: He draws a smiley face on the bar room floor of the girl who left him. However, the print I saw had the scene of Chaplin bumping into his girl's family reversed with his scene in the bar. This is the second Chaplin film I've seen where restoration has failed by changing the editing, like this, or reversing the images. *1/2 of 4 stars.
Review of The Face on the Barroom Floor
