Getting Acquainted (1914)

Am a big fan of Charlie Chaplin, have been for over a decade now. Many films and shorts of his are very good to masterpiece, and like many others consider him a comedy genius and one of film's most important and influential directors. He did do better than 'Getting Acquainted', still made fairly early on in his career where he was still finding his feet and not fully formed what he became famous for, though previous efforts showed signs of his style starting to settle. Can understand why the Keystone period suffered from not being as best remembered or highly remembered than his later efforts, but they are mainly decent and important in their own right. 'Getting Acquainted' is a long way from a career high, but has a lot of nice things about it and is to me one of the middling efforts in the 1914 Keystone batch and a decent, if not one of the better ones, acting collaboration with Mabel Normand. Sure, 'Getting Acquainted' is not as hilarious, charming or touching as his later work and some other shorts in the same period. The story is flimsy and the production values not as audacious. Occasionally, things feel a little scrappy and confused.'Getting Acquainted' is not bad at all, having said that. Far from it.While not audacious, the film hardly looks ugly, is more than competently directed and is appealingly played. Chaplin looks comfortable for so early on and shows his stage expertise while opening it up that it doesn't become stagy or repetitive shtick. Mabel Normand is quite charming.Although the humour, charm and emotion was done even better and became more refined later, 'Getting Acquainted' is humorous, sweet and easy to like, though the emotion is not quite there. It moves quickly and doesn't feel too long or short. Overall, pretty decent. 6/10 Bethany Cox

Chaplin stars with Mabel Normand for the last time in this film, another of his park comedies. They're each in a park with their respective spouses played by the behemoths Phyllis Allen and Mack Swain. The spouses appeared to be mismatched in terms of size, a sight gag often used in silent comedies. Chaplin flirts with Mabel Normand as usual by using his cane; he also flirts with another young lady and soon he's being run off by Mack Swain and the other young lady's beau. A policeman happens upon the scene only to be flirtatious himself, but soon he's after Charlie too. Chaplin ducks into a bush as the men run back and forth repeatedly trying to find him. Chaplin and Swain each flirt with each other's wife near the end, and then they're both paired back up with their wives. The film has several moments of camera lingering perhaps knowing Chaplin was leaving Keystone after his next film. The film is entertaining but nothing special except the usual Keystone slapstick is noticeably absent, which is probably due to the fact Chaplin edited, wrote, and directed this film. ** of 4 stars.

A Fair Exchange is a strangely prophetic film about the troubles with women that Chaplin would encounter later in life. Having seen a few documentaries about Chaplin's life off screen, I always get the feeling that I can sense just under the surface (and even in his earliest films), his love not only of attention but of the amorous affections of women. A Fair Exchange concerns two married couples, one happy and one not so happy, in which the men ultimately meet and make passes at each other's wives, and soon find themselves being introduced to their would-be mistresses by their own wives.As is probably to be expected, it is Chaplin who is clearly in a miserable marriage with what appears to be an angry, over-bearing wife, and it doesn't take long before he starts taking steps to try to meet someone else. One thing that I noticed about this film it that it seems to be much less modest than films of the time were, or at least how I thought they were.At one point, the pretty wife of the other man bends way over right in front of Charlie, giving him a clear view of her backside, and Charlie makes no effort to be cautious as he gazes enraptured at the sight before him, despite the fact that his wife is sitting right next to him. Later, he scolds his cane for 'accidentally' lifting up the girl's skirt as she is standing next to him. I'll just go ahead and admit that until now, I thought such things would have been unacceptable in the movies. Looks like it's about time for me to go back and re-read the parameters of the infamous Code.At any rate, the film also features a pretty clear picture of what might be considered Chaplin's conflicting views of women. Given what we know about his personal life, he had a particularly strong desire for women, but he seemed to reel back and forth from extremes of good and bad, with very quick love and happy marriages soon turning into divorce and bitter legal disputes.In the movie, it could be argued that he was just inexperienced in the ways of romance. Charlie doesn't seem to know how to act around women, at one point tipping his hat and smiling, and at the next, using her as an armrest. Whatever the case, it seems that in the years that followed, his behavior in real life may have been a little too similar to his behavior in the movie. As a film in comparison to the other short films that he was making at the time, what I really like about A Fair Exchange is that it has a fully developed plot that is relatively easy to follow. A lot of the Keystone comedies tried to tell more of a story than they could sustain, and ultimately became very hard to follow. The plot here is entertaining and easy to follow, and while the comedy and slapstick is not much different from the other short films, it is more memorable here because it comes with an entertaining story.

It's time for more fun in the park: two restless husbands leave their wives behind, flirt with other women, get involved in brief but heated confrontations, chase each other through the shrubbery and, ultimately, receive harsh punishment from a cop who seems to be on permanent Flirtation Patrol. Dozens of Keystone comedies fit this description, but Getting Acquainted is a fairly amusing example of the familiar routine. It's a little less frantic than some shorts and decidedly less violent than the Keystone norm of the day. This was the second-to-last comedy Charlie Chaplin made for Mack Sennett, and it feels almost like a sentimental farewell to the old gang. Here's what passes for "sentimental" at Keystone: no bricks are hurled, no mallets wielded, no bombs explode, and not one person gets thrown into the pond. That said, Charlie does receive a rather nasty-looking stab in the butt early on, and the mustachioed cop (Edgar Kennedy) who pursues the errant husbands delivers a couple of vigorous conks on the head with his billy-club, but compared to some Keystone efforts this one amounts to a genteel tea party.At times the camera lingers on the players for a quiet moment or two in between intrigues, giving us a chance to observe them more closely than was generally the case in these brisk one-reel comedies. The couples at the center of the action certainly look mismatched: pint-sized Charlie is paired off with the much larger, older, gorgon-like Phyllis Allen (who would also play his formidable spouse years later in Pay Day) while Mack Swain, obese and unsightly, is paired with petite, pretty Mabel Normand. We meet Charlie and Phyllis first (although this opening scene is missing from some prints), and they make such an inappropriate-looking couple the casting itself serves as a sight gag. Next we meet Swain and Normand, as Mack kindly assists a motorist with his car. Soon afterward we recognize that this film's theme concerns people who don't belong together, searching in vain for their true partners. Or, I don't know, maybe it's really about comedians in quaint outfits, chasing each other through shrubbery.In any case, Charlie quickly ditches his wife and tests the water with blonde Cecile Arnold, but he is distracted and then driven away by her escort, a mysterious man wearing a fez. I wanted to know more about this fellow, but apparently he's there solely to supply a touch of the exotic. Come to think of it, this couple looks mismatched too, visually anyway, but they appear perfectly content with each other during their brief scenes. Once Charlie meets Mabel he forgets all about Cecile and wastes no time in trying to make an impression on this new potential conquest. First he taps Mabel's bottom with his cane, then within moments he raises the cane and 'accidentally' hooks her dress with it. When Mabel reacts with shock Charlie disengages his cane and gives it a quick spank. Mabel's attitude towards this strange little cad never improves after this startling introduction, but soon Charlie is too busy getting chased through the park by Kennedy and Swain to care. Edgar Kennedy, by the way, gives the film's most lively performance as the crazed cop.Getting Acquainted is diverting if not exactly memorable, while its comparatively relaxed, methodical tempo stands in notable contrast with Chaplin's other Keystone "park" comedies. It's lightweight fun while it lasts, and it's nice that we're granted a few moments to appreciate Mabel Normand's dark-eyed beauty. This film marked Chaplin's last teaming with Mabel, seen here while still in her youthful prime.