Charley at the Beach

Director: Otto Messmer
Release date: October, 1919
Stars: Charlie Chaplin
Rating: ★
Review:

Pat Sullivan’s Charlie Chaplin animated shorts were a short lived series, spanning only two years (1918-1919) and about 16 films. ‘Charley at the Beach’ is one of the last and shows that some Charlie Chaplin’s mannerisms were transferred surprisingly well to the animated screen.

Indeed, Pat Sullivan’s Charlie Chaplin shorts were supported by the great comedian himself. Chaplin gave the animators thirty or forty photographs of himself in different poses and with these the animators could copy several of his movements. Sullivan’s prime animator was of course Otto Messmer, who a month later would create Felix the Cat.

According to Messmer his work on the Chaplin cartoons greatly influenced his work on Felix (Felix – The Twisted Tale of the World’s Most Famous Cat, p. 38), but to be honest, compared to the later Felix the cat cartoons, the animation on Charlie Chaplin is remarkably stiff and primitive. Moreover, in these Messmer makes a lot of use of text balloons, even when the images could speak for themselves, like in the hot dog scene.

‘Charley at the Beach’ is little more than a string of unrelated gags at the beach. Messmer even goes for some throwaway gags on fish. Unfortunately, several of the gags are misogynistic (Charlie Chaplin is a peeping Tom, and there’s some fat shaming) and one is even racist: when Charlie discovers a girl he fancies is black, he quickly swims away. The result is a pretty tiresome and boring film, and nowhere we can detect Messmer’s great talent, yet.

‘Charley at the Beach’ is available on the Blu-Ray ‘Cartoon Roots: Otto Messmer’s Feline Follies’