The Face on the Barroom Floor

A picture from Chaplin's Keystone days that makes an attempt at something different, for once: an honest-to-goodness literary adaptation (of a dreadful tragi-comic ballad, but still!). There's even a framing story/flashback structure. It doesn't really come together very well, though, since there's not much to make you care about Charlie's lost love, and the humor's rather too thin. Still, it's an indication of interest in something beyond just farce.

This is best appreciated for its narrative inventiveness, as a drunken Charlie appears to be recounting for his barmates his former life as an important artist. The nice blend of tragic-comedy never works as well as it should, but I can appreciate this early attempt of Chaplin to get at what would become second-nature to him later.

An interesting narrative structure, but not nearly enough laughs.