Charlie Chaplins Police (1916) is a film directed by Charlie Chaplin, a silent comedy film in a short format whereby Charlie Chaplin is an ex-convict whose effort to lead a straight life goes wrong and he finds himself in another crime and anarchy filled night. The movie is currently in the public domain and manages to endure as a condensed expression of physical comedy, social satire and unexpected emotional heat by Chaplin.
Charlie Chaplins Police Movie background
Police is a silent short film from 1916 directed by and featuring Charlie Chaplin. The film was made during his Essanay period at Majestic Studio (Los Angeles) and has a runtime of about 26 to 30 minutes depending on the version. Edna Purviance plays the role of the sympathetic young lady while Wesley Ruggles is Chaplin’s cellmate and accomplice. In addition, James T. Kelley, Leo White, John Rand and Fred Goodwins are among the cast playing different characters.
This was the 14th Essanay film by Chaplin, and is generally considered to have been his 49th film released film overall, and placed towards the end of his work with Essanay before he transferred to Mutual. The collection of surviving prints is also prevalent in archives and on the Internet since the short has now passed into the public domain in the United States.
Charlie Chaplins Police Full plot summary
This is a narrative that starts when Charlie comes out of prison broke, with a couple of dollars and sent back into the nasty world with empty hopes of rehabilitation. A fake preacher or pastor attacks him on the street, and on the pretext of helping him straight, the latter makes him weep about his sins and later, quietly robs him of his money.
On finding out about the loss in a fruit stand, Charlie fights with the dealer and flees only to meet a footpad who happens to be his old cellmate. The former classmate convinces the penniless and depressed Charlie to accompany him in robbing a nearby house and the duo beats a law enforcer with a hammer before they eventually break down the door.
They start stacking up silverware in the house, but Charlie is clumsy thus causing crashes and a bunch of dishes that break, which wakes up Edna, the young lady that lives in the house. Scared by this, she makes a silent call to the police, and attempts to buy time by giving the invaders something to eat and pleading with their consciences, and even saying that her ailing mother upstairs would die of the fright were they to proceed.
Her plea motivates Charlie who now begins to think about the burglary again but is denied the opportunity to do so by his more hard-core cellmate who insists on ransacking the house which results in a fight between the two men. The cellmate breaks out as the cops come, but Edna defends Charlie to the authorities by claiming that he is her husband and when the cops out of favor smoking have a smoke with them, he walks off with a dollar that she hands to him.
The last sequence accompanies Charlie to a low-end boarding house where he conceals the dollar in his mouth during sleep in order to keep it out of the reach of thieves only to dig it in his mouth. Another lodger robs Charlie, who recovers the stolen money and rings and causes a spirited fight which he ultimately gets away with leaving the rings back to the house of Edna, to pay her good nature back before the short fades.
Genre and key themes
Police is a short silent comedy that also highlights as a social satire regarding poverty, crime and the hardship of rehabilitation after prison. Although the number of slapstick jokes is abundant, the storyline manifests time and again how the lack of support and predatory nature of some people on the world, like the fake preacher, make Charlie relapse into crime.
Several themes stand out:
Difficulty to do right things: due to deceives, hunger and his former criminal friend Charlie does not succeed in doing the right things.
Compassion vs. the system: The personal kindness of Edna is in contrast to the inhumane institutions, when she lies on behalf of Charlie, she provides him with a much-needed opportunity to be dignified in a justice system that never tries to do so.
Class and survival: The flophouse fight and never-ending petty theft show how individuals at the edge are lured into criminal and desperate situations.
This combination of a comedy and a social commentary prefigures more acrid observations to come by Chaplin later in his features such as The Kid and Modern Times.
Charlie Chaplins Police (1916) Full Movie Watch and Download
Watch Charlie Chaplins Police (1916) on Internet Archive:
🏛️ See Also
Dementia 13 (1963) – Francis Ford Coppola’s Chilling Gothic Debut
The Man Who Cheated Himself (1950) – A Classic Film Noir Gem Set in San Francisco
A Man Betrayed (1936) – Classic Republic Crime-Drama
Inner Sanctum (1948) – A Suspenseful Noir Thriller
Why it’s still worth watching
Police is striking as a miniature of the Chaplin Tramp develops into a materialistic underdog possessing the moral compass. The little film is packed with creative physical comedy, closely-spaced chases and scuffles, and a surprisingly emotional climax when Charlie decides to protect Edna rather than change sides with his accomplice thief.
To the viewers of the time, the movie provides an insight into the studio comedy of the 1910s in which the actors expressed themselves through gestures without the need to use a voice or speaking. Since Police is in the public domain and it can be accessed or reposited by such websites as Internet Archive and through the many classic-film channels, it won’t require a lot to watch, share or embed as a free classic film as one searches through the early work of Chaplin.
