The Sunday Intertitle: Rinky-Dink

Impressively, Chaplin’s THE RINK has only, I think, two intertitles in its first reel. Perhaps not so impressive when you consider how slight the plot is. Chaplin is an incompetent waiter, then he gets into a rollerskating rink and trips up Eric Campbell. A bunch of times.

How bad a waiter is Charlie? Bad enough to serve up a live cat for lunch. I think that gives you an idea.

At the midway point there’s a sudden flurry of text flung at us as Chaplin needs to motivate a rematch, getting the antagonists invited to Edna Purviance’s “skating party” (?) so it can all kick off again. A slender pretext for a great action finish.

Chaplin is a bolshy underling at the restaurant where he works, not only careless and accident-prone but malicious and aggressive — very much the Keystone Charlie. Once he comes into contact with Edna, he’s a kind of knight in armour, even if he is indulging in identity theft to woo her. It is, as Keystone would have put it, a “farce comedy,” so you have to expect a bit of imposture along with the ruckus.

This is the movie that provoked W.C. Fields to compare C.C. to a ballet dancer, which I never took as a knock, or the result of envy, or contempt. It just seems an apt analysis. As skilled and graceful a physical performer as Fields could hardly fail to be impressed by Chaplin’s movements, even if what he did with them wasn’t up Fields’ street. I can see the Great McGonigle being more taken with Chaplin the scoundrel than with anyone having the temerity to cast himself as a hero.

The knockabout in the rink is pretty spectacular, though meanie that I am I laughed most this time at the pantomimic distress of the female onlookers as Chaplin repeatedly falls on a prone fat lady, who’s played by regular trouper Henry Bergson in drag. Funny enough the first time, the hysteria escalates with every pratfall ~

It’s not that I always laugh at people in torment — I’m not God — but there’s something ticklesome about the realistic weeping and wailing as a reaction to the stylised pratfalling. It’s as incongruous as vomiting in response to an aria.