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8 of 8 people found the following review helpful:
4.0 out of 5 stars
This film belongs more to Sennett and Dressler than Chaplin, 2 Mar 2004
What makes this film notable is not the presence of Charlie Chaplin, who is essentially out of character playing the heartless sharpie instead of his beloved Tramp character, but that it was the product of Max Sennett's desire to produce the first feature-length comedy in film history. Sennett had signed the famous stage comedienne Marie Dressler for a film version of her big success, "Tillie's Nightmare." A massive legal entanglement resulted and the film was sold to Arco for $100,000 and released as "Tillie's Punctured Romance" in a whole bunch of different lengths with different soundtracks. Essentially this is a burlesque of a burlesque in which the city slicker (Chaplin) leads the pretty country heiress (Dressler) astray. Sennett throws every trick he knows into directing this 1914 film and anyone familiar with the work of Chaplin or Dressler after this point will be dismayed with their performances here. Chaplin is extremely deadpan and Dressler is overly mannered (with way too much makeup on). Fortunately even his facial hair is different enough for us to convince ourselves this is not really Charlie. A lot of the humor is sub-par, but the party scene at the end has some good moments as Chaplin and Dressler do a take off on Vernon and Irene Castle, the world famous ballroom dancers of the period before the First World War. In terms of familiar faces from the silent screen Chaplin's future leading lady Mable Normand plays Mabel, his girl friend, Mack Swain is Tillie's Father, Chester Conklin is family friend Mr. Whoozis, and Edgar Kennedy has a bit role as the restaurant owner. Believe it or not, the paper boy is reportedly a young Milton Berle, then known as Milton Berlinger. Of course Dressler went on to success in "Dinner at Eight" and "Min and Bill," where she found her perfect leading man in Wallace Beery, while Charlie Chaplin went on to be the most famous face on the planet. "Tillie's Punctured Romance" is a historical curiosity, necessary for your Chaplin collection out of a sense of completeness rather than for great comic enjoyment. "Tillie's Punctured Romance" was remade a couple of times, most notably in 1928 with W.C. Fields.
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