Laughing Gas (1914)

That was an excellent one.

How sad is this?

Fanciful, disturbing, and wildly original, it announces the arrival of a fresh, bold voice in American cinema.

It's an amazing and heartbreaking story.

"Laughing Gas" is an American live action short film from 1914, so this one is already over a century old and it also runs for 14 minutes. With this age, nobody can be surprised that here we have a black-and-white silent film. The writer, director and lead actor is the legendary Charlie Chaplin and this is a film from his very first year in the entertainment industry. The title already gives away that many characters are laughing in this little movie and why they do so. Most of the action is linked to a dentist for which Chaplin works and he causes a great deal of mayhem there, not just with gas, but also with people's teeth etc. This is one of the rare Chaplin (short) film that could have needed more intertitles actually as I felt that the story was not too easy to understand at times and it was more than just a little bit awkward to see everybody constantly laughing in this film and you as an audience member have no clue what is actually going on. Admittedly, the comedy at that point from Chaplin is still far away from the level of his career-best works because here we have the approach for example of Chaplin punching a guy and that is the joke. So as a whole, this one can impossibly receive a positive recommendation. I give it a thumbs-down unless you are a gigantic Chaplin fan and suggest you watch something else instead.

This was another early Charlie Chaplin film that he also directed. Since it's for the Mack Sennett Keystone Studio, expect lots of punching, slapping, and throwing of bricks. In Laughing Gas, The Tramp is a dentist's assistant who sometimes acts like he's his boss. One of the ways he takes advantage of that is when he steals kisses from one of the lovely female patients by using one of those tweezers to pull her face toward his. And she seems to like it! That was one of the funniest scenes for me. There's also a funny fight/chase between him and Mack Swain that causes Swain to go guess where! So on that note, Laughing Gas is recommended and is available on a DVD collection called "American Slapstick".

Chaplin plays a dental assistant in this one. There are several moments highlighting physical comedy and sight gags in this film. The hitting, slapping, and falling bits are better timed and funnier than in most early Chaplin efforts, though of course we've seen it all before. The tremendous size difference between Chaplin and the dentist he works for is used to particular good advantage. Chaplin's bit on the staircase, his trick rolling his hat on his arm, and his use of the pincers to steal a kiss are also very funny gags. As with most of Chaplin's early films, the film is uneven. However, Chaplin edited and directed this film, and the film moves at a frenetic pace and has much quicker edits between scenes than any previous Chaplin film. ** of 4 stars.

I've seen quite a few Chaplin shorts from early in his career and I've noticed that his early stuff (done for Keystone Studios) is pretty dreadful stuff. Unlike his wonderful full-length films from the 20s and 30s, the films from 1914-1915 are incredibly poorly made--having no script but only vague instructions from the director. In most cases, the films had almost no plot and degenerated to people punching and kicking each other.This short is quite a bit better than the norm. While at times the plot degenerates to a lot of punching and kicking for absolutely no reason at all, the film also has a few decent laughs as Charlie pretends to be a dentist. Nothing outstandingly funny, but compared to the generally boring stuff he did for the studio, it's a big improvement.