The Count (1916)

Memorable, crazy movie

Admirable film.

Funny, strange, confrontational and subversive, this is one of the most interesting experiences you'll have at the cinema this year.

The movie's neither hopeful in contrived ways, nor hopeless in different contrived ways. Somehow it manages to be wonderful

Charlie Chaplin's fifth film for Mutual is a somewhat simpler film than its immediate predecessors The Vagabond and One A.M. and is more reminiscent of his Essanay work, albeit it more sophisticated and slightly funnier. Chaplin plays an inept Tailor's assistant who gets fired for burning a Count's trousers. His boss (Eric Campbell) finds an invitation to a party at the house of Miss Moneybags (Edna Purviance) and decides to impersonate the rich Count in order to marry the attractive, rich girl. Chaplin is also at the party having snuck in through the back door and beats Campbell to the impersonation. All hell breaks lose though when the real Count arrives, along with the Police to chase out the impostors.The Count features lots of funny moments but lacks the knockout blow of the likes of One A.M. or The Bank. It's testament to the quality of Chaplin's Mutual films that I felt disappointed by The Count even though it is far superior to a lot of his Essanay work.Although there were no huge laughs to be found here I still chuckled a lot. For me the funniest scene was the opener in which Chaplin is taking a woman's measurements. First he measures her ears, then her lips before mistakenly giving her a five foot waste and finishing off by measuring one finger. It was totally bonkers. I also liked his embarrassment with regards to going near any of her more private areas and measured her bottom with a ruler from about four feet away. Another funny scene comes late on in the final chase. Here Chaplin is chased through a house and across a slippery dance floor in a very well choreographed sequence.There are obvious comparisons to be made between this film and A Jitney Elopement in which Chaplin again impersonates a Count to gain Edna Purviance's affections. Chaplin is able to create humour in both films around the dinner table, a trait that continued into the rest of his career. Personally I prefer A Jitney Elopement to The Count but both films have their merits.One final thing of note here is Eric Campbell's beard. It is simply extraordinary even by his standards. I've never seen anything like it before. Ridiculous facial hair is something that is evident in most of Chaplin's earlier films but I think it reaches new levels in The Count.www.attheback.blogspot.com

In this short, subtitled "The Phoney (sic) Nobleman" on-screen, Charlie Chaplin plays a tailor's apprentice fired for mis-measuring a woman's waist, since he had his measuring tape circling BOTH the customer's bottom AND the mannequin's middle at the same time. The tailor's apprentice makes the notation "Waste--five feet," which apparently is not accurate enough to meet his employer's standards. Which is an analogous situation to the accuracy displayed by IMDb, versus Wikipedia's standards. While Wikipedia requires a source footnote for every claimed "fact," IMDb frequently runs with unattributed MISinformation. Take the running time of this short as an example. IMDb baldly claims it is "34 minutes." My DVD time counter states otherwise: 20 minutes, 32 seconds. Hence, IMDb is claiming--seemingly with no authority--that my DVD was missing 37.5 per cent of this film. However, I studied the 12 user reviews about THE COUNT previously submitted to IMDb during the past 10 years, and EVERY SECOND described in ALL of them were contained in the 20:32 on my DVD. Logically, this means there is either 12-minutes of secret self-contained prologue and\or epilogue material contained in some arcane description of the original no one at IMDb sees fit to share with us ordinary users, OR the folks who run this site just plug in any old "technical specifications" with no effort to check for accuracy. (As an underemployed fact checker, I not only would be happy to help out with this possible need--hopefully on on full-time, paid basis, but I know of several other people that are qualified and able to pitch in during this time of need.)

Charlie and Eric Campbell are in top form is this very amusing short. Charlie plays a tailor's assistant and Campbell is his boss. They wind up by coincidence (!) at the same rich lady's party, where both compete for the daughter Miss Moneybags, played by Edna Purviance.The plot is, of course, completely ridiculous, and the whole thing is totally silly and contrived--which is just how it should be. The highlight is a hilarious dance sequence, with Charlie at his acrobatic best. There is a lot of cake-throwing and bottom-kicking. The latter is such a standard device in Chaplin movies that I wonder if there might have been some kind of underlying S&M thing going on here.Not one of his best, but standard Charlie is Grade A stuff. Still very very funny.

Charlie Chaplin goes to a party and he pretends to be a certain count. He doesn't act like a count but they all believe he is one until the real count shows up.This is another fine Charlie Chaplin movie where he does some nice satire on higher society. It starts a little slow but once they are on that party it gets very funny.