Tango Tangle (1914)

The acting in this movie is really good.

Exactly the movie you think it is, but not the movie you want it to be.

All of these films share one commonality, that being a kind of emotional center that humanizes a cast of monsters.

The story, direction, characters, and writing/dialogue is akin to taking a tranquilizer shot to the neck, but everything else was so well done.

"Tango Tangle" is a 12-minute short film from the year 1914, the year when World War I began. So if you put this into perspective, you will not be surprised that this is a black-and-white silent film. It is over 100 years old and stars Charlie Chaplin, which means it is almost exclusively comedy. Some drama occasionally, some fight sequences and also some romance of course. But all this really only serves the purpose of getting even more comedy in here. There are more stars working on this one other than Chaplin. The director and writer is Mack Sennett, very successful back in the day and co-starring in here is Roscoe "Fatty" Arbuckle, one of the biggest silent film stars and filmmakers in his own right. Sterling and Conklin are also somewhat famous to people with huge interest in silent films. Charlie here arrives at a dance and mayhem quickly ensues as he keeps fighting the musicians over the love of a young woman that everybody seems to have an interest in. Despite the strong cast and crew, this was only a mediocre movie, nowhere near Chaplin's best. I do not recommend the watch.

Watching silent comedies is an almost lost art, one that today's younger viewers must teach themselves through an open-minded exposure to multiple examples, always reminding themselves that the intent to tell an amusing story clearly is always there, even if at first glance the impression is of fast-paced incomprehensible chaos. With practice one can learn to understand the conventions of the day, follow the action and enjoy the multitude of jokes and amazing performances.Even someone who has managed this for comedies of the 1920s, and who can both appreciate and enjoy, say, The General and The Gold Rush, may find their first exposure to Keystone material of the 1910s throws them back into bewilderment. Yet once one adjusts to the conventions of the time (such as the fast paced, physically detailed and extremely demonstrative acting that makes most '20s performances seem restrained by comparison), even these very early, frenetic and largely improvised Keystones can delight.This one is particularly interesting for several reasons already cited in other reviews: the lack of character makeup on Chaplin and Sterling (both almost always appearing in other films with fake facial hair of various sorts), the amazing athleticism of Arbuckle, the wholly natural reactions of the actual onlookers in the "found" dance hall location to the antics of the leads. It repays a second and even a third viewing for those seeking to learn the skill of following early Keystone comedies.This was one of Sterling's last handful of films at Keystone and one of Chaplin's first. At the time, Sterling was the bigger star. They work very well together here, especially in their fight scenes, which have tell-tale signs of being more improvised than rehearsed or precisely choreographed, yet are nevertheless creative, clearly told and quite entertaining.If you've never seen a silent Chaplin short, this is not the one to start with. (Try one of the Mutuals, like Easy Street or The Immigrant) But if you've some familiarity with the genre, the circumstances of the shooting of this one make it one of the most interesting of his first half-dozen or so.

In his sixth film, Chaplin plays a music hall rival with Fatty Arbuckle and Ford Sterling. The appears to be a real dance in one scene and it would have been great to hear the actual music from the era. Instead, we get the droning soundtrack which stops and starts again several times through the film without any correlation to the scene occurring. Fatty Arbuckle moves well for a 300 pound man, although he was relatively young at the time. Ford Sterling wins out in the end and we somehow wonder whether or not Chaplin was being used properly at the time. In these early films he bounces back and forth between playing heels and troublemakers, as in this film, and a rough version of the tramp. The film is full of stock exaggerated character mannerisms for the period. ** of 4 stars.

Tango Tangles, one of Charlie Chaplin's earliest silents, was made before The Little Tramp became his film persona of choice. Here, without his moustache, the surprisingly young-looking comic does a variation on his popular music hall drunk act, playing a dandy who tries to woo a cute dancer, much to the chagrin of his rivals for her affections -- a band leader and a fat musician, the latter played by Fatty Arbuckle.This is quite a rare film in that Chaplin is completely and utterly overshadowed by one of his co-stars. Ford Sterling, an actor little remembered today, plays the bandleader, and offers such balletic, graceful and funny slapstick in his comedic fights with both Chaplin and Arbuckle that one could think that Chaplin might have taken some inspiration from the older actor in his own later performances as The Tramp.This was a movie that cries out for sound. The story takes place at a dance (apparently a real one, based on the fact that a number of bystanders can be seen smiling and waving at the camera!), yet the music usually heard on the stock soundtracks provided for these silents on DVD and video does not match the action on screen, which appears to be performed in time with whatever music was being played at the time.This isn't a bad film by any means, and it's interesting for its rare glimpse of the silent era Chaplin without his Tramp disguise. It also offers some funny moments for Fatty Arbuckle. But this is very much Ford Sterling's show and he's a joy to watch.