A Day’s Pleasure *** (1919, Charles Chaplin, Edna Purviance, Jackie Coogan) – Classic Movie Review 11,757

Director Charles Chaplin’s 1919 comedy short A Day’s Pleasure is Chaplin’s fourth film for First National Pictures and stars Charles Chaplin as Father, Edna Purviance as his wife and Jackie Coogan as one of the kids.

One of Chaplin’s final two-reel shorts sees him muting the slapstick fun while searching for a new, poetic style that was to grace his later full-length movies. He plays a married man with two children who can’t start his Ford car, but later goes for a family picnic on a river-boat pleasure-cruise, and naturally gets mixed up with the law when the family return home and there is a traffic jam.

A Day’s Pleasure is good middle-range Chaplin, with the star on good form, backed by his excellent comedy stock players. It is amusing, clever and appealing.

It runs just 25 minutes.

It was made at the Chaplin Studio and the opening scene shows the Chaplin Studio corner office in the background while Chaplin tries to get his car started.

Chaplin composed his own score for the sound reissue in the 1959 re-release as part of The Chaplin Revue.

A Dog’s Life (1918) is the first of Chaplin’s nine films for First National, followed by The Bond (1918), Shoulder Arms (1918), Sunnyside (1919), A Day’s Pleasure (1919), The Kid (1921), The Idle Class (1921), Pay Day (1922), and The Pilgrim (1923).

The cast are Charles Chaplin as Father, Edna Purviance as Mother, Marion Feducha as Small Boy, Bob Kelly as Small Boy, Jackie Coogan as Smallest Boy, Tom Wilson as Large Husband, Babe London as His Seasick Wife, Henry Bergman as Captain, Man in Car and Heavy Policeman, Loyal Underwood as Angry Little Man in Street, Marion Feduche, Bob Kelly, Albert Austin, True Boardman and Charles Reisner.

© Derek Winnert 2021 Classic Movie Review 11,757

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