The Immigrant **** (1917, Charles Chaplin, Edna Purviance, Eric Campbell) – Classic Movie Review 2536

This now restored 25-minute silent comedy short from 1917 is among writer-director-star Charles Chaplin’s best work, still clever, touching and above all funny after 100 years. He’s a poor new arrival to America, who endures hardships on the voyage there and gets into more trouble as soon as he arrives.

Edna Purviance is a fellow immigrant and Eric Campbell is the head waiter, with Albert Austin as a diner and Henry Bergman as the artist.

This funny, touching and clever two-reeler shows Chaplin at his most brilliant. In the first half of the film, his little tramp immigrant character encounters a sea of troubles on the boat to New York, and, when he lands, kicks a brutal immigration officer. In the second half, he comes up against nasty restaurant head waiter Campbell after he loses the coin he’s found to pay for meals for Purviance and himself at the restaurant.

As usual Purviance plays the girl he falls for and helps. On the boat she and her sick mother have been robbed of everything, but Charlie wins in a card game, puts the money in her bag, but retrieves a little for himself and is accused of being a thief.

It’s all cleverly contrived and the poor immigrant drama is personally felt by low-born Chaplin, a child of south London’s poverty-stricken Elephant and Castle district, who went through a lot of hardships himself before he was famous and then quite a few after.

Purviance was required to eat so many plates of beans during the many takes to complete the restaurant sequence that she became ill.

© Derek Winnert 2015 Classic Movie Review 2536

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