The Pilgrim *** (1923, Charles Chaplin, Edna Purviance, Sydney Chaplin, Mack Swain, Loyal Underwood, Dean Riesner, Charles Reisner) – Classic Movie Review 11,754

Charles Chaplin’s 1923 four-reel silent comedy film The Pilgrim stars Chaplin as The Pilgrim, an escaped convict who snatches a swimming minister’s clothes to replace his prison uniform.

Writer/ producer/ director Charles Chaplin’s 1923 four-reel silent comedy short film The Pilgrim stars Chaplin as The Pilgrim, an escaped convict who snatches a swimming minister’s clothes to replace his prison uniform, and has to impersonate the Devil’s Gulch, Texas’s new preacher when he gets off the train on a Sunday to be greeted by the town’s reception committee.

Chaplin’s silent comedy offers quite a few laughs as Chaplin takes to the pulpit, where he improvises a sermon about David and Goliath, and the collecting box, while a convict (Charles Reisner) and a woman (Edna Purviance) turn up in his life. The preacher is to board with Mrs Brown (Kitty Bradbury) and her attractive daughter Miss Brown (Edna Purviance) who is attracted to the Pilgrim. But then the Pilgrim’s old cellmate spots the Pilgrim.

Chaplin’s last short film is fine, inventive and observant, though the pacing is a bit slack, and it tends to charm rather than tickle the funny bone, but by and large it does both.

Marion Davies appears uncredited as a congregation member.

Chaplin’s brother Sydney Chaplin appears in several roles as Eloper / Train Conductor / Little Boy’s Father.

The Pilgrim is the last film Chaplin made for First National.  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).

Chaplin included The Pilgrim as one of his three films in The Chaplin Revue in 1959, re-scored and slightly re-edited, with the song ‘I’m Bound For Texas’, written and composed by Chaplin, and sung by Matt Monro.

It entered the public domain in the US in 2019.

Charles Reisner became a successful film director.

The cast are Charles Chaplin as The Pilgrim, Edna Purviance as Miss Brown, Sydney Chaplin as Eloper / Train Conductor / Little Boy’s Father, Mack Swain as Deacon Jones, Loyal Underwood as Small Deacon, Dean Riesner as Little Boy, Charles Reisner as Howard Huntington, alias Nitro Nick, alias Picking Pete, Tom Murray as Sheriff Bryan, Henry Bergman as Sheriff on Train / Man in Railroad Station, Kitty Bradbury as Mrs Brown, Mai Wells as Little Boy’s Mother, and Marion Davies as congregation member (uncredited).

It runs 47 minutes, is made by Charlie Chaplin Productions and released by Associated First National Pictures (US) on 26 February 1923.

Purviance stars in Chaplin’s A Woman of Paris (1923), in which Chaplin has a cameo, but this is the last time they star together.

© Derek Winnert 2021 Classic Movie Review 11,754

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