“You’re Working By The Hour, Not The Ounce!”
Welcome to the first entry in my new series, Classic Cinema. This series will sporadically appear and will focus on classic films from the years prior to 1980. I’ll continue posting horror film reviews in my Classic Horror series and will utilize Throwback Thursday for any films released after 1980. I was inspired to start this new series after volunteering at the Calcasieu Parish Short Film Festival where we showed Charlie Chaplin’s final short film, Pay Day (1922), in celebration of its 100th anniversary.
In Pay Day, a silent short film, Chaplin portrays a worker at a construction site who digs a hole, stacks bricks, steals lunches, and believes that he is shorted on his wages at the end of the day. Upset, he heads out to a local bar in order to drink away his troubles. From there he ends up battling the rain, gets a bit lost, tries to catch a streetcar, and eventually makes his way home just in time to get in trouble with his wife.
The short is loaded with humorous gags. A work elevator is used for a running gag at the construction site. In one of the funniest moments in the film, Chaplin catches bricks from laborers below him. He catches them with his hands, back, legs, feet, and knees. He also falls for the foreman’s daughter (Edna Purviance) despite being married.
Speaking of his marriage in the film, Chaplin’s chemistry with Phyllis Allen is simply wonderful. The duo play off of one another to perfection. From quarreling over money to trying to sneak into the house without waking her up, Chaplin and Allen are hilarious together.
The short runs just over twenty minutes and is very funny. The musical accompaniment moves the story along at a great pace. The stunts and gags work to perfection. If you’ve never seen any of Chaplin’s work, check out this short. It serves as a bridge between his silent short film career and his amazing full length feature career.
Primary Cast:
- Charlie Chaplin – Laborer
- Phyllis Allen – His Wife
- Mack Swain – Foreman
- Edna Purviance – Foreman’s Daughter
Thanks for checking out my first Classic Cinema post. I hope that you enjoyed it. I might expand the category a bit more and focus a few of the posts on production, special effects, and film history. Let me know what you’d like to see in this series in the comments section below.
Ken's Alternate Universe! 