A Dog’s Life *** (1918, Charles Chaplin, Edna Purviance, Syd Chaplin) – Classic Movie Review 11,753

Director Charles Chaplin’s 1918 Chaplin three-reeler (40 minutes) silent comedy A Dog’s Life is a sweet, amusing and often ingenious silent movie, in which his little Tramp character is a desperate beggar joined by a kindred soul – a mongrel called Scraps.

Their conditions are paralleled – Charlie’s frustrated search for a job and the dog’s quest for a bone.

As writer, Chaplin poignantly draws on his past as street seller and inmate of the workhouse, but thankfully adds jokes, tying a cop’s shoelaces together, sheltering next to a fence full of holes. He meets Edna Purviance as a bar singer in a dance hall cabaret – and soon rescues her, himself and the pooch from a dog’s life.

Chaplin’s brother Syd Chaplin [Sydney Chaplin] has a small role as lunch wagon owner, marking the first time the brothers were on screen together.

It 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 composed a new score added for the film’s inclusion in the 1957 The Chaplin Revue.

Also in the cast are Syd Chaplin, Charles Reisner, Henry Bergman, Albert Austin, Tom Wilson, M J McCarty, Mel Brown, Charles Force, Bert Appling, Thomas Riley, Slim Cole, Ted Edwards, and Louis Fitzroy.

© Derek Winnert 2021 Classic Movie Review 11,753

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