Tillie's Punctured Romance (1914 film)

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Tillie's Punctured Romance

Directed by	Mack Sennett
Produced by	Mack Sennett
Written by	Hampton Del Ruth Mack Sennett
Starring	Marie Dressler Mabel Normand Charles Chaplin Mack Swain Chester Conklin Charley Chase (uncredited) Gordon Griffith (uncredited)
Release date(s)	November 14, 1914
Running time	82 min
Country	US
Language	Silent
All Movie Guide profile
IMDb profile

Description of Charlie Chaplin's character

Description of Marie Dressler's character

Tillie's Punctured Romance was the first feature-length comedy film from Keystone Film Company and the Christie Film Company, produced in 1914. A silent film directed by Mack Sennett, the film stars Marie Dressler, Mabel Normand, and Charles Chaplin, as well as the Keystone Kops.

1 Plot
2 Characteristics of the Film
3 See also
4 External links

[edit] Plot

Chaplin plays a womanizing city man who meets Tillie (played by Dressler) in the country after a fight with his girlfriend. When he sees that Tillie's father has a very large bankroll for his workers, he persuades her to elope with him. In the city, he meets the woman he was seeing already, played by Mabel Normand, and tries to work around the complication to steal Tillie's money. He gets Tillie drunk in a restaurant and asks her to let him hold the pocketbook. Since she is drunk, she agrees, and he escapes with his old girlfriend and the money.

Later that day, they see a picture show entitled "A Thief's Fate," which illustrates their thievery in the form of a morality play. They both feel guilty and leave the theatre. While sitting on a park bench, a paperboy asks him to buy a paper. He does so, and reads the story about Tillie's Uncle Banks, a millionaire who died while on a mountain-climbing expedition. Tillie is named sole heir and inherits three million dollars. The man leaves his girlfriend on the park bench and runs to the restaurant, where Tillie is now forced to work to support herself, as she is too embarrassed to go home. He begs her to take her back and marries her. Although she is skeptical at first, she believes that he truly loves her. They move into the uncle's mansion and throw a big party, which ends horribly when Tillie finds her husband with his old girlfriend, smuggled into the house and working as one of their maids.

The uncle is found on a mountaintop, and didn't die after all. He goes back to his mansion, which was in disarray after Tillie instigated a gunfight which, luckily, didn't harm anyone. Uncle Banks insists that Tillie be arrested for the damage she has caused to his house. The three run from the cops all the way to a dock, where a car "bumps" Tillie into the water. She flails about, hoping to be rescued. She is eventually pulled to safety, and both Tillie and the man's girlfriend realize that they are too good for him. He leaves, and the two girls become friends.

[edit] Characteristics of the Film

Chaplin's character is distinctly different from the "Little Tramp" character. Instead, he is rude, arrogant, violent, and dishonest.

The comedy in the film is largely slapstick: people frequently kick each other on the bum or trip each other; four men attempt to (and are unable to) help Tillie up when she falls; Tillie, taken to the police station, has a police officer wave his finger in her face, and she bites it.

Milton Berle always claimed that he played the five-year-old paperboy in the film but the role was actually portrayed by Gordon Griffith.