One o'clock at night

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Movie
German title One o'clock at night
Original title One AM
Country of production United States
original language English
Publishing year 1916
length 2 reels, 610 meters, at 22 fps 24 minutes
Rod
Director Charles Chaplin
script Charles Chaplin, Vincent Bryan, Maverick Terrell
production Henry P. Caulfield, Charles Chaplin
camera William C. Foster, Roland Totheroh
cut Charles Chaplin
occupation

One o'clock at night (original title One AM ) is an American film that Charles Chaplin made for Mutual Co. in 1916 . Chaplin wrote the script with Vincent Bryan and Maverick Terrell. He also did the editing. Apart from the brief appearance with Albert Austin as a taxi driver, Chaplin mastered this film as a soloist. "One AM" was Chaplin's fourth film with the Mutual Co. It was released on August 7, 1916 in American cinemas.

action

In a bon vivant dress with tailcoat, cape and top hat , a young man arrives in front of his house late at night in a taxi after an extensive drinking tour. He fights with the car door when getting out and then with the chauffeur when paying. On the way to the front door, he thinks he has forgotten his house key and so prepares to get in through the window. He climbs into a fishbowl that is under the window and almost falls when the carpet slips away from under him. When he has regained his balance, he searches his trouser pockets and realizes that he did have the key. He goes back to the window, gets out and comes back in through the front door.

In the house, furniture and other inanimate objects prove to be almost insurmountable obstacles for the drunk. He struggles for his balance on sliding carpets and thinks he's on roller skates. He falls and lands between a tiger skin and a stuffed lynx, which he is frightened of because he thinks they are alive. He walks over to the table and tries to pour himself a glass, but first he turns the table top in circles and then he fails to get the liquid into the glass. Then he tries in vain to light a cigarette, finally he wants to climb the stairs that lead to his bedroom. Several times he misses the stairs; a large cuckoo clock at the top of the stairs is also difficult. His attempts to climb the stairs are becoming more and more resourceful, and he even uses mountaineering equipment.

When he finally gets to his bedroom, he struggles with the fold-up bed until he breaks it. He gives up the idea of ​​sleeping in his bed and goes to the bathroom. There he gets into the shower, which he accidentally turns on. Soaked, he lies in the bathtub and falls asleep under a towel.

background

Charles Chaplin had developed into a real movie star while at the production company Essanay . The competitor Mutual Co. recruited him for what was then a proud sum. With her, Chaplin was able to expand his reputation as a star due to good working conditions; Twelve short films he was for Mutual Co. rotate.

One AM was established in Lone Star Studio in Hollywood and was in America through the Mutual Co. sold. The photographers were William C. Foster and Roland Totheroh . The equipment was provided by the prop master George Cleethorpe and the scriptwriter ET Mazy. Ed Brewer was the technical director.

In 1932 Amedee van Beuren bought Chaplin's mutual comedies from Van Beuren Studios. He added music by Gene Rodemich and Winston Sharples to them , added sound effects and distributed them as sound films through RKO Radio Pictures , without Chaplin being able to take legal action against it.

reception

This short film by Chaplin, like his other mutual comedies, only came to Germany after the First World War .

The Mutual Society's films included several masterpieces: “One o'clock in the morning” [sic], “The Vagabond”, “The Pawn Shop”, “Behind the Screen” and others (R. Payne).

One o'clock at night , Chaplin's fourth film in his series for the Mutual Company, premiered on August 7, 1916. This film became famous for the opening sequence with the taxi driver, played by Albert Austin, and for the brilliant solo number as a drunkard - an absolute highlight in Chaplin's comedy. "( Filmkommunikation Thüringen).

“The arrangements and objects reflect one's habits and projects. Thus the basic joke in “One AM” centers on the way that Charlie acts estranged from his own house and possessions. He is not merely clumsy and so comic because drunk; he also appears comically absent-minded in a Bergsonian sense, lost in his own place and at odds with the physical objects he encounters in it, even though these objects are his possessions and their arrangement is ostensibly his. " (Lawrence Howe et al., P. 4)

"Vienna - The question of" how things may look when we are not looking at them "is what the recently deceased Nobel laureate for literature José Saramago has dealt with since childhood and in one of his last diary entries. Surprisingly and in an" unobserved "one. Unfortunately, he was never able to surprise things at the moment. But even in old age he unwaveringly assumed a life of their own. Charlie Chaplin at least made concrete experiences with his household effects in One AM . In the slapstick comedy from 1916, he fought against door late at night , Bed and carpet as well as stuffed wildcats. In addition to the films "Hotel Elettrico" and "Fantasmagorie", which were made in 1908, the film sets the mood for a disorganized human order, which one also encounters with the design objects by ak7. " (Ivona Jelcic, The Secret Life of the Dressing Table, in: Tiroler Tageszeitung, October 12, 2010)

“Above all this film demonstrates the comic butt who not only has rendered himself impaired due to drinking, but who repeatedly makes situations worse with his clumsy choice of actions as he tries to execute simple tasks such as lighting a cigarette or walking up the stairs. .. ”(Lawrence Howe et al., P. 10)

“Falling is a main motif in 'One AM', more so than in any other Chaplin film. He falls no fewer than thirty-six times, well over once per minute. Undoubtedly this is the “technical virtuosity” Chaplin refers to, and it is impressive. Indeed, it's hard to see how he manages to do some of these falls without injury. Each is slightly different from the others, carefully motivated by his action, and they built to an amazing series of falls down the twin staircases. " (D. Kamin p. 44)

Chaplin himself described 'One AM' as “a pure exercise in mime and technical virtuosity with no plot or secondary characters” (Kamin p. 41).

“Silent film comedy, with its childlike love of the illogical, the destructive and the anti-social, seems to suggest a form of comic revolt against the mechanization and the uniformity of the machine age, but ... a new consumer culture sought simultaneously to tame and contain these energies, redirecting them in the service of a newly emergent mass culture. " (Blurb on Alan Bilton: Silent Film Comedy and American Culture, 2013)

Re-performance

One AM was quoted in Vienna alongside the films "Hotel Elettrico" and "Fantasmagorie" at the exhibition The Art of Design , which was held from October 2 to November 21, 2010 in the "freiraum quartier21 INTERNATIONAL, MuseumsQuartier Wien" by the Tyrolean artist group ak7 - Contemporary Design by Contemporary Artists was shown.

The cultural channel Arte showed One AM on December 23, 2013 on German television with musical accompaniment by Carl Davis as a prelude to a Charlie Chaplin series.

Several publishers have now brought One AM onto DVD .

literature

  • Alan Bilton: Silent Film Comedy and American Culture. Palgrave Macmillan Publisher, Basingstoke, Hampshire 2013, ISBN 978-1-137-02025-3 .
  • Erich Burger: Charlie Chaplin. Rudolf Mosse, Berlin 1929.
  • Heinrich Fraenkel: Immortal Film. The great chronicle. From the magic lantern to the sound film. Part of the picture by Wilhelm Winckel. Kindler, Munich 1956, pp. 176-178, 393.
  • Lawrence Howe, James E. Caron, Benjamin Click: Refocusing Chaplin. A Screen Icon through Critical Lenses. Verlag Scarecrow Press, 2013, ISBN 978-0-8108-9226-2 , pp. Vi, 2, 4, 6, 8-9, 19, 218 and others. 222.
  • Dan Kamin: The Comedy of Charlie Chaplin. Artistry in Motion. Scarecrow Press, Lanham, Maryland / USA, 2008, pp. Xiii, 25, 37, 41 ff, 44, 50-51, 56, 63, 87, 98, 102, 124, 220-221 and the like. 223.
  • Andrea Melcher: From a writer to a language writer? Alfred Döblin's concern with film and radio, 1909–1932. (= European university publications. Series 1: German language and literature. Volume 1553). Verlag Peter Lang, Basel 1996, ISBN 3-631-49153-0 , p. 62.
  • James L. Neibaur: Early Charlie Chaplin. The Artist as Apprentice at Keystone Studios. (= G - Reference, Information and Interdisciplinary Subjects Series ). Scarecrow Press, Lanham, Maryland / USA, 2012, ISBN 978-0-8108-8242-3 , pp. 77, 212, 226.
  • Robert Payne: The Great Charlie. Biography of a clown. Andre Deutsch Limited, London 1952. (German: The great Charlie. A biography of the clown. European Publishing House Frankfurt am Main 1952)
  • Johannes Schmitt: Charlie Chaplin. A dramaturgical study. Lit-Verlag, Münster 2006, ISBN 3-8258-9317-0 , p. 48.
  • Friedrich von Zglinicki: The way of the film. History of cinematography and its predecessors. Berlin, Rembrandt Verlag 1956, pp. 515, 517-520.

Web links

Commons : One o'clock at night  - collection of images, videos and audio files

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ cf. Boozemovies.com boozemovies.com : "Not only was this short experimental at the time - apart from a brief appearance of Albert Austin as the cab driver delivering Charlie home, Chaplin performs the short solo - it also set the bar for staggering slapstick."
  2. ↑ According to D. Kamin, Totheroh made his debut with this film as a cameraman for Chaplin at Mutual , cf. P. 41: “'One AM' is also notable in that it marks the debut of Rollie Totheroh as Chaplin's chief cameraman and cinematographer”
  3. ↑ cf. WaverBoy, entry # 285, 29 May 2007 silentcomedians.com ( Memento from January 13, 2014 in the web archive archive.today )
  4. ↑ According to Burger, around 55 Chaplin films were censored and shown in Germany between 1921 and the end of the silent film era (Zglinicki p. 519), including 'One AM', which here is called “Chaplin has a Schwips”. In Germany it was also shown under the title “One o'clock in the morning”.
  5. ↑ so Robert Payne, quoted in at Zglinicki p. 517.
  6. ↑ cf. fk-thueringen.de fk-thueringen.de
  7. ↑ cf. ak7.at ak7.at
  8. ↑ cf. arte.tv arte.tv ( Memento of the original from March 31, 2014 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link was inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. @1@ 2Template: Webachiv / IABot / www.arte.tv
  9. ↑ cf. Dr. Achim Lewandowski: DVD recommendation No. 7 - Films with Charlie Chaplin alewand.de