PROFILBARU.COM

The Idle Class
The Idle Class
	Lobby card
Directed by	Charlie Chaplin
Written by	Charlie Chaplin
Produced by	Charlie Chaplin
Starring	Charlie Chaplin; Edna Purviance; Henry Bergman; Mack Swain
Cinematography	Roland Totheroh
Edited by	Charlie Chaplin
Music by	Johnnie von Haines (1969) Charlie Chaplin (1972)
Production; company	Charles Chaplin Productions
Distributed by	First National; Playhouse Home Video (1985) (USA); Key Video (1989) (USA) (VHS); Image Entertainment (2000) (USA) (DVD); Koch Vision (2000) (USA) (DVD); MK2 Diffusion (2001) (World-wide) (all media); Warner Home Video (2004, DVD); Continental Home Vídeo (Brazil) (VHS)
Release date	September 25, 1921;
Running time	32 minutes
Country	United States
Language	Silent (English intertitles)

The Idle Class

The Idle Class is a 1921 American silent comedy film written and directed by Charlie Chaplin for First National Pictures.

Plot

The "Little Tramp" heads to a resort for warm weather and golf. At the golf course, the Tramp's theft of balls in play causes one golfer to mistakenly attack another. Meanwhile, a neglected wife leaves her wealthy husband until he gives up drinking. When the Tramp is later mistaken for a pickpocket, he crashes a masquerade ball to escape from a policeman. There, he is mistaken for the woman's husband. Eventually, it is all straightened out, and the Tramp is once more on his way.

Cast

Charlie Chaplin as Tramp / Husband
Edna Purviance as Neglected Wife
Mack Swain as Her Father
Henry Bergman as Sleeping Hobo / Guest in Cop Uniform
Al Ernest Garcia as Cop in Park / Guest
John Rand as Golfer / Guest
Rex Storey as Pickpocket / Guest
Lita Grey as Guest

Reception

Helen Rockwell of the New York Telegraph wrote,

"...instead of going for a five-reel affair, he has returned to his first short love. But what there is of The Idle Class is so good and so funny that one realizes how much better is it to be entertained by two reels than bored in five."^[1]

Chaplin biographer Jeffrey Vance describes The Idle Class as “one of Chaplin’s funniest short comedies.”^[2] He notes that Chaplin began production on the film in January 1921 with the working title Vanity Fair:

“Ultimately, Chaplin favored a more equivocal title—The Idle Class—for it is purposely not clear in the film which is the idle class: the idle rich or the idle poor. Chaplin plays both. The film took five months to complete, an amazingly long time for a two-reel comedy.” Vance speculates, “It is perhaps ironic that the story of The Idle Class centers on an unhappy marriage between an absent-minded husband and a lonely wife. This state of affairs could easily describe the principal characters of the tragi-comedy that was Chaplin’s own marriage. In the film Chaplin manages to dramatize the two sides of his own personality: Charlie the Tramp and the Absent-minded husband, rich and neglectful, absorbed to his own interests and indifferent to others. The latter was certainly how Mildred Harris [his first wife] regarded Chaplin.”^[2]

References

^ "The Idle Class (25 September 1921)". Chaplin: Film by Film. August 31, 2018. Retrieved December 4, 2018.
^ ^a ^b Vance, Jeffrey (2003) Chaplin: Genius of the Cinema New York: Harry N. Abrams, pg. 117 and 121. ISBN 0-8109-4532-0