Quicklinks
Top Links
trailers and videosfull cast and crewtriviaofficial sitesmemorable quotesOverview
main detailscombined detailsfull cast and crewcompany creditsAwards & Reviews
user reviewsexternal reviewsawardsuser ratingsparents guidemessage boardPlot & Quotes
plot summarysynopsisplot keywordsmemorable quotesDid You Know?
triviagoofssoundtrack listingcrazy creditsalternate versionsmovie connectionsFAQOther Info
box office/businessrelease datesfilming locationstechnical specsliterature listingsNewsDeskPromotional
taglines trailers and videos posters photo galleryExternal Links
showtimesofficial sitesmiscellaneousphotographssound clipsvideo clipsReviews & Ratings for
Behind the Screen More at IMDbPro »
| Page 1 of 2: | [1] [2] ![[Next]](http://i.media-imdb.com/f86.gif){kind=small} |
| Index | 16 reviews in total |
6 out of 6 people found the following review useful:
Excellent Short - Plenty of Good Slapstick, & Much More, 20 August 2001
Author:
Snow Leopard from Ohio
"Behind the Screen" is an excellent Charlie Chaplin short feature, with
plenty of good slapstick and much more. The setting, with Charlie working
as a hired hand in a movie-making operation, lends itself to a lot of good
comedy, and there are plenty of standard gags plus a lot of material that
creatively uses the props and situations of the setting. It also works very
well as a self-satire of the industry (as suggested by the title), making
some subtle and other not so subtle points. Finally, there is some nice
interplay between Charlie's character and his superiors, especially his
burly, brutish immediate supervisor, played by Eric Campbell, an amusing
actor who was one of Chaplin's best supporting players.
Most of these earlier Chaplin films (referring to 1914-1916, the years when
he made the majority of his short features, making ten or more each year) do
not get very high ratings. It's true that some of them are mostly routine
slapstick, but there are also a few gems like this one that combine
slapstick with substance. Most of the movies from these years can be rather
hard to watch, because the film often survives in poor condition, and so
it's understandable that even the best ones might not always stand out as
clearly from the rest. But this one is a fine film, and definitely
recommended for Chaplin fans.
5 out of 6 people found the following review useful:
Excellent short comedy in which Charlie Chaplin satirizes his own craft., 25 July 2001
Author:
Michael DeZubiria (miked32@hotmail.com) from Luoyang, China
Chaplin plays the part of David, the lowly assistant to the oafish stage
hand Goliath, and as is to be expected, everything goes wrong in the most
hilarious ways. Being an early short Chaplin comedy, a good portion of the
comedy is slapstick, with such elaborately acted scenes as the one with
the
stage pillar prop that just would not seem to stand up.
Poor David works like a slave for the lazy Goliath, but at first, he just
keeps messing things up - he just can't seem to do anything right. But
later, when he starts working really hard and doing things right, his boss
always walks in just as he sits down to rest, and he gets into trouble for
loafing on the job, and Goliath, who spends most of his time sleeping,
gets
all of the credit for David's work.
Not only does this film satirize the falsity of film and stage, but it
also
goes into actual filming, in the surprisingly effective pie throwing
scene.
Eventually, all of the workers go on strike, leaving only David and
Goliath
on stage and, as is common in Chaplin's films, he ends up the victor as a
result of some inadvertent events concerning a trap door and a lot of guys
fighting. The ending of this film is unusually violent for a generally
light
Chaplin comedy, but the comedic value is never diminished.
3 out of 3 people found the following review useful:
"Dressing the scene", 13 February 2010
Author:
Steffi_P from Ruritania
Charlie Chaplin sometimes repeated himself when it came to ideas for
his comedy shorts, but only when his skill and technique had improved
significantly in the meantime. Behind the Screen treads similar ground
to Dough and Dynamite (made at Keystone) and His New Job (made at
Essanay), being a comical expose on the film-making process itself, but
it demonstrates all the development his style had made since those
older pictures.
One major difference is the audacity and satiric bite of Chaplin's
comedy by this point. Unlike the earlier examples, Behind the Screen
bases most of its jokes on the artificiality of cinema, with "marble"
pillars being shifted by hand, an "invisible" trapdoor that causes
mayhem, and eventually the dramatic department having its dignity
invaded by errant custard pies from a comedy set. He also has a sly dig
at pompous directors and lazy stagehands. All this from an era before
the majority of people in the audience wouldn't have really known
exactly what went on behind the cameras. Still there is enough broad
slapstick here to entertain the viewers who don't get the in-jokes.
Chaplin's management of the comedy is also now incredibly refined and
to-the-point. In the earliest scenes, he shows how he can make himself
the centre of attention without necessarily being in the foreground.
Whilst everyone else on the set stays fairly still, Charlie bustles
about all over the place leaving chaos in his wake. It's funnier this
way because we see the little tramp upsetting the order of his
environment.
The comedian had by now also accumulated a regular crew of supporting
players – comic actors who were more buffoonish and ridiculous than
funny in their own right, thus providing suitable antagonists for the
little tramp. Eric Campbell is as usual the burly bully – the tyrant of
a small pond who it is satisfying to see knocked down. Henry Bergman,
in only his second of what would be many appearances with Chaplin is
the perfect awkward fat man. He must have been a real find, and Charlie
seems to take every opportunity to knock him down to get that
undignified and helpless flailing of arms and legs that Bergman was the
master of. And of course he now has Edna Purviance – by now often the
only one allowed to be a completely straight actress. Her features are
too feminine to be a convincing tomboy, but at least she gets the
chance to be involved in some of the comedic action this time round.
Which leaves me only to give out the all-important statistic –
Number of kicks up the arse: 7 (5 for, 2 against)
3 out of 3 people found the following review useful:
pretty good Chaplin effort, 6 July 2006
Author:
planktonrules from Bradenton, Florida
In 1914 and early 1915, Chaplin did his first comedy shorts. In
general, they were pretty awful--with almost no plot and consisting of
him mugging it up on camera and hitting people. However, in 1915 he
left Keystone Studio and began making better films with Essenay (though
there are some exceptions) and finally, in 1916, to Mutual where he
made his best comedy shorts. These newer films had more plot and laughs
and usually didn't relay on punching or kicking when they ran out of
story ideas.
This film is one of these later Mutual Films and has a pretty decent
amount of plot. Charlie is a carpenter's assistant on a movie set and
his boss mostly sits around doing nothing--making Charlie do all the
work. Later, the crew goes on strike and Charlie gets to act (although
in real life, Chaplin's sympathies would have definitely been with the
workers). In addition, a lady sneaks onto the set and disguises herself
as a male laborer. Charlie realizes this and falls for her, though
everyone else thinks she's a guy. I particularly liked the scene where
Charlie is making out with the lady and really smooching it up
good--and his boss looks on with horror! Overall, this is a pretty
typical Mutual film--neither better or worse than the average one and
worth a look if you get the opportunity.
An interesting scene was the one where Charlie picks up the MANY chairs
and then the prop piano. This exact same scene was replicated by Syd
Chaplin (Charlie's half-brother) years later in THE BETTER 'OLE.
3 out of 3 people found the following review useful:
Edna Purviance was never cuter, 12 June 2004
Author:
23skidoo-4 from Calgary, Canada
*** This review may contain spoilers ***
(Spoiler warning)
The unsung star of many of Chaplin's best silent films has to be Edna
Purviance. She and Chaplin shared a chemistry that, to be honest, was
superior to all other on-screen pairings Chaplin enjoyed either in his
silent era, or later sound films. And that includes Paulette Goddard and
Claire Bloom.
Behind the Screen doesn't showcase Edna per se - she only appears in maybe 5
minutes of it - but she nearly steals the scene as a wannabe actress who
disguises herself as a male stagehand in order to break into show business.
Of course it doesn't take long for Charlie (here playing David to Eric
Campbell's burly Goliath) to see through the disguise. Mere moments later,
he and Edna are smooching up a storm, leading to one of the funniest moments
in all of Chaplin's silents when Campbell's character catches the two,
thinks they're gay, then starts "flying" around the room. Yes, it's
politically incorrect and yes, no one could get away with such a joke today.
But this was 1916 and no one cared. It was just a joke ... and a very funny
one.
Edna's best scene is when Charlie discovers her sitting alone, strumming a
guitar and singing. It's a very brief moment, but you can tell from how it's
filmed that Chaplin did indeed care about showcasing his favorite
co-star.
The rest of the film is a fast moving look behind the scenes at a movie
studio, and features a rapid fire succession of gags, including the
inevitable pie-throwing battle. An unexpectedly violent ending (played for
laughs but nonetheless probably fatal for those involved) leaves a strange
aftertaste, but otherwise this is an example of Chaplin hitting his stride
during his very productive middle-period of silent films. Highly recommended
both for fans and for those curious about the appeal of Edna
Purviance.
5 out of 7 people found the following review useful:
Early Chaplin: Self-Reference, 9 August 2005
Author:
Cineanalyst
*** This review may contain spoilers ***
It's very interesting and illuminating to screen Chaplin's early short
films, to see his evolution as a comedian and as a protagonist viewers
could root for. As well, one can trace the recurrent themes and see him
refining and expanding upon routines. The self-referential aspect of
"Behind the Screen" is one such scenario he had tried before, and it's
a significant advancement over those previous works, becoming the apex
of Chaplin's backstage parodies on film-making.
From the beginning, Chaplin was involved in self-referential comedies,
of which Mack Sennett's Keystone was of the first to explore in film.
Only his second film, "Kid Auto Races at Venice" featured Chaplin
mugging for the camera much to the annoyance of the cameraman. While at
Keystone, Chaplin was also involved in, at least, three similar shorts
where he causes mayhem backstage or during a scene: "A Film Johnnie",
"The Property Man" (which is set in vaudeville rather than
movie-making) and "The Masquerader". In 1915, he directed a much better
paced version of this scenario, "His New Job", while at Essanay. The
column gag in "Behind the Screen" is elaborated from the brief one in
"His New Job". Furthermore, the storyline of Edna Purviance's character
trying to get work at the studio by masquerading as a male is taken
from "The Masquerader", except then it was Chaplin pretending to be a
woman--a reversal upon a reversal. It also fits into the structure of
self-reference, as she's an actress playing a wannabe-actress who
pretends (acts) in an attempt to become an actress.
There are some well worked out gags here involving a trap door and pie
throwing, ruining movie scenes and generally causing havoc throughout a
film studio. Chaplin and Eric Campbell once again play out their
antagonism of David to Goliath. Even the homosexual joke works, without
being too offensive. There's also the anti-trade unions social
commentary and the violent explosive finale gag, both of which didn't
hamper the fun for me.
Others have seen a parody of Keystone's film-making and knockabout
slapstick in the film, and that certainly has credibility. As well,
it's remarkable how far Chaplin had come after only leaving Keystone
two years prior. "Behind the Screen" is a much-matured Chaplin short
that finds its humor in poking fun at what it is and what goes into
itself.
4 out of 6 people found the following review useful:
Reflections, 3 September 2002
Author:
tedg (tedg@FilmsFolded.com) from Virginia Beach
*** This review may contain spoilers ***
Spoilers herein.
The world's best filmmakers (to my mind: Welles, Tarkovsky, Kurosawa)
thought Chaplin among the world's best. And usually we think they mean the
films of 1925-40, over which he labored and in which he controlled nearly
every aspect. But I think the earlier ones have tremendous cleverness and
energy as well -- even genius that embodied more risk in the type of humor.
That's because by 1925, he was already worrying over what was funny, but a
decade earlier was just intuitively _being_ funny and in a sometimes more
incisive manner.
Sure, this one has piethrowing. And lots of pratfalls. And the standard
class commentary. But it has -- for the first time I know -- some fairly
sophisticated humor about itself. After all, the thing that made Chaplin's
later work so deep was its self-awareness and the trunk of that tree is
self-reference. So I consider this film, right here, to be the birth of
modern film humor.
Oddly, this film is accessible on DVD as an extra on the execrable `Cat's
Meow,' whose story involves a Chaplin-like character. That film is the
converse of self-reference: is supposed to be (in fact has all its value in)
self-reference but is not.
Ted's Evaluation -- 3 of 4: Worth watching.
1 out of 1 people found the following review useful:
The tramp causes a riot at a movie studio and falls for tomboy Edna, 3 February 2011
Author:
Petri Pelkonen (petri_pelkonen@hotmail.com) from Finland
This silent short takes place in a movie studio.Charlie Chaplin is a stagehand named David.Eric Campbell is Goliath, his supervisor.Edna Purviance is a girl wanting to be an actress, dresses as a man and becomes a stagehand.Behind the Screen is a Chaplin film from 1916.Charles Chaplin plays the clown we all remember him as.Edna Purviance looks real pretty in this picture, wearing a boy's outfit.And then when that long hair comes out off that hat...And Charlie gets to give her many kisses! The movie involves some great pie throwing.And the lunch break is most amusing, where Charlie starts playing with the pie tins.And the gag with the lever and the trap door.This Chaplin comedy is a treat!
Great for Some Laughs, 22 March 2010
Author:
brando647 from Orlando, FL
From 1916, this is one of Charlie Chaplin's more entertaining short films in my opinion. Chaplin is a stage assistant named David, who works under the oppressive Goliath. Problems arise when the other stage hands go on strike, leaving the work for David while Goliath torments him. One reason this film appeals to me is that, not only go you get Chaplin's usual funny schtick, but you also get a glimpse into a film studio of the time. I love seeing the simplicity of the studio sets, the single boxy film camera, and even the use of a trap door for one hilarious bit. I always love the back-and-forth between Chaplin and frequent collaborator Eric Campbell and this is one of their better shows. For that extra chuckle, the film even includes a pie fight in the finale. You can't go wrong with one of Chaplin's funnier early efforts such as BEHIND THE SCREEN.
Backstage buffoonery, 6 October 2009
Author:
mutty_mcflea from Bristol, UK
Chappers is an overworked stage hand labouring under bullying lazybones Eric Campbell; Edna Purviance is the wannabe actress who sneaks into the studio disguised as a man. This one takes a little while to get going, but once it builds up a head of steam it's hilarious. My favourite scene is Chaplin putting on the helmet from a suit of armour to protect himself from an onion-eating co-worker, and then trying to eat a slice of bread – his timing in this bit is absolutely pitch perfect, and I was roaring. Other highlights include Chappers loading himself up with chairs, and Campbell's face when he gets his head stuck in a trap door! It's bitty, but very funny.
| Page 1 of 2: | [1] [2] |
Related Links
| Plot summary | Amazon.com summary | Ratings |
| External reviews | Plot keywords | Main details |
| Your user reviews | Your vote history |
Copyright © 1990-2012
IMDb.com, Inc.
Terms and Privacy Policy under which this service is provided to you.
An 
company.