The Better 'Ole (1926) User Reviews

first half is pretty dull and the second half is great fun

[planktonrules · 7/10 · 4 July 2006]

This WWI comedy stars Charlie Chaplin's half-brother, Syd. Physically, he doesn't look much like him, but with his bushy mustache looks highly reminiscent of the Keystone comedian, Chester Conklin.

The first half of the film is very mundane and frankly it bored me. Nothing particularly funny occurred and the plot just seemed stuck. About the only thing that happened was the corporal making life miserable for Syd and his underlings because he was just a power-hungry jerk. Fortunately, towards the middle, it abruptly became extremely funny and I found myself laughing out loud. In fact, my wife came in the room and after a moment or two, she was laughing as well! So, let's skip talking about the first half except to say that Chaplin in a career private and dislikes his jerk of a corporal, played by Edgar Kennedy. When the movie switches to the show being put on for the troops, it picks up greatly. Seeing one of the guys in drag was cute, and Syd and his buddy dressed in an amazingly articulated horse suit provided a lot of laughs.

Unfortunately, the Germans attack during the show and the British troops scatter--leaving Syd and his buddy stuck in the horse costume and unable to get out in time! So, they continue to pretend they are a horse. Now this sounds stupid but was made believable because by the time they were discovered, the Germans who saw them were quite drunk! And it was pretty cute seeing them try to escape--especially when the horse head fell off and Syd's dog jumped into the costume (a horse with a dog's head is definitely memorable).

Later, once they are out of the suit, they attack a couple Germans and steal their uniforms. They then discover the German's plan to evacuate the town for the British and leave it booby-trapped to blow up! They also discover that one of the British officers is a German spy. Well, Syd rises to the occasion and the day is miraculously saved. The General is so thrilled that he offers to give Syd ANYTHING he wants, so Syd asks to become a sergeant so he can pay back Edgar Kennedy for all the awful things he did to him in the first part of the film! The film gets high marks for being entertaining and original. It is a FAR, FAR better film than Buster Keaton's WWI film, DOUGHBOYS and a little better than Laurel and Hardy's PACK UP YOUR TROUBLES (good film but too much sentimentality).

PS--Watch the scene just before Syd dons the horse suit. Watching him packing up chairs is amazing--such a seemingly mundane task done in such a swift and amazing way.

Where is the better hole?

[Jim Tritten · 5/10 · 29 August 2002]

Fair silent comedy that does not play well to a modern audience -- probably because it is not slapstick enough to be funny today and because the drama appears more of an afterthought to what could have been a pure comedy. The first half of the movie drags but the second half is bearable.

Film opens with our hero, Syd Chaplin, and his pal in the trenches where they are chastised by bully Corporal Austin (Edgar Kennedy) –for singing after having survived a shelling. IMDb credits list Ed Kennedy as Corporal Quint but the actual film credit is quite clear. Film shift to the town of Boucaret where we encounter the traitor Major Russett who is in league with Gaspard, the owner of the Rooster Inn. Long and not particularly interesting sequence where Syd gets breakfast.

Cabaret night is mildly funny as Syd picks up thirteen chairs and a piano to clear the stage. Town transitions from British to German control. Syd and pal get left behind in horse costume. Probably best scenes are where Syd serves German General lunch and then sits on the body of an unconscious German soldier whose legs he arranges to look like his own. Syd and pal manage to fool German guards and eventually break free to help British Intelligence Officer save the British troops that come back into Boucaret. Syd is promoted to Sergeant thus giving him the opportunity to pay back Edgar Kennedy.

In many of these old silent war movies, even if the plot is threadbare, the shots of old war equipment or tactics might be of interest today. This is not one of those movies. Nor was Syd as good as his half-brother Charlie.

Horsing Around with the Other Chaplin

[wes-connors · 5/10 · 21 October 2007]

Syd Chaplin (as "Old Bill" Busby) and Jack Ackroyd (as Little "Alfie") are World War I servicemen; while being bombarded, in a foxhole, Mr. Chaplin tells Mr. Ackroyd, "If you knows of a better 'ole - go to it." This exchange gives the film its peculiar title. The characters are based on the (by now) obscure British cartoon comic "Old Bill", by Bruce Bairnsfather. Seeing the familiar characters brought to the screen might have made the opening scenes delightful, but they no longer entertain. Veterans (of film) Edgar Kennedy (as Austin) and Harold Goodwin (as Bert Chester) help make the early going bearable.

Ackroyd's stabbing of Chaplin as he sleeps under a bale of hay begins some intermittently good scenes. Chaplin's chair lifting ability amazes, and the Chaplin/Ackroyd team becomes funnier as the comedy progresses; they are most delightful as "two-men-in-a-horse".

The production levels offered by Warner Brothers are quite high; "The Better 'Ole" was the second film to make use of the studio's synchronized music and sound effects "Vitaphone" process. With a certain British sibling named "Charlie" experiencing a "Gold Rush" at the box office, it's easy to understand Warner's effort.

***** The Better 'Ole (10/7/26) Charles Reisner ~ Syd Chaplin, Jack Ackroyd, Edgar Kennedy, Harold Goodwin

A better 'ole, a lesser Chaplin

[F Gwynplaine MacIntyre · 7 July 2002]

Syd Chaplin was a successful silent-film comedian whose importance has been upstaged by his much more famous half-brother. But in fact it was Syd Chaplin who helped kid brother Charlie get his first jobs as a performer in Victorian music-halls. After Charlie Chaplin became a film star, it was big brother Syd who negotiated the contracts that made Charlie a multi-millionaire. Richard Attenborough's film biography "Chaplin" sadly neglected the major contributions which Syd Chaplin made to Charlie's career, in addition to entirely ignoring Syd's own career as a comedian.

Like the Addams Family movies, "The Better 'Ole" is a live-action movie based on characters that originally appeared as magazine cartoons. "The Better 'Ole" stars Syd Chaplin in heavy make-up as Old Bill, a Tommy Atkins (private infantryman) in the British Expeditionary Forces during the Great War. Some historical background is necessary here. Americans of a certain age will recall Willie and Joe, the two riflemen drawn by American cartoonist (and infantryman) Bill Mauldin for "Stars and Stripes" magazine during World War Two. During the same period, English military humourist W.J.P. Jones was lampooning British Army officers in a panel cartoon called "The Two Types". What those characters represented for the Second World War, "Old Bill" represented for the British army during the First World War. Old Bill was created by Bruce Bairnsfather, a B.E.F. army captain and talented cartoonist. Bairnsfather's most famous drawing depicted Old Bill and a younger infantryman in a filthy trench full of rainwater. The younger man has clearly just finished uttering a complaint, and the caption reveals Old Bill's reply in his Cockney accent: "If you knows a better 'ole, go to it." That scene is re-enacted by Syd Chaplin in this movie, along with several more of Bairnsfather's drawings. (Bairnsfather's creation also became a London stage play, and there was a 1919 film version made in England ... so this movie is a Hollywood remake.)

Most of this film's appeal will be lost to modern viewers, who can't be expected to realise how incredibly popular (and how important to morale) Bairnsfather's cartoons were for the British war effort (and, to a lesser extent, the American war effort) during the Great War. Alas, too much of the humour here is too predictable. The best scene in "The Better 'Ole" occurs when Old Bill and his troopmate Alf go behind enemy lines disguised as the front and rear of a horse. This sequence is funny, but it's too similar to a scene in the earlier film "Shoulder Arms", in which Charlie Chaplin is a doughboy who goes behind enemy lines disguised as a tree. The fact that Syd Chaplin appears in "Shoulder Arms" (in two supporting roles) only emphasises how derivative "The Better 'OIe" is.

"The Better 'Ole" features good supporting performances by comedy veteran Edgar Kennedy and his unjustly obscure half-brother Tom Kennedy. The Kennedy brothers both had long film careers but only seldom worked together because they were similar physical types. Here, they're in separate scenes.

I enjoyed "The Better 'Ole" but I expect that most modern audiences lack the patience for it. Syd Chaplin deserves to be rediscovered, but this movie isn't one of his best efforts.

The Willie and Joe of the First World War

[bkoganbing · 7/10 · 26 May 2014]

Although the character of Old Bill and his pal Alf had its origins in the comic strips of Great Britain in doing a bit of research I was surprised to learn that the play on which this film was based was produced by the American actor Charles Coburn. It ran 353 performances and it starred Coburn on Broadway as well during the 1918-19 season. But it came to the screen as a vehicle for Sydney Chaplin, older brother of Charlie Chaplin and a fair comic himself.

Curiously enough one of Charlie's successes was a service comedy set in World War II Shoulder Arms. But in this case the comedy is set in the British army with the British born Sydney Chaplin.

Whatever else Old Bill is, he's a survivor. He and partner Alf played by John Ackroyd are the Willie and Joe of the British Expeditionary Force. The situations these two find themselves could easily be adapted to World War II era service comedies that conceivably would have starred folks like Bob Hope or Danny Kaye.

Briefly put the plot has Old Bill and Alf foiling a major German offensive almost singlehandedly. A remarkable achievement for a pair that make gold bricking an art form.

I'd check out The Better 'Ole to see what a funny guy Charlie's brother could be.

Fun in France

[richardchatten · 7/10 · 23 October 2016]

Syd Chaplin is Bruce Bairnsfather's cartoon creation to the life in this, the second screen adaptation of the play he wrote with Arthur Elliot in 1917. Aged only 41, Charlie Chaplin's elder brother Syd looks twenty years older as the laconic army veteran who even for a silent film says very little. Although frequently called upon to show great athletic prowess (it comes as no surprise when he turns out to be able to pick up a piano in one hand), Chaplin remains for the most part quietly inscrutable behind that enormous moustache that makes it difficult to see where his mouth is, but for the pipe usually sticking out of it.

Although there is quite a lot of plot, the film for the most part comprises a series of comic episodes, some of them quite surreal, such as the lengthy sequence in which Bill and little Alphie get drunk while careering around terrorising Germans dressed as a pantomime horse... No, really! (Contrary to the late F. Gwynplaine MacIntyre's earlier declaration, by the way, the Kennedy brothers do share the screen together in a play staged for the troops: Tom as a blacksmith shielding his daughter from a nasty Hun played by Edgar). Great fun, handsomely produced.

the other Chaplin

[SnoopyStyle · 7/10 · 26 September 2022]

In WWI, Bert Chester is in the British Secret Service and working the British lines alongside the lowly soldiers. Pvt. William 'Old Bill' Busby (Syd Chaplin) is the beloved 30 years veteran of the service. He's a comedic everyman who won't be rising up the ranks any time soon.

I don't know anything about Syd Chaplin. Apparently, he's the older half-brother of Charlie Chaplin and had his own movie career during the silent era. The brothers were very close. One can certainly see similar mannerisms. Syd is a chunkier and older version of his famous brother. That works comedically. I'm actually surprised that he didn't get more play as the Tramp's friend or family. He would fit very nicely as a carnival mirror image of the iconic character. Maybe he's a little too close for comedic purposes. They would step on each other comedically. In this movie, he's a rougher version of the Tramp. I really like this character. He's fun. As for the movie, it runs a bit longer than I expected. It's full-length like a modern film. It runs out of steam. The horse bit goes on too long. I like my silent films a lot shorter unless they are involved stories. I'm not that involved with this story.

Terrible waste of time and energy

[morrisonhimself · 2/10 · 26 September 2022]

This is my second attempt to watch this totally worthless excuse of a movie. I cannot see any value in it, except maybe as a bad example of a silent movie about The Great War, a movie that is supposed to be funny.

Syd Chaplin, Charlie's older brother, does a lot of mugging the camera, including from inside a costume horse, but none of it was funny.

The other people in the cast of "The Better 'Ole" try as hard as they can, but without any funny material, it's all a waste.

Considering this is rather late in the history of silent movies, it's really hard to understand why there is a lot of knockabout, a lot of falling down, but almost nothing funny.

Apparently Syd Chaplin had some success, was considered a comedic character, but judging by "The Better 'Hole," I cannot see why.

Tonight, 25 Sept 2022, is at least the second time TCM has shown it, There are so many good movies, including good silent movies, I just do not understand why it's being shown again.

One of the funniest!!!

[tgallo-3 · 10/10 · 14 July 2006]

Oh my goodness this is one of the funniest movies I have ever seen. There are scenes I laughed so hard I thought I would burst. Funny throughout.... so sad Syd did not get the acclaim of his half brother...he deserved every bit of it... I was wary of a silent film about war... but I was not disappointed in the least... it is one of those movies one wishes could go on forever...it was so very good... at least if you like Chaplinesque type of slapstick others in the movie were also very funny... If you enjoy slapstick and comedy...if you love old silent films long lost...then you will really enjoy this movie. It is set in France during World War I when German was invading and controlling the country side...the Allies in this movie are the British and the comedy is without limits to nationality.

The Other Chaplin

[Michael_Elliott · 28 February 2008]

Better 'Ole, The (1926)

** (out of 4)

Due to his legendary younger brother people have forgotten the work of Syd Chaplin. Forgotten is that this guy form the comedy genre and pretty much formed his younger brother Charles. This film here is yet another forgotten one but is slightly remembered for being Warner's second feature film to have the Vitaphone sound. The film, based on newspaper cartoon characters, features Syd as 'Old Bill', a legendary figure fighting in WW1 who constantly finds himself battling an uphill fight. This is a rather strange comedy because the film remains highly entertaining even though there's not a single laugh to be found it in. All of the jokes aren't what I'd call funny but they are amusing in some weird way and in the end the film really isn't too bad. The Vitaphone sound includes various sound effects, a couple whispered words and that's about it but I was surprised at how well it all sounded considering this technology was under a year old. Several of the gags are based around these sound effects and there are a couple unique ones including a scene where a bomb goes off in a barn and Syd finds himself covered with hay. There's also a very long sequence dealing with Syd and his buddy getting into a cow outfit and causing all sorts of trouble. I was also surprised at how big the budget was on this thing because the war scenes look top notch and all the costume detail is top notch. Even with that said, the comedy just doesn't come off as funny but for fans of early sound cinema this is worth viewing at least once.

Bairnsfather's other films

[battlefields · 1 January 2009]

There is more about Bairnsfather's films in his biography - IN SEARCH OF THE BETTER OLE published by Pen and Sword Books, Barnsley, UK. His most famous cartoon was the Better Ole but his most famous film was 'Carry on Sergeant' the phrase that gets most Army Officers through wars. The film was made in Canada in 1928 but caused furore in the country when a Canadian soldier was shown going upstairs with a girl in an estaminet. It did not do well mainly because it was a silent film just at the time that the talkies were taking off eg The Jazz Singer. Originally 14 reels long it has been shortened in the modern era and has been shown on Canadian television. Other films by Bairnsfather are The Better Ole 1918, Old Bill through the Ages 1924, The Better Ole 1926, Vitaphone personal appearance 1927 and Old Bill and Son 1941.

Little-known but splendid comedy

[rfwilmut · 15 September 2020]

The film is an excellent silent comedy, well up to the standard of many better-remembered films. There is one delirious sequence involving Bill, and another soldier inside a pantomime horse. They are taking part, reluctantly, in a daft play for the troops, in a French village close to enemy lines, and manage to muck it up in various predictable ways. Most comedians would have stopped there, but the gag is built up and built up for about twenty minutes.

Firstly, there is a surprise attack by the Germans. The troops withdraw hurriedly, but the two inside the horse are trapped by falling scenery. By the time they get clear - having to attack a couple of Germans in the process, their own troops have gone.

Realising their position, they shuffle over to a horse trough and join a couple of real (and rather surprised) horses. Two German soldiers, too drunk to realise that not all the horses are real, lead the two real and the pantomime horse to a stable. As the Germans get more and more drunk and Old Bill and his mate try to get away there is a good deal of byplay: then Bill manages to snaffle some cognac and he and the other soldier proceed to get pretty drunk themselves. This does nothing for the realism of their act as a horse, but the Germans are now pretty well gone. They attempt to shoot the disobedient pantomime horse, but can't hit anything except its rump (to the annoyance of the soldier in the back). Then a dog, who has been introduced into the story earlier, gets involved, so that there is a scuffle with two Germans, the dog, and the 'horse'.

The Germans manage to pull the head off the horse and stagger back, knocking themselves out temporarily. The dog has no intention of being left out of the fun and climbs inside the horse, causing even more contortions. The two in the horse try to get away by climbing over the stable gate with a good deal of difficulty. Staggering about in the street outside, the appearance of a headless horses scares some more German soldiers witless: then the dog manages to realign himself so that his head is poking out of the front.

Finally what appears to be a mis-shapen and lurching horse with a dog's head stumbles into a barn where a number of German soldiers are sleeping, causing them to run away in bewildered panic.

That's the best sequence in the film, but there are several other classic sequences: it's a pity that it isn't more widely known - it certainly deserves to be. As I write it's available on a DVD in Amazon with its original Vitaphone score.