Tillie's Punctured Romance (1914)

A con man from the city dupes a wealthy country girl into marriage.

Directors:

Mack Sennett, Charles Bennett (uncredited)

Stars:

Charles Chaplin, Marie Dressler, Mabel Normand

Cast

Complete credited cast:
Marie Dressler	...	Tillie
Charles Chaplin	...	The City Slicker
Mabel Normand	...	Mabel
Mack Swain	...	Tillie's Father
Charles Bennett	...	Douglas Banks - Tillie's Millionaire Uncle / 1st Restaurant Proprietor
Chester Conklin	...	Mr. Whoozis / Singing Waiter

Storyline

Charlie talks wealthy farmer's daughter Tillie into eloping with him (and taking her father's money). In the city Tillie gets drunk and lands in jail while Charlie runs off with her money and his old girlfriend Mabel. Later Charlie reads that Tillie (now working as a waitress) has inherited the estate of her multi-millionaire uncle. Charlie dumps Mabel and talks Tillie into moving into her uncle's villa, and Mabel arranges to become a housemaid there. The uncle (never really dead) returns and summons the police to have them all thrown out.

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Plot Keywords:

slapstick comedy | marriage | curtain call | revenge | millionaire | 

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Taglines:

in SOUND and MUSIC

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Genres:

Comedy

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Certificate:

Not Rated

Details

Country:

USA

Language:

English

Release Date:

21 December 1914 (USA)

Also Known As:

For the Love of Tillie

Filming Locations:

Sans Souci Castle, Los Angeles, California, USA

Box Office

Budget:

$50,000 (estimated)

Company Credits

Production Co:

Keystone Film Company

Technical Specs

Runtime:

74 min 82 min (2003 restoration)

Sound Mix:

Silent

Color:

Black and White

Aspect Ratio:

1.33 : 1

Did You Know?

Trivia

The first feature-length comedy ever made.

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Goofs

The police put Tillie in "the tank" with a group of men. In real life, she would have been placed in a separate "tank" for her protection.

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Quotes

Title Card: The Secretaries Set Out To Find The Heiress

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Alternate Versions

Re-released in the 1950s with a organ score and narration. The narration, though, was being read while the title cards were seen.

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Connections

Followed by Tillie Wakes Up (1917)

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Soundtracks

New Orleans Bump
(used as a music insert in later public domain sound copies)
Written and performed by Ferdinand 'Jelly Roll' Morton

User Reviews

Chaplin and Normand at the movies

Forget the Marie Dressler main plot, elephantine and lumbering as the star (on this occasion: she was great when movies finally allowed her to talk and properly preserve her theatrical identity). Throw out almost everything else, especially the usual Mack Sennett hash joint/beanery-with-continental-pretensions which holds the action and us captive for roughly half the running time, tricking the film out to feature length.

The claustrophobia and boredom these stage-bound scenes induce have the positive effect of making us fully appreciate everything that happens outdoors in lovely underdeveloped 1914 Southern California. The scenes with rascal Chaplin and his lovely accomplice Normand (a beautiful team) hiding out together from the rest of the movie in real locations provide delicious escape and a very different, carefree, style of acting and film-making, which can be reduced to the one wonderful scene (throw the rest away if only five minutes can be preserved) where Charlie and Mabel go to the movies only to find an on screen version of the very scam they've haplessly set into motion and have ducked into the dark to escape. It's valuable documentation of what movie-going looked like in 1914, fascinating in itself, but the comedy raises it higher. Mabel is the kind of audience member who emotes and comments as she watches. The fellow sitting next to her is the stern sort who gets annoyed and says "Shush!" As Chaplin and girlfriend watch further they realize they're seeing themselves, and Mabel can't help but notice and say it out loud (yet silently). As she does so, she and Chaplin, increasingly self-conscious about talking in the theater, notice that the shush-er beside them reveals a sheriff's star as he adjusts his waistcoat. Paranoia sets in and from this moment on klassic Keystone Kops seem to be lurking in the edges of everywhere they dream of transgressing. A lovely vignette and accompanying good bits and pieces.