A Woman (1915)

Mother, Father and Daughter go to the park. The women dose off on a bench while the father plays a hide-and-seek game with a girl, blindfolded. Charlie leads him into a lake. Both dozing ... See full summary »

Director:

Charles Chaplin (uncredited)

Stars:

Charles Chaplin, Billy Armstrong, Marta Golden

Cast

Complete credited cast:
Charles Chaplin	...	Gentleman / 'Nora Nettlerash'

Storyline

Mother, Father and Daughter go to the park. The women dose off on a bench while the father plays a hide-and-seek game with a girl, blindfolded. Charlie leads him into a lake. Both dozing ladies on the bench fall for Charlie and invite him for dinner. The father returns home with a friend. Charlie rushes upstairs and dresses like a woman, shaving his moustache. Both men fall for Charlie.

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Plot Keywords:

father | park | hide and seek | female impersonator | cross dressing | 

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Genres:

Short | Comedy

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Certificate:

TV-G

Details

Country:

USA

Language:

English

Release Date:

12 July 1915 (USA)

Also Known As:

Charlie the Perfect Lady

Company Credits

Production Co:

The Essanay Film Manufacturing Company

Technical Specs

Runtime:

26 min

Sound Mix:

Silent

Color:

Black and White

Aspect Ratio:

1.33 : 1

Did You Know?

Trivia

This is the last time Chaplin appears on screen without a mustache (because he is in drag), until Limelight (1952).

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Connections

Edited into Chase Me Charlie (1918)

User Reviews

"Let's rest our soles and exercise our eyes!"

A Woman is one of the most sexually charged Chaplin films I've ever seen, and not only because Charlie spends a lot of it dressed as a woman. From the very opening of the film ("Charlie Chaplin in A Woman") to the scene where he's having tea and bagels. He takes a long, phallic knife and skewers the bagels, allowing them to slide down the shaft onto their plates, and then he quips, "I do this trick in my bath - when I have one."

When you have one what, Charlie?

The rest of the film, however, is family friendly fun, even when Charlie is dressed as a woman. Most of the time he is playfully fending off the advances of a man who was furious with him minutes before, but now is completely fooled by the disguise. Charlie slaps and pushes and shoves him, knocking him over backwards and over furniture and whatnot, a lot of the typical slapstick that we have come to expect from Chaplin's short comedies of this era.

This is not the only time Chaplin has dressed up as a woman in one of his short films, and once again he is surprisingly, almost disturbingly, convincing in the costume. A lot of the comedy of his silent slapstick comes from the effeminate nature of his mannerisms, and he puts those to good use here.

The first half also takes place in a park and therefore resembles countless of his other short films that take place in a park, which used to be Chaplin's favorite place to go and set up the cameras and just let a little comedy happen, and it's clear that that was what was happening in this film. But the second half makes up for the unsurprising first half. Not a bad little film at all.