Pay Day

This film has some highly imaginative and well-timed stunts--all revolving around Charlie's job at a construction site. All the near-falls and accidents remind me of Sweet Pea from POPEYE cartoons--as the baby is nearly killed again and again but miraculously escapes. In Chaplin's case, it involved a funny sequence when he ALMOST falls down an elevator many times, dropping objects accidentally on those below and a really interesting sight gag involving guys throwing bricks up to Charlie who catches this with complete ease (it was done by running the film backwards). Later, Charlie's hideous and scary wife is introduced and it goes from a work comedy to a domestic one. In a way, this was a minor disappointment, as I preferred the faster paced work stunts, but all-in-all this is a funny and well executed short.

Said to be Chaplin's favorite of his short films, Pay Day is a quick, yet funny story of the Tramp and his Pay Day. Showing up to the job late, complaining about his wage, and then having to deal with his scary wife is just the first half of the movie. The night spent out on the town, drinking his problems away and then trying ever so hard to catch the train home is the second half. The physical comedy in Pay day is pure Chaplin. Catching the bricks, the escapades with the elevator and the mob to ride the train are segments that are unique and very funny. Still, Pay Day is not you average Chaplin film. There are moments in the movie that are just there to make you laugh. More of a joke filled story that an actual story with a beginning, middle and an end, Pay Day is a no holds bar comedy with the object to make the audience laugh. And it does.

"Pay Day" was Charlie Chaplin's last short film, and I think it's one of his best--not especially for the gags or scenario, but mostly because of its technical superiority in film-making. I consider the scenario substandard; I prefer Charlie as a real tramp, not a man of domesticity in the Tramp outfit, but that's just my preference. Doubtless, "Pay Day" is better constructed than "A Day's Pleasure", another First National short where Chaplin plays a married everyman. And, there are some very funny scenes in "Pay Day". The bricklaying at his construction job is a highlight--a carefully choreographed gag projected in reverse motion. Additionally, Chaplin is hilarious when playing a drunk.

The night scenes when the tramp becomes inebriated and his subsequent follies at his apartment are better photographed than any scenes in a Chaplin film before. Chaplin is well known to be a rather minimalist, even unimaginative, filmmaker when it came to the more technical aspects of the art, such as cinematography, but he and cinematographer Roland Totheroh tried something different here with the lighting. Their films usually feature very flat lighting, but here they employed backlighting, adding another dimension to the film's images. When Chaplin tiptoes towards the camera oblivious of his wife standing behind him in their apartment, he seems ready to fall off the screen.

The night scenes are particularly striking; the backlighting more fully exposes shadows and the shades of gray, highlighting the textures of the sets and streets. The scene where the tramp attempts to get a ride on the trolleys was broken into location shots for the trolleys and studio shooting for when Chaplin is in front of the walled background. Chaplin was by then organizing his films for more efficient production, and the result is this great-looking short.

Art director Charles D. Hall, who would have a prestigious career designing sets for various horror flicks, helped greatly to expand Chaplin's films spatially at First National, which included simply featuring more sets and covering a greater area. Of course, the difference between the First National films and his ones before has as much to do with having his own studio, but Hall's contribution shouldn't be ignored. Even though the sets are still stagy (the missing wall confounded by a lack of changing camera placements), the backlighting highlights their texture and dimensions. "Pay Day" is Chaplin's most tactile short. The Mutual films were a period of refining Chaplin's Tramp persona, as were some of the First National pictures, but these First National films were also a period of experimenting with his film-making--in ways as simple as the number of reels to the technical experiments such as in "Pay Day".

Pay Day is definitely one of the best of all of Charlie Chaplin's early short comedies, and that's not even just because it is now placed at the end of The Gold Rush, Chaplin's own favorite of his films. Charlie plays a construction worker who shows up to work late to a job at which his boss is clearly a tyrant. The part where Charlie is in the ditch strenuously digging and only coming up with tiny bits of dirt is one of the funniest parts of the entire film. And then, of course, you have the classic brick throwing scene, which was sure to have knocked people off of their seats when they first saw it in 1922.

But Pay Day is not just another slapstick comedy, it's also got one of the better stories of Chaplin's early, short films. His misadventures at work set up the scene for his underpayment (which seemed not to be enough pay because Charlie was uneducated and added wrong – 2+2+2+2=9), and his eventual confrontations with his beast of a wife. When she takes nearly all of his paycheck, he sneaks away to a bar to get drunk, finally making it home at 5am, only to find his horrendous wife sleeping with a rolling pin. It is another classic moment when he sneaks into the bathroom (hoping to have convinced his wife that he has already left for work) and goes to jump into the bathtub full of laundry, only to find that it is also full of water.

While Pay Day does present a steady stream of slapstick comedy (which was, of course, one of Chaplin's greatest skills), it is also a fairly involved story, which few of his short films had, but which were almost always very well done. He again presents the predicament of the working man, both in his work environment as well as an amusing comment on the working man's home life. If you are interested in Chaplin's work or in slapstick comedy in general, Pay Day is a must see.

This film is definitely worth seeing for the amazing slapstick sequences, though it doesn't have much of a storyline overall. The killer opening scenes, showing Charlie working at a construction site, had me staring open-mouthed at the screen. I also enjoyed the drunks' night out, the running-after-the-tram scenes, and the bits involving the cats (especially that sausage one).

I was less thrilled with the clichéd character of the rolling-pin-wielding wife. That role seems kind of misogynist to me, plus it opens up way too many questions that the film will never answer--you can't help but wonder how they got together in the first place, etc. And it takes a little of the innocent shine off of Charlie's sighs over Edna Purviance when you find out he's supposed to be married. The Tramp actually seems unusually louche in this picture.

According to David Robinson, this picture boasted some of the first successful night scenes that didn't have to be tinted. I loved the big searchlight that lit up the tram sequence. Sydney Chaplin also contributes some nice comedy. Edna, disappointingly, has a very small role.

This is far from my favorite Chaplin film, but I'm glad I have the DVD, because there are sequences I will enjoy watching over and over (and in slow motion).