The Fireman (1916)
Chaplin's Mutual Comedies (1916-1917)
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26m
In Chaplin's second effort for Mutual, THE FIREMAN, he portrays an inept firefighter at Fire Station 23, surrounded by a plot filled with arson and insurance fraud. Filmed partly at an actual fire station (Fire Station 29, located at 158 South Western Avenue in Los Angeles), two condemned houses were burned to provide authenticity and higher production value.
In one memorable scene, Charlie, still asleep, mistakes a drill bell for a fire alarm and single-handedly drives out the horse-drawn fire engine. When he discovers his error, he simply backs up the engine into the fire station, with horses galloping backwards (an early instance of camera tricks - cameramen Foster and Totheroh skillfully cranked the cameras in reverse and Chaplin staged the action backward).
Up Next in Chaplin's Mutual Comedies (1916-1917)
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The Vagabond (1916)
THE VAGABOND, Chaplin's third Mutual film, was an important step in Chaplin's career in which he interweaves pathos as an integral part of the comedy. In this way, THE VAGABOND is the prototype of The Kid (1921) and The Circus (1928). Chaplin employs the same romantic triangle seen in The Tramp (...
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One A.M. (1916)
ONE A.M, Chaplin's fourth Mutual, is an impressive piece of virtuosity, a solo performance except for a brief appearance by Albert Austin as a taxi driver. The film is a tour de force of Chaplin's superb pantomime and comic creativity performed in a restricted space, a brilliant experiment that h...
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The Count (1916)
The fifth film in the Mutual series, THE COUNT, further develops the situations of Caught in a Cabaret (1914) and A Jitney Elopement (1915) and anticipates the future Chaplin films The Rink (1916), The Idle Class (1921), and City Lights (1931), films in which Charlie impersonates a man of means i...
