Burlesque on Carmen (1915)
by popegrutch
I’m going a bit backward, reviewing this one now, since it was actually the last movie Charlie Chaplin made in 1915, but since I just did the DeMille “Carmen” last night, it’s appropriate. So far as Chaplin goes, the story is this: at the beginning of 1914, he met Mack Sennett and signed up with Keystone, rapidly producing a few dozen shorts and “Tillie’s Punctured Romance” and becoming a star in the process. At the end of the year, he demanded a raise to $1000, which is a lot more than I make, but not considered all that much for a movie star nowadays. Sennett refused him, so he signed with Essanay, who came up with the money and gave him even better exposure. By the end of that year, he was a worldwide mega-star (I just read a letter in the “Moving Picture World” today from South Africa, talking about how much they all loved him there), and wanted still more money. Once again, Essanay refused the raise, so he signed with Mutual for ten times as much. But before his Essanay contract ran out, he made this spoof of the popular opera/novel/movie(s).
So how is it? In comparison to Chaplin’s Keystone work, it’s leaps and bounds ahead. The story is more complicated, his style is more honed, and there’s more room for his co-stars to get in some good parts. The filmmaking of 1915, as I’ve mentioned several times this year, is much closer to what we expect in a modern film, and I think there’s actually more use of close-ups and multiple shots within scenes than we saw in DeMille’s version. The plot is basically a speeded-up version of that one, with gestures, costumes, and title cards borrowed or deliberately sent up at several points. Edna Purviance, who plays Carmen, is perfect, both as a compliment to Farrar’s sophisticated yet bestial sensuality, and as a skilled comedienne with a sense of timing to match Chaplin’s. Chaplin is more or less doing his “Little Tramp” character in a uniform here, and in the year since he left Keystone, he’s made that character more sympathetic and more believable. A running gag involves the fact that his full-size sword sheath contains only a tiny dagger, which he tends to whip out at inopportune moments. No Freudian humor here or anything. I’m looking forward to getting fully caught up with Chaplin’s Essanay career as the year progresses.
Director: Charlie Chaplin
Starring: Charlie Chaplin, Edna Purviance, Leo White, John Rand
Run Time: 31 Min, 24 secs
You can watch it for free: here (Sorry, no music)
Century Film Project 
[…] released in modified form by Essanay after Charlie left, but it survived in better shape than “Burlesque on Carmen,” which Chaplin repudiated as a hack job. It begins with Chaplin’s “Little Tramp” getting […]
[…] this period, but I don’t think you will find any of comparable picture quality. In cases like “Burlesque on Carmen” and “Police,” where the studio released butchered versions, the movies have been re-edited […]
[…] the end of 1915, this movie was held over and reissued many times, perhaps almost as many as “Burlesque on Carmen,” which Essanay released only after Chaplin had broken his contract and […]
[…] 18, release of “Burlesque on Carmen” (in edited form), starring Charlie […]
[…] As a final note, it’s interesting that in this movie Charlie spends most of the running time out of his familiar costume, wearing a reasonably well-fitted uniform as a janitor. We’ve become so used to the iconic look that he doesn’t need to rely on it anymore. His mustache is enough to signal us to his persona, and it is the consistent thread that carries us through here, as it is in the “Burlesque on Carmen.” […]
[…] would be the last un-cut movie Charlie Chaplin did at Essanay Studios before leaving for Mutual (“Burlesque on Carmen” was released in a mutilated form by the studio and not restored for many […]
[…] On the whole, though, it isn’t up to the level of later “feature-length” work like “Burlesque on Carmen,” nor even the sustained zaniness of “The Tramp.” If you like Keystone Chaplin well enough to […]
[…] Not often spoken about in terms of directing is Charlie Chaplin, who directed most of the movies he appeared in, starting about mid-way through his year at Keystone Studios. By this point in 1915, he’s at Essanay, and is directing some of the classic shorts that made him an immortal. It’s hard to extract Chaplin’s directing from the rest of his mythos, but I would say that he had a talent for fast-moving action that slapstick work, and that it took him a while to start thinking seriously about character development or even sympathetic characters. His later work proves that he did get it, eventually. This year, his work includes “The Tramp” and “Burlesque on Carmen.” […]
[…] for the star and he moved again, but not before producing great films like “The Tramp” and “Burlesque on Carmen” which showed his improvement as a director and maturity as a comedian. Essanay’s name was a […]
[…] Cinema refers to the Glenroy Brothers as “a burlesque boxing act” – let’s remember that “burlesque” had different connotations at the time, because this is, if anything, a less sexy fight than […]
[…] Movies: “The Tramp,” starring Charlie Chaplin, released April 11. This will be the most profitable Chaplin film to date, to be outdone later in the year by “Burlesque on Carmen.” […]