This pre-war compilation of Chaplin's work comprises of four films he made in 1917, considered by many the peak year of his two-reeler product. Certainly Easy Street is a masterpiece of planning, more or less within a single set and perhaps the closest Chaplin came to the timing and invention of the Buster Keaton comedies. The Cure and The Adventurer also show patches of inventive genius, while The Immigrant is an early example of the pathos in Chaplin's soul, as well as having the scene in which he tries to retrieve a dollar from under a waiter's foot. The waiter, and indeed all four of the `villains' in these films, is played by Eric Campbell, a huge Scottish actor whose death in a car crash in December 1917 showed just how important he had been to the early Chaplin comedies.


©ipc tx. Film content from TVTimes