SeeQuant Blending excellent reporting and strong storytelling, this is a disturbing film truly stranger than fiction

Siflutter It's easily one of the freshest, sharpest and most enjoyable films of this year.

Guillelmina The film's masterful storytelling did its job. The message was clear. No need to overdo.

Allissa .Like the great film, it's made with a great deal of visible affection both in front of and behind the camera.

Jay Raskin Reviewers here so far seem to be apologizing that this isn't a later Chaplin film. Perhaps if they understood the circumstances under which it was made, they would appreciate it for what it is.In 1913, Mack Sennett had contracted to produce three one reel comedies a week. By the end of 1913, they were so popular that he contracted to produce four. Producing 30 minutes of comedy every week was strenuous. Everybody at Keystone felt overworked. Now they were commanded to produce four reels Lead comedian Fred Mace had quit in June 1913. His replacement, Ford Sterling told Sennett that he was getting better offers and would also quit soon. Sennett hired vaudeville comedian Charlie Chaplin to replace Ford. The problem was that Chaplin had never made a film before. He was about to enter a comedy factory where he would be punched, slapped, kicked, pushed and fall down again and again for 12 hours a day, six days a week, 50 weeks a year.Ford was gracious enough to stay on for a few months to help Chaplin get accustomed to the pace. This is a film that was probably written for Sterling by Lehrman. Sterling has the starring role. If Chaplin had not signed with Keystone, probably Lehrman himself or Eddie Dillon or a half dozen other actors at keystone could have played the part or the rival lover that Chaplin plays. It was a simple Keystone formula picture: two men fight over the same beautiful girl. Chaos breaks out. Cops come. A chase ensues and when it ends so does the picture.The movie begins as its title says "Between Showers." It has rained and Ford Sterling's umbrella has been ruined. He is going to steal an umbrella. What is great about Sterling is that he talks directly to the audience. He tells them exactly what he is going to do. He breaks the separation between the audience and the actor (the invisible fourth wall). Sterling talks to the audience like they're his best friend. He tells the audience straight out, "Watch me while I steal this umbrella," as if he is doing something the audience is going to find daring and funny. It is a little strange that he would pick a cop to steal the umbrella from, but it just makes the silly heist even sillier.At this point, we skip to Sterling being noble and helping a pretty woman, Peggy Pearce across a street. The street is flooded and she will get soaked if she tries to cross it. Sterling foolishly gives her his newly stolen umbrella and goes to find a board to help her cross. At this point he first encounter the tramp, Charlie Chaplin. Chaplin also finds the woman quite fetching and he also tries to help her. Sterling and Chaplin begin some great slap-stick fighting. This is the main motif for the rest of the film.What is marvelous is how perfectly Sterling and Chaplin match. They both have perfect comic timing and look as if they have been working together for years. If Sterling was not about to leave Keystone and strike out on his own and if Chaplin had not just been hired, it is possible that they would have have been the movie's first great comedy team with the large sized Sterling finding the perfect foil and stooge in the small sized Chaplin. There is something wonderful in watching Chaplin getting knocked down, popping right up and fighting back and refusing to let the bigger sized Sterling intimidate him.Again, you have to see Chaplin here as just an actor in a Keystone formula movie. The formula is funny, and Chaplin is executing it perfectly, but it is not really Chaplin's film. It would be another month before he would really start making his own films.The writer-director Henry Pathe Lehrman, also deserves a lot of credit. He was apparently struggling bitterly with Chaplin to get him to adapt to Keystone's breakneck style and pace. For this round, at least, he won.

Michael DeZubiria In Kid Auto Races at Venice, Chaplin first tried on the costume of the little Tramp, and was clearly unsure what to do with it. He wandered around and made himself seen, making it clear that he wanted to be noticed and had something to show the world, but he still wasn't sure what the personality of his character was. In Mabel's Strange Predicament, he tries something new, and finds that it went wrong. Now, in Between Showers, we have another example of the incredible, almost prophetic foreshadowing and symbolism that we saw in Kid Auto Races. Whereas in his last film, he was an obnoxious, belligerent drunk, in Between Showers he decides to try helping people. Not only that, but within the first few minutes of the film, he is literally testing out the waters. And as we would see in the years to come, the experiment worked with phenomenal success.What Chaplin also largely discovers in this film is the hyperbolic fight scene, exaggerated to cartoonish proportions for the benefit of the slightly fast motion and the absence of close-ups, which provides a comic effect sufficient to inspire years of including similar scenes in future films. The plot is simple, as they were in those days, and concerns the varying degrees of possession of an umbrella, with hilarious results, as they say. Between Showers probably marks the last major change for the Tramp that we would ever see, since Chaplin got it nearly perfect here. Let the show begin

rbverhoef In this comedy short we see a man steal an umbrella from a police officer. After a big shower the man who stole the umbrella wants to help a woman cross the street without getting her feet wet. While he is looking for things she can walk on, Charles Chaplin enters the film. He also wants to help the woman. While Chaplin is looking for useful things as well the woman is carried across the street by a police officer. Chaplin and the man who stole the umbrella have a fight.With some of the usual Chaplin moments 'Between Showers' is entertaining enough to watch, but it misses the magic of Chaplin's later work. We see some little things from his famous tramp, one moment when he is walking away with the umbrella in particular, but it is not enough to really recommend this short. There are many better Chaplin shorts, but if you like his work you probably enjoy this one as well.

23skidoo-4 Although Chaplin still had many kinks to work out of his Little Tramp character by the time he made this, his fourth movie, Between Showers nonetheless shows tremendous improvement over his first attempts at developing a screen persona. In the first, Making a Living, he played a rich villain. In Kid Races at Venice and Mabel's Strange Predicament, the Tramp made his debut, but was portrayed as a rather mean-spirited, and in the Mabel Normand film, almost lecherous, jerk.But Between Showers, for the first time, presents the Little Tramp as a somewhat noble, almost heroic character, who comes to the aid of a damsel in distress (here portrayed by an Edna Purviance prototype). He still has rough edges, but Chaplin was starting to flesh out the character.The plot of Between Showers is an illustration of how delightfully simple and high concept early silent comedies could be. A man steals an umbrella -- that's pretty much the plot, with a little (attempted) romance tossed in for good measure. It's a fun little film, and fascinating to watch from the perspective of observing how Chaplin is slowly crafting his most famous character.