Filmmaker Solves Puzzle of Chaplin’s Truncated ‘Police’

Very early in his Hollywood career, Chaplin grew restless with the knockabout Mack Sennett formula and longed to put the Little Tramp in situations of ever-increasing poignancy and social consciousness. Newly restored, the 1915 three-reeler “Police” reveals itself as the first truly important Chaplin three-reeler. It was the source of themes and motifs to be developed in such familiar Mutual comedies as “The Pawnshop” (1916), “Easy Street” (1917) and “The Immigrant” (1917).

As producer-director-editor of the 80-minute, two-part “The Chaplin Puzzle,” which airs on PBS in January, film historian Dan McGlynn explains what happened to “Police.” No wonder Robert Downey Jr., in preparing to play Chaplin, watched “The Chaplin Puzzle” three times; indeed, Part I reveals just how authentic “Chaplin” is in its depiction of Chaplin’s formative years with Sennett. Both parts benefit enormously from Joe Adamson’s narration, which is spoken with warmth and relish by Burgess Meredith, who was to marry Paulette Goddard after she left Chaplin.

“The Chaplin Puzzle” demonstrates how Chaplin, having left Sennett for a year with Essanay Film Manufacturing Corp., embarked upon a major departure with a film called “Life,” a story of the dispossessed that was to echo the Dickensian environment of his own childhood. But Essanay didn’t understand it and intervened, and Chaplin reduced the work to the three-reel “Police.” Still fearful and unsatisfied, the studio brutally chopped a reel out of “Police” that ended up in a 1918 Essanay three-reeler called “Triple Trouble”--some 2 1/2 years after Chaplin left to become an independent producer.

In essence McGlynn took a flophouse sequence out of “Triple Trouble” and placed it back where it belonged in “Police”--and also restored Chaplin’s initial meeting with Edna Purviance, crucial to understanding the film’s concluding sequence when he again crosses paths with her.

A perfect blend of comedy, pathos and social consciousness, “Police” begins with the Little Tramp being released from prison, tells in jaunty fashion of his struggle for survival and poses the question of how he is to survive without returning to a life of crime. It’s entirely possible to take “Police” as a breezy comedy and overlook the social commentary, which no doubt many contemporary audiences did. The point that “The Chaplin Puzzle” makes so well is that Chaplin isn’t just history; there may be more discoveries to be made in--and about--his films.

* For information about the shows at the New Beverly Cinema, call (213) 938-4038.