The Rink (1916)

In the Oskaspeil Cafe Chaplin continually shows his disregard for the head chef by throwing him down and knocking him about unmercifully. Chaplin manages to get himself involved in a dozen difficult situations from which he extricates himself with his usual ingenuity. At one moment he appears to be cornered by an indignant husband with whose wife he has been conducting a flagrant flirtation, but the next instant the indignant hubby is hors du combat. Then there is always Edna to be looked out for. Charlie's sweetheart resents, as always, his flirtatious attitude toward her sex in general and pursues him like a faithful but indignant fiancee, mollified as usual after the offender has been brought to book by his magnetic smile and bland, childlike surrender to her demands. Edan's flirtation with "old man" Campbell, a giddy old chap of the skating rialto, is countered by Chaplin with an affair involving Campbell's wife, which in the long run gets him mobbed. Probably the best comedy in the play is that presented in Chaplin's efforts as a waiter. His progress between the tables with a tray is one long succession of disasters in which soup invades the decolletage of feminine diners and full dress shirts become vivid futurist fantasies done to tomato sauce and mustard pickles. Everybody knows that Chaplin's feet are the funniest facts about Chaplin. Well, Charlie's feet with roller-skates on them are funnier feet than ever. The skates Chaplin has to wear in order to make them fit his exaggerated shoes, have to be at least eight sizes too big for Charlie, but that doesn't make a bit of difference to so expert a skater as he.