Tillie's Punctured Romance (1914 film)
| Tillie's Punctured Romance | |
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Re-release poster with different billing
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| Directed by | Mack Sennett |
| Produced by | Mack Sennett |
| Written by |
Hampton Del Ruth Craig Hutchinson Mack Sennett |
| Based on |
Tillie's Nightmare by A. Baldwin Sloane and Edgar Smith |
| Starring |
Marie Dressler Mabel Normand Charles Chaplin Mack Swain Charles Bennett Chester Conklin The Keystone Cops Charley Chase (uncredited) |
| Cinematography |
Hans F. Koenekamp (uncredited) Frank D. Williams (uncredited) |
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Production
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| Distributed by | Alco Film Corporation |
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Release date
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Running time
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74 minutes 82 minutes (2003 restoration) |
| Country | United States |
| Language | Silent English intertitles |
Tillie's Punctured Romance is a 1914 American silent comedy film directed by Mack Sennett and starring Marie Dressler, Mabel Normand, Charlie Chaplin, and the Keystone Cops. The picture was the first feature-length motion picture produced by the Keystone Film Company, and is the only one featuring Chaplin.
The film is based on Dressler's stage play Tillie's Nightmare by A. Baldwin Sloane and Edgar Smith. Tillie's Punctured Romance is notable for being the last Chaplin film which he neither wrote nor directed, as well as the first feature-length comedy in all of cinema. In it, Chaplin plays an entirely different role from his Tramp character, which was relatively new at the time.
Charles Chaplin portrays a womanizing city man who meets Tillie (Marie Dressler) in the country after a fight with his girlfriend (Mabel Normand). When he sees that Tillie's father (Mack Swain) has a very large bankroll for his workers, he persuades her to elope with him. In the city, he meets the woman he was seeing already, and tries to work around the complication to steal Tillie's money. He gets Tillie drunk in a restaurant and asks her to let him hold the pocketbook. Since she is drunk, she agrees, and he escapes with his old girlfriend and the money.
Later that day, they see a picture show entitled "A Thief's Fate", which illustrates their thievery in the form of a morality play. They both feel guilty and leave the theater. While sitting on a park bench, a paperboy (Gordon Griffith) asks him to buy a newspaper. He does so, and reads the story about Tillie's Uncle Banks (Charles Bennett), a millionaire who died while on a mountain-climbing expedition. Tillie is named sole heir and inherits three million dollars. The man leaves his girlfriend on the park bench and runs to the restaurant, where Tillie is now forced to work to support herself as she is too embarrassed to go home. He begs her to take him back and although she is skeptical at first, she believes that he truly loves her and they marry. They move into the uncle's mansion and throw a big party, which ends horribly when Tillie finds her husband with his old girlfriend, smuggled into the house and working as one of their maids.
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Wikipedia