The Count (1916)
A tailor's assistant is fired for botching a customer's suit, then crashes a high-society party by posing as a visiting count, only to collide with the real impostor already working the same con.
The Count was the fifth short Chaplin made for Mutual, built around one of his favorite premises — impersonation of the upper class — and pairs him against Eric Campbell, the towering foil who anchored most of Chaplin’s Mutual comedies as the heavy.
Background
The Count was the fifth of the twelve short comedies Chaplin made for Mutual Film Corporation, built around one of his favorite comic premises: a lower-class character impersonating a member of the upper class to gain access to wealth and status he does not actually have. Here, a tailor’s assistant fired for botching a customer’s suit crashes a high-society party by posing as a visiting count, only to collide with another impostor already running the same scheme.
What to watch for
Watch for Eric Campbell’s performance as the film’s imposing antagonist; Campbell, a large and physically commanding actor, became Chaplin’s most frequent foil throughout the Mutual series, and the contrast between his size and Chaplin’s smaller, nimbler Tramp character is a visual joke the films return to again and again. It is a good example of how reliably Chaplin mined class pretension and mistaken identity for comedy throughout this period of his career.
