Cruel, Cruel Love

"You Can See the End from Here"

Cruel, Cruel Love by George Nichols, 1914:



What's the opposite of "Tramp"? (WWI-era) — Chaplin of Making a Living? Tango Tangles? / ......Time passes, more and more characters resemble Burt Lancaster in The Leopard / Cruel, Cruel Love starts out like the closet scene in Blue Velvet but with all the genders swapped / A mirror structured by two voyeurs / A single roll of Chaplin's shoulders could be considered the '14 equivalent of an Alec Sulkin tweet / Sets that precursor The Jerry Lewis Show / Once, all professional men looked like Strindberg / The fantasy devil-sequence, the dynamics of the close-ups (with Chaplin's facial acrobatics), and the backward tracking (driving) shot of a charging wagon make this George Nichols's most audacious Chaplin one-reeler to date / The one with death-throes that make the sitting public throw its arms wide, keep coming back every time / Talent — — is — — Talent

Cruel, Cruel Love by George Nichols, 1914:









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Previous pieces on Chaplin at Cinemasparagus:

Making a Living [Lehrman, 1914] / Kid Auto Races at Venice, Cal. [Lehrman, 1914] / Mabel's Strange Predicament [Normand, 1914] / Between Showers [Lehrman, 1914] / A Film Johnnie [George Nichols, 1914] / Tango Tangles [Sennett, 1914] / His Favorite Pastime [George Nichols, 1914]

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