"A Thief Catcher" is nowadays best known as one of Charlie Chaplin's early movies. It was thought lost for many years until a copy got found at a Michigan antique sale in 2010. The movie itself is OK, not great. Chaplin has a small role as a cop in the midst of a theft. He doesn't have the bowler hat and notched cane, so he might not be that easy to spot. Also starring is Mack Swain, who later played Big Jim in "The Gold Rush". As expected, there's no shortage of physical humor; the early one-reelers always knew how to make great use of that. These relics of early cinema are, more than anything, a look at how people had to figure out how to act without words (it was still over a decade before they figured out how to align sound with film). People's faces have to do a lot of the acting. It's a fun way to spend seven minutes.

I was fortunate enough to be at Slapsticon 2010 where this unknown Chaplin picture -- removed from his filmography by BFI edict in 1938 -- was re-premiered. I would like to tell you of Chaplin's brilliance, but really, it is a fine Ford Sterling piece as the chief Keystone Kop in civvies, this time, takes his dog out for a run and gets waylaid by baddies Mack Swain and Edgar Kennedy. It's fine stuff if you enjoy Ford Sterling in snarling mode. I do.Charlie is present as a cop on the beat who runs into the bad guys and is quickly driven off and he is unmistakable -- until his half-brother Syd showed up the following year, no one at Keystone moved like him and as the third film in which he had a role and the fourth released, there was no Chaplin mania and no imitators yet.As a previously lost Chaplin it's an important film, but if you enjoy it, it won't be for Chaplin. But it's a good one nonetheless.