THE CURE (Mutual Studios, 1917), Written, directed and starring Charlie Chaplin, his tenth comedy short (20 minutes) for the Mutual studio, is one of his all time greats. For a title that indicates one to be set in a hospital with Charlie as an unruly patient who flirts with the nurses and drives his doctors crazy, in essence, it takes place in a sanitarium that wherever Charlie goes, trouble follows. For THE CURE, Chaplin breaks away from his traditional tramp character with derby and cane for straw hat, white suit and cane retained, stirring as much trouble as he can, intentionally or not, to those around him.The story opens at a resort with an assortment of female gossips gathered together seated around the health spring where enters the new resident, the drunken Charlie (Charlie Chaplin), arriving for a rest cure, to nearly fall into the water well on the ground. After being escorted to his room by a frail and thin bellboy, Charlie opens his crate that reveals an assortment of liquor bottles. Once the bottles are discovered with the bearded bellboy found drunk in Charlie's room, the superintendent (Frank J. Coleman) orders the bottles thrown out. The attendant (Albert Austin) takes him literally and throws the bottles out the window where they end up inside the water spring below. In the meantime, Charlie makes his rounds about the resort, encountering an attractive woman (Edna Purviance) being annoyed by the burly gout (Eric Campbell), thus, saving the day by becoming a big annoyance for the big man and hero to the girl. Later at the massage parlor, Charlie begins to have second thoughts of treatment when witnessing how the sadistic masseur (Henry Bergman) works on one of his customers. Following a series of unforeseen circumstances, Edna, whose about to meet with Charlie, discovers, to her disbelief, the refined residents and attendants having way too much fun for themselves in the lobby without knowing the reason why. And if that isn't enough!!!While there's not much plot nor character background development to go around, THE CURE is non-stop comedy, pure and simple. The carefully planned-out gags are enough to guarantee solid laughs with Chaplin stock character types in their proper roles for background support. As much as Chaplin is the sole attraction when it comes to both character and gags, Eric Campbell should not go unnoticed for his achievement in villainous comedy. Campbell, better known in later years as "Chaplin's Goliath," partakes in some of the greatest sight gags imaginable, including the revolving door, his reaction towards Charlie's misconducts involving his bandaged foot, his involvement with Charlie in both lobby and massage parlor, his trip down the stairs in a wheelchair, among others. Aside from Edna Purviance as Chaplin's frequent female co-star, other members of the cast include James T. Kelly, John Rand, Janet Miller Sully and Loyal Underwood.In the well documented three-part 1983 documentary, "Unknown Chaplin," there are some detailed moments capturing behind the scenes preparation for THE CURE, with Chaplin directing various sequences that were rehearsed and filmed, but not making it to the final print, and how changes to THE CURE developed into what has become one of Chaplin's finest gems, especially when properly scored on the musical soundtrack.When presented on public television in the sixties and seventies, this and other Chaplin's Mutual comedies (1916-17) were broadcast with sound effects and musical score taken from 1930s reissue prints. For THE CURE, underscoring consisted of current hit tunes of the day ranging from "Happy Feet" to "Happy Days Are Here Again." These reissue prints later became part of the Blackhawk/ Republic Home Video package dating back to the 1980s. In latter years, Chaplin's Mutual comedies were restored to accurate silent projection speed (25 minutes) with new orchestral score from KINO Video, the prints that have played on Turner Classic Movies (TCM premiere: December 6, 1999). After listening to different scores from various distributors, nothing comes off better than those orchestrated ones from Blackhawk for that bad scoring takes away the impact for such a fine comedy, considering how these twelve Chaplin shorts for Mutual are simply the cure for what ales you. (****)

Chaplin heads to a spa, which was all the rage back in the day, in the tenth film he edited, wrote, produced, and directed for the Mutual Film Corporation. Although perceptions of alcoholism have changed significantly since Chaplin's time, the rising tide of the temperance movement was influential in passing the eighteenth amendment a couple years after this film was released. Alcoholism was perceived as more a battle of will power than environment or genetics. In The Cure, Chaplin descends on a health spa catering to the hoity-toity and creates chaos as usual. Instead of the tramp, we get Chaplin playing a regular character this time. Chaplin's character, like probably many real life people who went to these spas, has no intention of actually drying out. There are many moments of slapstick, sight gags, and poking fun at the high and mighty. Eric Campbell is on hand as a rich masher with gout. Edna Purviance plays the girl Chaplin helps of course. Henry Bergman plays the bathhouse masseuse as, what Chaplin's character perceives to be, a wrestler. This sequence builds laughs upon laughs and is uproarious, as Chaplin attempts to extricate himself from what he fears to be a very intimidating situation. Revolving doors also play a role in some terrific sight gags. Like many Chaplin films, the film starts slow and picks up as it goes along, an enjoyable departure from the tramp. *** of 4 stars.

Before Chaplin got into films, he was well known on the English stage for his roles playing a drunk, yet these roles are undeniably the weakest performances of his early film career. The movie opens with him stumbling all over himself as an exasperated bellhop tries in vain to lead him into a hotel. There is the obligatory mayhem involved in getting through a revolving door, which goes on for as long as it can. Chaplin seems to have an almost prophetic knack for milking a gag until there's nothing left! Once inside, what seemed like just another drunk movie turns delightfully into something else.Charlie reprimands a bellhop about to light a cigarette, and wags his finger at him, reminding him that smoking is bad for you health, and then casually opens a suitcase packed to the brim with every kind of alcohol imaginable. Needless to say, soon the bellhop doesn't seem to smoke much anymore, but spends most of his remaining screen time falling over drunk off of booze that he apparently "borrowed" from Charlie's suitcase. And by the way, seeing all of those bottles of 1917 alcohol reminds me of a long standing wish that I could have tasted Coca-Cola back in the old days, when it lived up to its name…Soon Charlie checks into one of those establishments where you go to relax in the pool, spa, sauna, or get a massage, etc. I'm not sure what they're called in English, but I know that in Chinese it translates to "bath house." It's interesting to me to see what the place was like, because when I lived in America I never really spent much time in them, although I have been to some astonishingly nice ones in Colombia and China. It may be the third world, but I guess when a sizable portion of the population has no shower at home, public bathing spots are big business. There's an amusing scene involving a swimming pool and then a frighteningly vicious massage, which appears to be a mandatory experience in this particular bath house, and the massive masseuse chases Charlie all over the place, ultimately flat out fighting with him. But the best part of the film is that Charlie doesn't just play a drunk, we see him the next morning, and his actual dependency on alcohol is brilliantly portrayed. There is a scene where he charms a young woman off her feet, and she offers him a drink which at first he refuses, given that he's still recovering from the night before. But he takes a sip anyway, and then downs the rest of the glass and pours himself another, eventually taking the whole jug and drinking it down in front of the young lady, who is unimpressed. It mirrors the end of the film, which quite literally illustrates the message of the movie, which is that too much alcohol will lead to your life falling "in the drink."

Measured in terms of sheer belly-laughs The Cure may well be the funniest movie Charlie Chaplin ever made. Not one moment is given over to sentimentality about childhood trauma, unrequited love, poverty or anything of the sort; this time around, Chaplin is single-minded in his drive to make us laugh, and he achieves his goal with ruthless and exhilarating efficiency.The story's setting may require a bit of explanation for younger viewers. At the time this film was made there were a number of well-known health resorts in the U.S. and Europe built around mineral springs. It was fashionable for middle- and upper-class people to spend a week or two at these spas to address whatever health problems they might be struggling with, for it was believed that mineral water cured or at least alleviated a variety of ailments. The resorts were visited by well-to-do patients afflicted with everything from rheumatism, gout, or polio to chronic alcoholism, and someone in the latter category who went to a spa to get clean and sober was said to be "taking the cure."When Charlie arrives at the spa that is our setting, pushed in a wheeled deck-chair by a uniformed attendant and obviously still tipsy, we know right away that despite the familiar mustache he's not the Little Tramp we usually encounter. Here, though slightly disheveled, Charlie sports a dapper ensemble of light jacket, straw boater, and spotted tie, indicating that he's a respectable bourgeois citizen who has come to this place -- probably at the insistence of family or friends -- to dry out. It's soon apparent that he has no intention of changing his ways, however, for his wardrobe trunk is full of booze and he wastes no time in refreshing himself. When an attendant tries to ply him with mineral water he reacts with disgust, and after taking a sip rushes back to his room to wash the taste out of his mouth with liquor. Just to demonstrate that he's not entirely a wastrel, however, Charlie gallantly rescues a young lady (Edna Puviance) from the unwelcome attentions of an obnoxious man (Eric Campbell), and even sobers up long enough to go for a massage and a very brief dip in the spa's pool. Eventually, Charlie's stash of liquor is discovered by the resort's manager and inadvertently dumped into the spring. Soon, everyone in the place except for Charlie and Edna is drunk and disorderly, and Charlie must once again come to Edna's aid.The great sequences in this comedy begin almost immediately, when Charlie confronts a revolving door and has his first run-in with Eric Campbell, whose unpleasant personality determines that his gouty foot will be fair game for brutality thereafter. Campbell, who wears an especially nasty-looking beard, has a great moment when he appears behind Edna in the lobby, leering at her through a curtain like a crazed goblin. Things get a little risqué when Charlie misinterprets Eric's flirty gestures as meant for himself, but the real comic highpoint comes when Charlie heads for the pool and must fend off a beefy masseur (Henry Bergman). This sequence is absolutely hilarious no matter how many times you see it, and stands with the best work of Chaplin's career.Perhaps the synopsis of The Cure will sound distasteful to anyone who hasn't seen the film; and granted, attitudes towards substance abuse have changed over time. I maintain that Chaplin was well aware of the seriousness of his subject matter -- his own father died young as a result of alcoholism -- and that he did not take it lightly. The true subject of this film was the contemporary fashion for health resorts, and much of the humor derives from poking fun at the proponents of the spring's curative powers. We see just enough of the spa's administrative staff to get a sense of their self-righteousness, a well-meaning but pompous attitude suggesting that they know all the answers and hold the key to health and happiness. Charlie with his trunk-full of booze is a dangerously subversive element in this atmosphere, and it's his (almost accidental) overthrow of authority that's funny and exhilarating.The Cure is beautifully staged, expertly performed, and hilarious. Where health and happiness are concerned I'd say that viewing it is as restorative as the spring waters touted by the resort's staff in the film: it's good and good for you.