John Rand

Chaplin's spoof of Cecil B. DeMille's Carmen, released the same year as the film it mocks. Chaplin plays Darn Hosiery, the Don José figure — a dim Spanish officer seduced and ruined by the gypsy Carmen (Edna Purviance) — with Ben Turpin as the toreador Remendado, mangling his name in the bargain. The parody is affectionate but pointed, and its mock-tragic ending is a real gag rather than a whimper. Essanay later padded the two-reeler out to four reels with discarded footage for a 1918 re-release, prompting Chaplin to sue the studio; most surviving prints derive from that expanded version. As a work published before 1930, it is in the public domain in the United States.

Comedy · Silent

Chaplin's last film for Essanay before he jumped to Mutual for ten times the salary. Released from prison, Chaplin's ex-convict is determined to go straight, but the world won't let him: a bogus parson swindles him out of what little money he has, and an old cellmate ropes him into a bungled burglary. Inside the house, the family's daughter (Edna Purviance) takes pity on the would-be thief, giving the short a surprising streak of sympathy for its outcast hero. Less frenetic than the earlier Essanays, Police points toward the blend of slapstick and sentiment Chaplin would perfect at Mutual. As a work published before 1930, it is in the public domain in the United States.

Comedy · Silent

A Mutual two-reeler and one of the best of Chaplin's 1916 run. Charlie is a tailor's apprentice who burns a count's trousers with a hot iron and gets fired; the tailor then sneaks off to impersonate the count at a society party, and Charlie turns up in the same borrowed identity. Eric Campbell, Chaplin's towering half-courted villain of the Mutual years, plays the rival suitor, and Edna Purviance is the object of everyone's attention. The party sequence — Charlie dancing, wolfing food off other people's plates, and dodging Campbell — is some of the purest slapstick he ever filmed. As a work published before 1930, it is in the public domain in the United States.

Comedy · Silent