Chaplin edited, wrote, produced, and directed this film for First National Pictures, his last short film before focusing exclusively on feature films. In it, Chaplin plays an industrious worker with an amazing ability to lay bricks at lightning speed. There are numerous sight gags, especially at lunch time when the workers take their break involving an elevator and discarded food items. Chaplin feels he's been cheated out of some pay, but the boss let's him in so many words that it's a closed issue. Edna Purviance is the boss' daughter, but she has nothing to really contribute in this film. Chaplin tries hiding his pay from his Philistine wife played by the behemoth Phyllis Allen, but she's quick to discover his hiding place. Chaplin ends up smuggling some money back from his wife and heads to a Bachelor's Club and stays out drinking most of the night. He has a heck of a time trying to catch a trolley ride home, and when he does stroll home in the wee hours, he almost fools his wife into thinking he was never out all night until the alarm clock goes off at just the wrong moment. Of course, with a wife like his, sleeping with a rolling pin in hand, can we blame him for drinking? This was supposedly Chaplin's favorite short film, and it's understandable in that it contains some common themes that find themselves in many of his films. It's a tale of a workingman, everyman with a nagging wife, trying to just make it day to day in a world that seems stacked against him. However, the film is not really as funny or as good as many of his other films from this period. **1/2 of 4 stars.
Review of Pay Day
