Tillie's Punctured Romance: VHS featuring Charlie Chaplin Marie Dressler & Mabel Normand

Tillie's Punctured Romance VHS featuring Charlie Chaplin Marie Dressler & Mabel Normand Video Warehose Inc., West LongBranch NJ No. 35 77 min. Black &White; 1985 Tillie's Punctured Romance is a 1914 American silent comedy film directed by Mack Sennett and starring Marie Dressler, Mabel Normand, Charlie Chaplin, and the Keystone Kops. The picture was the only feature-length comedy made by the Keystone Film Company. At the time of production Marie Dressler was a major stage star, and in this film Chaplin and Normand support her as leads within Keystone's stock company of actors. The film is based on Dressler's stage play Tillie's Nightmare by A. Baldwin Sloane and Edgar Smith. Tillie's Punctured Romance is notable for being the last Chaplin film which he neither wrote nor directed, as well as the first feature-length slapstick comedy in all of cinema. In it, Chaplin plays a slightly different role from his Tramp character, which was relatively new at the time. However, he retains a moustache (here a, pencil-thin "dude" type rather than his usual "toothbrush"), thin cane and distinctive walk. Given the combination of factors it seems likely that it is also the first feature to contain a "film within the film" where the couple go to the cinema to watch "A Thief's Fate" large sections of which are seen. Whilst this occupies less than one reel of the total six reels it is still significant.