‘Tillie’s Punctured Romance’, directed by Mack Sennett in 1914 and going down in film history as the first feature-length slapstick film in American cinema, stars a young Charlie Chaplin and a stunning Marie Dressler. Tillie (Marie Dressler) is a simple country girl who ends up falling in love with a gallant and deceitful playboy (Charlie Chaplin) who is passing through on his property. After countless vicissitudes in which they both play a part, it is a providential patrol of the Keystone Kops (Sennett’s trademark) that restores calm, even if in the end all the characters involved end up falling overboard. The film is also an important example of the precarious coexistence – so much so that Chaplin later preferred to direct his own films – between Sennett’s frenetic pace and the legitimate acting aspirations of a rising Chaplin.
subject: A. Baldwin Sloane - (theatre text), Edgar Smith - (theatre text)
script: Hampton Del Ruth - (uncredited), Craig Hutchinson - (uncredited), Mack Sennett - (uncredited)
photography: Hans F. Koenekamp, Frank D. Williams
music by: Edward Kilenyi - (musical commentary for the 1938 reissue)
other titles: For the Love of Tillie, Marie's Millions, Tillie's Nightmare, Le roman comique de Charlot et de Lolotte, Tillie's Big Romance, Charlot milionario per un'ora, Il Romanzo di Tillie
color: Bianco & Nero
taken from: from the musical comedy 'Tillie's Nightmare' by Edgar Smith and A. Baldwin Sloane
production company: MACK SENNETT PER KEYSTONE FILM COMPANY
Su gentile concessione dell'Ente dello Spettacolo
