- Year :
- 1915
- Cast :
- Charles Chaplin, Edna Purviance, Charles Insley, Billy Armstrong, Marta Golden, Leo White, Paddy McGuire
- Production :
- Essanay
- Description :
- The havoc created by incompetent laborers had always been prime slapstick material. For example, in 1906 Chaplin had appeared in Wal Pink’s music-hall sketch, Repairs, playing a plumber’s assistant. In this comedy, Chaplin plays a paperhanger’s assistant hired to paper a mansion (the imposing home was the Bradbury Mansion, one of the biggest homes in Los Angeles). Peace is replaced with anarchy, culminating with a massive explosion. The opening sequence—which shows Charlie pulling a work cart down a busy street and up a hill with his boss sitting in the cart’s driver seat, hitting Charlie with a whip—is striking for its symbolic importance regarding the exploitation and degradation of human laborers.
- DVD & Blu-ray :