The Pawnshop
1916 · 25m · USA
Directed by Charlie Chaplin
Charlie Chaplin plays a bumbling assistant in a pawnshop who gets into slapstick battles with his coworker, fumbles with customers, and foils a robbery — all while trying not to get fired by the owner whose daughter he adores.
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The alarm clock dissection scene is one of the great prop comedy sequences in all of cinema — Chaplin performing surgery on time itself. Rest is filler around a masterpiece.
The alarm-clock dissection scene is among the supreme prop-comedy sequences in silent cinema, executed with the surgical patience of a great clown. Chaplin near the height of his Mutual powers.
The alarm-clock dissection scene is Chaplin treating a prop like an organ — methodical surgical mime where every component gets a beat. Pure prop comedy at peak Mutual-era precision. 4.7M views on YouTube backs the runtime.
Reviews
The imagination is accurate. The acting is restrained and naturalistic. The result is a scream.
One of Chaplin's greatest 'prop' pictures, in which he manages to sustain an entire twenty-five minute short just through messing around with the bric-a-brac and getting in the way of his co-workers.