The Rink
1916 · 24m · USA
Directed by Charlie Chaplin
Tones: whimsical
Charlie Chaplin plays an inept waiter who causes chaos at a restaurant, but reveals himself to be an astonishingly graceful roller skater at the local rink, where slapstick mayhem ensues among the upper-class patrons.
Picked by Margot
The scouts
Chaplin actually skates beautifully and the chaos is balletic — but it's a one-trick reel built around a skill demonstration. Pleasant, slight.
Chaplin's skating choreography, inherited from his Karno-troupe days, turns slapstick into something approaching ballet. A confident demonstration of his physical instrument.
Chaplin's actual roller-skating ability from his Karno vaudeville days transforms slapstick into balletic precision — you can see the muscle memory in the way he glides between collisions. 24:38 YouTube cut.
Reviews
Plenty of fun provided by [Chaplin] on the rollers... he displayed a surprising cleverness on them, outshining and outwitting any of the others on the floor.
The skating scenes are a brilliant display of mastery that's just as remarkable in a 1916 film as it would be, twenty years later, in Modern Times.