Easy Street is a 1917 short action-comedy film by Charlie Chaplin.
Plot
In a slum called Easy Street, the police are failing to maintain law and order.
The Little Tramp is sleeping rough outside a mission near the streets of a lawless slum. He is reformed somewhat at the mission where there is singing and religious education. His religious awakening is inspired by a beautiful young woman who pleads for him to stay at the mission.
Spotting a help wanted ad for a job at the police station, the Little Tramp accepts and is assigned the rough-and-tumble Easy Street as his beat. Upon entering the street he finds a bully roughing up the locals and pilfering their money. The Little Tramp gets on the wrong side of the bully and following a chase the two eventually come to blows culminating in the Little Tramp inventively using a gas lamp to render the bully unconscious.
The bully is taken away by the police but manages to escape from the station and returns to Easy Street. After a long chase the Little Tramp manages to knock the bully unconscious by dropping a heavy stove on his head from an upstairs window. On returning to his beat on Easy Street the unruly mob knock the Little Tramp unconscious and drop him into a nearby cellar where he manages to save the aforementioned beautiful young woman from a nasty drug addict after accidentally sitting on the drug addict's needle. Supercharged by the effects of the drug he takes on the mob and heroically defeats them all and as a consequence restores peace and order to Easy Street.
Cast
- Charles Chaplin ... The Derelict
- Edna Purviance ... The Mission Worker
- Eric Campbell ... The Bully
- Albert Austin ... Minister/Policeman
- Lloyd Bacon ... Drug Addict
- Henry Bergman ... Anarchist
- Frank J. Coleman ... Policeman
- William Gillespie ... Heroin addict
- James T. Kelley ... Mission Visitor/Policeman
- Charlotte Mineau ... Big Eric's Wife
- John Rand ... Mission Tramp/Policeman
- Janet Miller Sully ... Mother in Mission
- Loyal Underwood ... Small Father/Policeman
- Erich von Stroheim Jr. ... Baby
- Leo White ... Policeman (uncredited)
- Tom Wood ... Chief of Police (uncredited)
Sound version
In 1932, Amedee Van Beuren of Van Beuren Studios, purchased Chaplin's Mutual comedies for $10,000 each, added music by Gene Rodemich and Winston Sharples and sound effects, and re-released them through RKO Radio Pictures. Chaplin had no legal recourse to stop the RKO release.
See also
- Charlie Chaplin filmography
References
External links
- Easy Street at the Internet Movie Database
- Easy Street at AllMovie
- Article at InDigest Magazine about the film recently being scored by Justin Vernon (Bon Iver)