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Charlie and Ben have been trying to drink the town dry. When Charlie
returns to his hotel, he is not sober enough to know where he is. He goes up to
the desk, tries to put his foot on a phantom brass rail and drink the ink.
When he finally gets to his room it is still early evening, but he prepares for
bed. He solves the problem of hanging up his coat, which has continually
fallen to the floor, by absent-mindedly thrusting it through the window. It
falls to the sidewalk below.
Across the hall a dog seizes the slipper of a young married lady (Edna Purviance) and runs with it into Charlie's room. Then
comes the charming young wife in her pajamas, pursuing the dog. Both the
dog and Edna hide under Charlie's bed. The husband tries to find Edna and,
while he is downstairs, she slips back into her room. But Charlie follows
her, gets into bed, and promptly goes to sleep. He is discovered by the husband
and is chased. Ben finds Charlie on the street and they go from one café
to another.
The irate husband turns out to be the headwaiter at
one of them. Charlie throws a custard pie at a Frenchman, washes in the
fountain, and is thrown out. Again at the hotel, Charlie knocks at the
door of the young wife. Her husband opens the door. Under his
threatening, stare Charlie retreats to his own room, packs his suitcase, and
realizing that escape is the better part of valor, leaves the hotel.
A Night Out was made at the Essanay Studio in
Niles, California, although some of the scenes were shot in Oakland.
Chaplin drew upon some of the material used in Mabel's Strange Predicament
for the hotel sequences. In prints of the film as now shown, re-edited
with a musical sound track, the sequence of events seems to have been altered.
Edna Purviance was introduced to the screen in A
Night Out. Born in Paradise Valley, Nevada, she was then nineteen
years of age. Work on A Night Out had been held up because a
suitable leading lady had not been found. When a young cowboy actor said
he had frequently seen a very pretty girl in a San Francisco restaurant, Chaplin
immediately arranged for an interview. The old fan magazines used to tell
the story, although it probably was not true, that four hours later Edna
Purviance was standing before a motion picture camera for the first time in her
life. This beautiful actress proved to be amazingly adaptable. Whether she
played a waif, a woman of wealth, a country girl, or a most alluring Carmen, she
was the perfect leading lady for Chaplin, often providing a center of
tranquility in a world of comic madness. She played in every film he made
from 1915 through 1923, except in the womanless One A. M. and His New
Job.
What was said about
A Night Out:
Bioscope
"Chaplin goes out with his friend,
Ben Turpin, for an evening's
entertainment, and the fun is certainly fast and furious. The sight of
these two disreputable tramps mixing with the company in a gorgeous restaurant
and behaving in a manner which would not be tolerated in an East-end bar house,
is sufficiently amusing in itself, and by disregarding any pretense at realism
adds to the absurdity and enjoyment of a humor that is extravagant to the last
degree. Chaplin appears in the old familiar costume, and does all the old
familiar business, some of which might well be spared, but most of which is
rendered even funnier by its constant repetition. The ease and apparent
lack of effort with which Chaplin works his quaint tricks show him to be a very
conscientious and hard-working actor in his own peculiar line."
The Cinema
"The hero (Chaplin) is magnificently and consistently drunk from first to
last. Accompanied by his knock-about partner,
Ben Turpin, he sets out to
test the limits of a stupendous thirst...This film gives Chaplin full elbow room
for many extraordinary antics and touches of humorous detail, and the fun runs
along at top speed. There is little or no actual plot, Charlie having very
wisely been given his head, and we should imagine that, at the finish of the
production, it was a very sore head. Turpin makes an excellent partner,
and takes many a stunning knockout blow with paralytic indifference."
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