These four short comedies by Chaplin are from volume 3 of a three volume set known as The Chaplin Mutuals comprising all 12 comedies he made for the Mutual company in 1916.
In Chaplin’s first short film for Mutual, The Floorwalker, he plays a customer in
a retail store who becomes unwittingly mixed up in an embezzlement scheme
involving the store’s manager and floorwalker. This is made possible by his
uncanny resemblance to the floorwalker which provides for an oft repeated (most
famously by the Marx brothers) classic bit in which Chaplin and his
doppelganger (Lloyd Bacon) play like they’re each looking in a mirror at the
other. What starts as another episode of the bumbling Tramp acting the fool
becomes a classic mistaken identity comedy as the store manager (Eric Campbell)
takes him for the man who betrayed him for the cash embezzlement. The Floorwalker is notable for being the
first film to use an escalator for comedy which provides Chaplin some great
physical comedy centered on one character chasing another down the ‘up’
escalator with neither of them moving anywhere. The climax features an elevator
as well, the two working together to add a new level to Chaplin’s comedic work.
