Themes: Mistaken Identities, Twins and Lookalikes, Cons and Scams
Release Year: 1916
Country: US
Run Time: 20 minutes
Plot
Charlie Chaplin launched his 670,000-dollar contract with the Mutual Film Corporation with the hilarious The Floorwalker. The film's chief comedic device, the store escalator, was inspired by Chaplin's visit to New York, where, at an elevated train station, he saw a minor accident involving one. The manager of the store receives a letter -- his superiors are coming to investigate him. He's been skimming money from the store, in cahoots with the bossy and mean floorwalker who bears a striking resemblance to Charlie. The pair decide they're going to take off with the cash and begin emptying the safe in the office upstairs. Meanwhile, Charlie comes wandering into the store, trying out everything but buying nothing. The store seems to be infested with shoplifters and store detectives. Charlie gets caught by one of the latter when he tries to buy a display rack. He escapes upstairs where he encounters his doppelganger who has just knocked out the manager and is escaping with a suitcase full of money. The lookalikes do the classic mirror routine, copied later by the Marx Brothers in Duck Soup. They agree to exchange clothes and identities, but the real floorwalker is arrested as the Tramp, leaving behind the satchel full of loot. Charlie takes over the floorwalker's duties, getting involved with various customers, especially the ladies in the shoe department. When Charlie finds the case, he's ecstatic, until Eric Campbell awakens and, mistaking him for his crooked partner, begins a merry chase up and down the escalator and all around the store, hampered only by the ever-vigilant store detectives. The real floorwalker returns in custody and comes clean, implicating the manager. The chase continues until Charlie is caught in the elevator by a detective as it descends upon the head of Campbell who is also apprehended. ~ Phil Posner, All Movie Guide
Review
The Floorwalker is one of Charlie Chaplin's lesser shorts. Through much-labored slapstick, Chaplin mugs his way through a comedy of sight gags, pratfalls, and mistaken identity as The Tramp. As always, Chaplin is a marvel to watch as he deftly wreaks havoc on the sales floor of a respectable department store. Lloyd Bacon has a choice part as the assistant store manager (or floorwalker) who looks suspiciously like The Tramp, a fact that will prove inconvenient for the real Tramp later in the film. Bacon and his stooge (played by Eric Campbell) are in the process of robbing the store, and when The Tramp comes through the doors to help himself to a shave, the case of mistaken identity begins. Chaplin and Bacon even perform a variation on the "missing mirror" gag that originated in vaudeville, and was most memorably used by the Marx Brothers in their classic film Duck Soup (1933), and before that in Alice Guy-Blaché's one-reel comedy His Double (1911). Many of the best gags center on an escalator that becomes the center of the action as the film nears its conclusion. For Chaplin's first film at Mutual, however, it is an uneven effort at best, with a slapped-together feeling; only the comic timing of Chaplin, Bacon, and Eric Campbell as an ensemble spark any real viewer response. That said, The Floorwalker is still a remarkable accomplishment for a young comedian on his way up, and a testament to the workmanlike ethic that pervaded all of Chaplin's two-reel comedies. ~ Wheeler Winston Dixon, All Movie Guide
