In The Park at Essanay

Cleansing myself from the Coulter posts that I engaged in after promising to
stop, which makes me a big fat liar so I should try to write Best Sellers, I
should at least keep my promise about In The Park.

I love the utter simplicity of this one-reeler, made hastily after
production on The Champion ran long. Chaplin likely wanted more time to
work out ideas once working at this studio, and to be relegated to a
one-reeler might have been creatively daunting. But within the simplest
premise, he puts his supporting actors through similar tracks as had been
covered by Keystone players, allowing the likes of Bud Jamison and Edna
Purviance to mug it up with pleasing results.

Not getting into specific analysis, the very idea that In The Park was
merely an in-betweener, post-Champion and pre-Jitney, makes it easy to
dismiss, as what would happen to the maddeningly underrated The Circus
(itself sandwiched between two legendary films). In fact, it is another
Keystonesque romp with greater attention to detail, and it holds up quite
well.