TheLittleSongbird Am a big fan of Charlie Chaplin, have been for over a decade now. Many films and shorts of his are very good to masterpiece, and like many others consider him a comedy genius and one of film's most important and influential directors. He did do better than 'Getting Acquainted', still made fairly early on in his career where he was still finding his feet and not fully formed what he became famous for, though previous efforts showed signs of his style starting to settle. Can understand why the Keystone period suffered from not being as best remembered or highly remembered than his later efforts, but they are mainly decent and important in their own right. 'Getting Acquainted' is a long way from a career high, but has a lot of nice things about it and is to me one of the middling efforts in the 1914 Keystone batch and a decent, if not one of the better ones, acting collaboration with Mabel Normand. Sure, 'Getting Acquainted' is not as hilarious, charming or touching as his later work and some other shorts in the same period. The story is flimsy and the production values not as audacious. Occasionally, things feel a little scrappy and confused.'Getting Acquainted' is not bad at all, having said that. Far from it.While not audacious, the film hardly looks ugly, is more than competently directed and is appealingly played. Chaplin looks comfortable for so early on and shows his stage expertise while opening it up that it doesn't become stagy or repetitive shtick. Mabel Normand is quite charming.Although the humour, charm and emotion was done even better and became more refined later, 'Getting Acquainted' is humorous, sweet and easy to like, though the emotion is not quite there. It moves quickly and doesn't feel too long or short. Overall, pretty decent. 6/10 Bethany Cox

CitizenCaine Chaplin stars with Mabel Normand for the last time in this film, another of his park comedies. They're each in a park with their respective spouses played by the behemoths Phyllis Allen and Mack Swain. The spouses appeared to be mismatched in terms of size, a sight gag often used in silent comedies. Chaplin flirts with Mabel Normand as usual by using his cane; he also flirts with another young lady and soon he's being run off by Mack Swain and the other young lady's beau. A policeman happens upon the scene only to be flirtatious himself, but soon he's after Charlie too. Chaplin ducks into a bush as the men run back and forth repeatedly trying to find him. Chaplin and Swain each flirt with each other's wife near the end, and then they're both paired back up with their wives. The film has several moments of camera lingering perhaps knowing Chaplin was leaving Keystone after his next film. The film is entertaining but nothing special except the usual Keystone slapstick is noticeably absent, which is probably due to the fact Chaplin edited, wrote, and directed this film. ** of 4 stars.

Michael DeZubiria A Fair Exchange is a strangely prophetic film about the troubles with women that Chaplin would encounter later in life. Having seen a few documentaries about Chaplin's life off screen, I always get the feeling that I can sense just under the surface (and even in his earliest films), his love not only of attention but of the amorous affections of women. A Fair Exchange concerns two married couples, one happy and one not so happy, in which the men ultimately meet and make passes at each other's wives, and soon find themselves being introduced to their would-be mistresses by their own wives.As is probably to be expected, it is Chaplin who is clearly in a miserable marriage with what appears to be an angry, over-bearing wife, and it doesn't take long before he starts taking steps to try to meet someone else. One thing that I noticed about this film it that it seems to be much less modest than films of the time were, or at least how I thought they were.At one point, the pretty wife of the other man bends way over right in front of Charlie, giving him a clear view of her backside, and Charlie makes no effort to be cautious as he gazes enraptured at the sight before him, despite the fact that his wife is sitting right next to him. Later, he scolds his cane for 'accidentally' lifting up the girl's skirt as she is standing next to him. I'll just go ahead and admit that until now, I thought such things would have been unacceptable in the movies. Looks like it's about time for me to go back and re-read the parameters of the infamous Code.At any rate, the film also features a pretty clear picture of what might be considered Chaplin's conflicting views of women. Given what we know about his personal life, he had a particularly strong desire for women, but he seemed to reel back and forth from extremes of good and bad, with very quick love and happy marriages soon turning into divorce and bitter legal disputes.In the movie, it could be argued that he was just inexperienced in the ways of romance. Charlie doesn't seem to know how to act around women, at one point tipping his hat and smiling, and at the next, using her as an armrest. Whatever the case, it seems that in the years that followed, his behavior in real life may have been a little too similar to his behavior in the movie. As a film in comparison to the other short films that he was making at the time, what I really like about A Fair Exchange is that it has a fully developed plot that is relatively easy to follow. A lot of the Keystone comedies tried to tell more of a story than they could sustain, and ultimately became very hard to follow. The plot here is entertaining and easy to follow, and while the comedy and slapstick is not much different from the other short films, it is more memorable here because it comes with an entertaining story.

MartinHafer I've seen quite a few Chaplin shorts from early in his career and I've noticed that his early stuff (done for Keystone Studios) is pretty dreadful stuff. Unlike his wonderful full-length films from the 20s and 30s, the films from 1914-1915 are incredibly poorly made--having no script but only vague instructions from the director. In most cases, the films had almost no plot and degenerated to people punching and kicking each other.In this film, Charlie and his friend meet at the park. They both begin making passes at the others' wives and from there it all degenerates to a lot of slapping, getting bonked on the head and silly slapstick. Not exactly deep stuff! By the end, it appears that both guys are pretty open minded about the other guy making the moves on their women! A very odd and simple film.