Colibel Terrible acting, screenplay and direction.

Lucybespro It is a performances centric movie

FeistyUpper If you don't like this, we can't be friends.

Humaira Grant It’s not bad or unwatchable but despite the amplitude of the spectacle, the end result is underwhelming.

Steffi_P With The Vagabond, the picture before this, Charlie Chaplin had made his first story in which the drama was strong and professional enough that it could have stood up on its own without the comedy. In One A.M. he takes things the other way, dispensing with any semblance of a plot and simply having fun in a stripped down one-man situation short.Unburdened with any need for narrative or supporting players to spar with, Charlie simply does what he can with the various props around the home of his wealthy drunkard character. While much of the act looks semi-improvised, as ever Chaplin shows sensibility in framing and timing. There is a great example here of how he makes the audience anticipate a gag and builds up a kind of suspense to it. Every time Charlie attempts the staircase, the camera tilts up with him, bringing an over-sized pendulum into view for a few seconds before he tumbles back down again. We know that sooner or later he is going to make it, only to be knocked back down again by the pendulum, only we don't know when. This build up makes the eventual blow funnier than if it had happened out of the blue.As you can imagine, with one character and one location stretched over two reels the humour is a bit hit and miss. In particular there is a lot of repetition, with some recurring gags rolling round once or twice too often. It is in fact the small, by-the-way moments that provide the best laughs, such as Charlie taking the opportunity to pour himself a drink when he happens to land in front of the whiskey decanter. After all, Chaplin was a smart comedian as well as a pratfalling clown. In any case, the situation of One A.M. is one most of us will be able to relate to, and perhaps have a wry chuckle at its embarrassing familiarity, even those of us not fortunate to have a tiger-skin rug or a revolving table in our homes. Which brings me onto another point; I think it's significant that he chose not to play this one as his usual little tramp character. Not only does it make sense for this well-off chap to have a house full of fun stuff, but I think it is more satisfying for the audience to see the upper class twit lurch around making an ass of himself, as opposed to the downtrodden tramp.And now, it's time for that all-important statistic -Number of kicks up the arse: 1 (1 for, although I'm not sure if it should count against stuffed cats)

Michael DeZubiria Chaplin playing drunk characters are his weakest roles, and for much of the time I was watching One A.M. I got the feeling that he went in to work and didn't have any ideas, so just decided to play a drunk guy coming home from a big night on the town. The plot is virtually nonexistent, it really does start with him coming home drunk, and his only purpose from beginning to end is to get upstairs and go to bed. He stumbles out of a taxi and, after accidentally paying the driver with a cigarette butt instead of the fifty cent fare, he climbs through a window to get into his house, stepping in the fishbowl on the way in. There is a series of mildly amusing sight gags involving things like an extremely slippery throw rug, a spinning table (which was one of the more amusing gags, despite making no sense at all), a stuffed cougar (or some other scary animal of the cat family), a coat rack, and a staircase with some insufficiently attached carpeting. The set that the movie is filmed on is a little strange, with two staircases on either side, both leading up to the second floor, which apparently contains just one door to the bedroom and a clock with a wildly over-sized pendulum. I'm struck by how unrealistic the set is, with those two staircases (it seems like something Sarah Winchester would build in her house), but then again, that clock's pendulum swings long and fast, directly across the path of the door to the bedroom, so it's clear that the set was designed with physical comedy in mind, not architectural efficiency. Chaplin does, after all, ultimately decide to climb that coat rack, twice, rather than use either of the staircases.The best part of the movie, however, is definitely the bed, which Charlie has to deal with when he eventually does make it upstairs. The mechanics of the bed make no sense at all, as it flips around every which way and seems to have a personality of it's own. And apparently it doesn't like being slept on! There is an interesting contraption at the end that I found a little curious. There's a thing that looks like a ladder in the bathroom, but it turns out that it's a shower that sprays water out of all of the rungs. I wonder if this was kind of a new and innovative showering idea that just never really caught on. At any rate, after losing his battle with the bed, Charlie ultimately falls asleep in the bathtub and the movie ends. It's a clever little comedy, but it's basically just physical comedy and nothing else. Even back in 1916 Chaplin was making much better films than this.

Snow Leopard One of Charlie Chaplin's many short comedies, "One A.M." is essentially a one-man show, and while it is purely slapstick-oriented without any of the depth of Chaplin's later films, it's pretty good. Except for a brief appearance by a cab driver at the beginning, Charlie is on-screen alone for the entire film, as a man returning home after a night of carousing. All he wants to do is go to bed, but before he can go to bed, he has to get up the stairs, and before he can get up the stairs, he has to get inside the house - but in Charlie's condition, each step is fraught with peril.The film starts somewhat slowly, but gets funnier as it goes along. Chaplin shows off not just his comic timing, but his acrobatic skills as well - some of the stunts are pretty impressive. While this is certainly not one of his best, it's worth watching.

jojo-36 This is wonderful early Chaplin stuff. His use of props and gimmickry are definitive. How do you suppose he could fall down the stairs that many times and still get up unhurt? The man was a genius!!.