Directed by: Charlie Chaplin
Starring: Charlie Chaplin, Edna Purviance, Eric Campbell, Henry Bergman, John Rand, Albert Austin, James T. Kelley

STORY
Charlie Chaplin arrives at an elegant health spa seeking a cure for his fondness for alcohol. There's just one small problem: Charlie has brought along an enormous trunk filled with enough liquor to make his commitment to sobriety somewhat questionable.
While the other guests dutifully drink the spa's supposedly restorative waters, Charlie dodges treatments, battles an enormous masseur, becomes entangled in a gloriously complicated revolving door, and attempts to romance the lovely Edna Purviance.
Then Charlie's hidden supply of alcohol accidentally finds its way into the spa's mineral spring.
Suddenly the establishment devoted to health and sobriety becomes considerably more... festive.
With extraordinary physical comedy, ingenious use of props and some of Chaplin's most beautifully choreographed slapstick, The Cure turns a respectable wellness retreat into complete comic bedlam.

AIN BACKSTAGE SECRETS & AINTOIDS

AINtoid: Charlie Brings His Own Medicine
Charlie arrives at the sanitarium carrying a huge trunk containing an impressive supply of alcohol.
So much for the cure.
The contradiction is the foundation of the entire comedy: Charlie has apparently come to improve his health while bringing along precisely the thing he's supposed to give up.
Chaplin doesn't need dialogue to explain the joke.
One look inside that trunk tells us everything.

AINtoid: The Revolving Door Becomes a Dance Partner
One of The Cure's most memorable sequences involves Charlie, a revolving door, and several people attempting to use it at the same time.
In Chaplin's hands, architecture becomes choreography.
Watch how carefully the sequence is constructed. Entrances, exits, collisions and changes of direction occur with extraordinary precision.
It looks chaotic.
It isn't.
It's practically a dance routine performed with a door.

AINtoid: Meet Chaplin's Giant Nemesis
The enormous Eric Campbell once again provides the perfect physical opponent for Chaplin.
Campbell's towering size and intimidating appearance made him an ideal contrast to the much smaller Chaplin. Simply putting the two men in the same frame created a visual joke before either performer did anything.
Their encounter during Charlie's massage treatment turns what should be relaxation into something considerably closer to hand-to-hand combat.

AINtoid: Somebody Spiked the Water!
The health resort's mineral spring is supposed to restore the guests.
Unfortunately, Charlie's liquor supply finds its way into the water.
The unsuspecting residents continue drinking their "healthy" mineral water—and the dignified spa rapidly becomes one very cheerful establishment.
It's a wonderfully Chaplinesque reversal:
Everyone arrives looking for a cure.
Charlie accidentally gives them a party.

AINtoid: Chaplin's Legendary Mutual Period
The Cure was released in 1917 during Chaplin's celebrated period with the Mutual Film Corporation.
Between 1916 and 1917, Chaplin made twelve comedies for Mutual, including Easy Street, The Immigrant, The Adventurer and The Cure.
These films gave him the time, resources and creative freedom to refine his comedy to an extraordinary degree.
Chaplin later remembered his Mutual period as one of the happiest times of his career.

AINtoid: Edna Purviance Brings the Heart
Once again, Edna Purviance provides a calm center amid Charlie's chaos.
By The Cure, their screen partnership was firmly established. While Chaplin generates the physical comedy, Purviance gives his character someone worth behaving himself for.
Or at least trying to behave himself for.
With Charlie, that's usually the best anyone can hope for.

AINtoid: Health Spas Were Already Big Business

Health resorts and mineral-water cures were enormously popular during the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries.
Visitors traveled to fashionable spas seeking relief through mineral baths, special diets, exercise and supposedly therapeutic spring water.
That meant audiences in 1917 immediately understood the world Chaplin was parodying.
Today's wellness retreat has smoothies and yoga.
Charlie's had mineral water, massages—and apparently a well-stocked suitcase.

AINtoid: Watch Charlie's Feet
Chaplin's comedy wasn't confined to his face.
Watch his feet throughout The Cure, particularly when he's trying to maintain his dignity while his body seems determined to do something entirely different.
His ability to isolate different parts of his body—to have his face communicate one intention while his feet communicate another—was one of the secrets of his extraordinary physical comedy.

AIN CURATOR'S NOTE
More than a century before wellness retreats, detox vacations and luxury spas became fashionable, Charlie Chaplin had already figured out the essential problem:
You can send someone away for a cure, but you can't necessarily make them want to be cured.
The Cure gives Chaplin a perfect comic playground.
Revolving doors.
Mineral springs.
Massage tables.
Dignified guests.
One enormous Eric Campbell.
And a suitcase that should probably never have made it past reception.
But watch beyond the gags.

By 1917, Chaplin's physical comedy had become extraordinarily sophisticated. The revolving-door sequence isn't simply funny—it is meticulously choreographed movement. His encounters with Campbell use differences in size, rhythm and body language to create comedy before the characters even touch.

Charlie Chaplin isn't simply performing jokes anymore.
He's directing movement.
And then, naturally, he pours an entire liquor supply into the health spa's drinking water.
Because sometimes even a cinematic genius knows the simplest solution:
When in doubt, spike the spa.