Directed by: Charlie Chaplin

Starring: Charlie Chaplin, Edna Purviance, Wesley Ruggles, Bud Jamison, Billy Armstrong, Paddy McGuire, Leo White

Written by: Charlie Chaplin

STORY

Charlie is a hapless young man in love with the beautiful daughter of a shipowner, but her father has absolutely no intention of allowing the romance to continue.

Meanwhile, the shipowner has problems of his own. He conspires with the captain of one of his vessels to deliberately sink the ship during its voyage so that he can collect the insurance money. The captain needs a crew, and his solution is brutally simple: shanghai unsuspecting men and force them aboard.

Charlie is recruited to help.

His job is to assist in knocking out potential sailors and getting them onto the ship. But as so often happens in Charlie Chaplin's world, the person helping create the chaos soon becomes its victim. Charlie himself is knocked unconscious and wakes up aboard the vessel with the very men he helped shanghai.

And then things become wonderfully, unmistakably Chaplin.

Life at sea turns into an escalating series of comic disasters as Charlie tries to survive hard labor, an unforgiving crew and a violently rocking ship. In one of the film's great comic sequences, Charlie attempts to work in the galley while the ship pitches from side to side, sending people, dishes and food sliding uncontrollably across the room.

But Charlie soon discovers that he has another passenger aboard — the shipowner's daughter has secretly followed him onto the ship.

Their romantic adventure suddenly becomes much more dangerous when the captain's criminal plan is revealed. The ship is carrying explosives, and the conspirators intend to abandon it and leave everyone else to die.

Now the little fellow who can barely stay upright on deck must somehow become the hero.

Shanghaied combines romance, physical comedy, danger and Chaplin's growing mastery of visual storytelling into a remarkably energetic two-reel comedy. Made in 1915, it captures Chaplin during a crucial period when the screen character that would make him one of the most famous people in the world was rapidly evolving from mischievous comic troublemaker into the funny, resourceful and surprisingly romantic underdog audiences came to adore.

AIN BACKSTAGE SECRETS & AINTOIDS
CHAPLIN AT ESSANAY

Shanghaied was made during Charlie Chaplin's celebrated year at the Essanay Film Manufacturing Company. Chaplin had left Keystone after 1914, and his move to Essanay gave him greater creative freedom and helped accelerate the development of both his filmmaking style and his famous screen character.

CHARLIE BEHIND THE CAMERA

Chaplin wasn't simply the star of Shanghaied — he directed and wrote the film as well. By this point in his career, Chaplin was increasingly controlling the entire construction of his comedies, developing the extraordinary combination of performer, writer and director that would eventually make him one of cinema's great auteurs.

EDNA PURVIANCE — CHAPLIN'S GREAT EARLY LEADING LADY

Edna Purviance plays the shipowner's daughter and Charlie's sweetheart. She became Chaplin's principal leading lady during this period and appeared with him repeatedly throughout the following years, becoming one of the most important collaborators of his early career.

Chaplin had first cast Purviance in A Night Out earlier in 1915. Their screen partnership would continue through dozens of films and eventually into Chaplin's feature-length work.

A COMEDY ON THE HIGH SEAS

Chaplin took full advantage of the nautical setting. The rocking ship becomes a comedy machine: bodies slide across floors, balance disappears and ordinary activities become almost impossible.

The galley sequence is a particularly wonderful example of Chaplin's physical imagination. Instead of relying solely on individual gags, he turns the environment itself into part of the joke.

AINTOID: WHAT DOES "SHANGHAIED" MEAN?

The title comes from the notorious practice known as shanghaiing — kidnapping or coercing men into serving aboard ships, often after they had been drugged or knocked unconscious.

The practice became particularly associated with 19th-century and early-20th-century port cities. By the time Chaplin made the film, the term was familiar enough to audiences that the title immediately suggested the predicament awaiting Charlie and the unfortunate sailors.

THE TRAMP WAS STILL EVOLVING

The Charlie audiences see in Shanghaied belongs to an especially fascinating stage in the development of Chaplin's screen persona.

The familiar costume was already there, but Chaplin was still discovering the emotional possibilities of the character. His Essanay films increasingly gave Charlie romance, vulnerability and moments of genuine sympathy alongside the slapstick.

That evolution would ultimately transform the Tramp from simply a comic figure into one of the most beloved characters in motion-picture history.

AINTOID: 1915 WAS A HUGE YEAR FOR CHAPLIN

Chaplin's Essanay period lasted only about a year, but it produced a remarkable collection of films and helped turn an already successful comedian into an international phenomenon.

Among the Chaplin films released during 1915 were His New Job, A Night Out, The Champion, The Tramp, By the Sea, Work, A Woman, The Bank, Shanghaied and A Night in the Show.

It was an astonishing burst of filmmaking from an artist still only in his twenties.

THE ROMANCE WAS BECOMING IMPORTANT

Shanghaied isn't merely a collection of nautical gags. Charlie's determination to protect Edna gives the comedy a romantic and heroic element.

That mixture would become increasingly important to Chaplin. Again and again in his later films, the Little Tramp would be ridiculous one moment and unexpectedly tender or courageous the next.

AINTOID: WESLEY RUGGLES BEFORE BECOMING A DIRECTOR

Among the cast is Wesley Ruggles, who later became much better known behind the camera. Ruggles went on to a long directing career and directed the 1931 Western epic Cimarron, which won the Academy Award for Best Picture.

Here, decades before many classic-film audiences would recognize his name as a director, he was appearing on screen alongside Charlie Chaplin.

BEFORE HOLLYWOOD RULED THE WORLD

Shanghaied comes from an extraordinary moment in film history. Feature-length movies had not yet completely displaced short subjects, synchronized dialogue was still more than a decade away, and the language of screen comedy was being invented almost in real time.

Chaplin was one of the artists helping invent it.

More than a century later, we can still watch Shanghaied and recognize comic techniques that became fundamental to movie comedy: carefully constructed physical business, escalating disaster, character-driven gags, romance mixed with slapstick and the eternally funny sight of one determined little man battling a world that seems determined to knock him over.