Directed by: Charlie Chaplin
Starring: Charlie Chaplin, Cecile Arnold, Fritz Schade, Vivian Edwards, Chester Conklin

STORY

Charlie Chaplin stars as a down-on-his-luck artist who wanders into a bar and tells the patrons the tragic story of the woman he loved—and the friend who stole her heart.
As the drinks flow, he recounts his fall from successful artist to brokenhearted wanderer. Inspired by his own sad tale, he attempts to recreate the face of his lost love right there on the barroom floor. Unfortunately, sentiment, alcohol, chalk, and Charlie Chaplin prove to be a rather dangerous combination.
Part parody, part melodrama, and pure early Chaplin, The Face on the Barroom Floor turns heartbreak into wonderfully ridiculous comedy.
AIN BACKSTAGE SECRETS & AINTOIDS

AINtoid: It Started With a Famous Poem!

The Face on the Barroom Floor wasn't originally a movie at all. Chaplin based his comedy on Hugh Antoine d'Arcy's enormously popular 1887 poem of the same name.
The poem tells the tragic story of a ruined man remembering the woman he lost before drawing her face on a saloon floor.
Chaplin naturally saw all that tragedy and thought: COMEDY!

AINtoid: Chaplin the Artist

Before becoming the bedraggled man telling his story in the bar, Chaplin's character was once a successful artist.
That gives Chaplin the perfect excuse for the film's centerpiece: attempting to draw his lost love's portrait on the floor while increasingly under the influence.
The result is considerably less Michelangelo and considerably more Charlie Chaplin.

AINtoid: Chaplin Spoofs Melodrama

Audiences in 1914 would have recognized the kind of gloriously exaggerated tragedy Chaplin was parodying.
Lost love! Betrayal! Ruin! Alcohol! A once-great man brought to his knees!
Chaplin takes every ingredient of Victorian melodrama, turns the dial all the way up—and then starts slipping on it.

AINtoid: Audiences Already Knew the Punchline

D'Arcy's poem had become a popular recitation in American saloons, theaters, and vaudeville halls. Many moviegoers therefore knew the original story before Chaplin's film even began.
That made the parody even funnier: audiences weren't simply watching a comedy—they were watching Chaplin gleefully dismantle something they already recognized.

AINtoid: Chaplin Behind the Camera

Released during his extraordinary first year in motion pictures, The Face on the Barroom Floor was directed by Chaplin himself.
He had arrived at Keystone only months earlier, yet he was already moving behind the camera and experimenting with adapting existing material to fit his rapidly developing comic personality.

AINtoid: A Very Different Little Tramp

The Chaplin character we meet here isn't yet the tender, romantic underdog audiences would later adore.
He's rougher, drunker, more mischievous and considerably less polished—and that's part of the fun of watching these early films in order. We're watching Chaplin discover the character while we're watching the movies.

AINtoid: From Poetry to Pictures

There's something wonderfully appropriate about Chaplin adapting a narrative poem for silent film.
Both forms depend on the audience's imagination to fill in what isn't explicitly shown or heard. Chaplin simply replaced the poet's words with movement, facial expressions, pantomime—and a healthy dose of slapstick.

AIN CURATOR'S NOTE

Only Charlie Chaplin could take a story filled with lost love, betrayal, alcoholism and personal ruin and somehow leave us laughing.
The Face on the Barroom Floor is especially fun today because we're watching Chaplin play with something audiences of 1914 already knew. He wasn't merely creating slapstick—he was parodying popular culture.

And watch the performance carefully.
The enormous gestures, tragic expressions and drunken attempts at artistic greatness aren't accidental. Chaplin is making fun of melodrama itself, exaggerating every emotion until tragedy tumbles headfirst into comedy.

It's also another fascinating snapshot from Chaplin's astonishing first year on film. He hadn't yet perfected the Little Tramp we know today. He was experimenting—trying characters, stories, emotions and directing techniques at a remarkable pace.

And in this one, he discovered something wonderfully Chaplinesque:

Sometimes the distance between tragedy and comedy is only a piece of chalk and one very slippery barroom floor.