Tillie’s Punctured Romance is a 1914 American silent comedy film directed by Mack Sennett and starring Marie Dressler, Mabel Normand, Charlie Chaplin, and the Keystone Cops. The picture is the first feature-length comedy and was the only feature-length comedy made by the Keystone Film Company.
At the time of production Marie Dressler was a major stage star, and in this film Chaplin and Normand support her as leads within Keystone’s stock company of actors.
The film, based on Dressler’s stage play Tillie’s Nightmare by A. Baldwin Sloane and Edgar Smith, is the first feature-length slapstick comedy in all of cinema.
This was the last time Charlie Chaplin acted in a film that he neither wrote nor directed. He plays a slightly different role from his Tramp character, which was relatively new at the time. However, he retains a moustache (here a pencil-thin “dude” type rather than his usual “toothbrush”), thin cane and distinctive walk.
Tillie provides an early example of film within a film, when the couple go to the cinema to watch A Thief’s Fate, large sections of which are seen.
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