Summary
A single reel of celluloid, originally wrapped in white ribbon and handed to Edwina and Louis Mountbatten on their wedding day, detonates into a carnival of larceny and whimsy. A rope of Tahitian pearls—each orb a miniature moon—becomes the magnetic pole around which a battalion of velvet-jacketed rogues pirouette. Chaplin, the eternal tramp transfigured into a kind of garden-shed demigod, materialises with a mallet carved from driftwood and thunder, flattening felons as if they were paper silhouettes. The lawn of Broadlands House, normally a manicured testament to Edwardian restraint, mutates into a proscenium where unconscious bodies are arranged like croquet hoops. Jackie Coogan—infant phenomenon, future Addams uncle—lurks beneath a counterpane that flaps like a surrender flag, his cameo a non-sequitur that feels, paradoxically, the most honest line of the whole affair. No intertitles moralise; no iris-in offers closure. The film ends when the camera, drunk on its own contrariness, simply loses interest and gazes skyward, leaving the necklace twinkling in the grass like a fallen constellation.
Synopsis
There is no real plot in this little short, who was made only as a wedding present for Lord and Lady Mountbatten. The main plot line is that Lady Mountbatten has a valuable pearl necklace, which a very large number of crooks wants to steal. Charlie Chaplin, even though he is wearing his tramp costume, is called to hunt the crooks, which he does with a wooden hammer, which appears suddenly in his hand. Then the unconscious crooks are all lined up on the lawn, close to Jackie Coogan, who was, at the beginning of the film, hidden there under a blanket, for no apparent reason whatsoever!!
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