This film starts with a man-hunt, where the police are hunting for an escaped convict (Charlie Chaplin) who has cleverly eluded the guards so far. One police officer (Henry Bergman) is told to guard the beach in case the escaped felon came within sight again. However, unbeknownst to the officer, Charlie is actually buried under sand next to the officer.
Fully aware of the danger, he is very cautious regarding his escape. He unburies himself very cautiously, however, Bergman is asleep, and he falls back on the hole which Charlie created while un-burying himself. Of course, Charlie makes a run, but it is too late.
The officer fires, missing Charlie by an inch. Charlie hurriedly climbs up a vertical wall of mud and stone, and the officer chases after him. Charlie, however, finishes Bergman off by throwing a rock at him. In vain, he shoots, but it misses Charlie's head by a mile.
A few seconds later, however, it seems Charlie is finished when a policeman stealthily creeps up to him. He steps on his hand, presumably to not let him escape, presumably as a reminder that his time is up. However, Charlie thinks it's a stray stone and covers it with mud. When he looks up and sees the officer, however, the chase resumes, and the Tramp eludes the officer. Charlie runs, into a group of officers.
Charlie runs all the way up to the top of the dusty cliff. Just when it seems like Charlie is free, another officer leaps in out of nowhere and shoots Charlie. However, the shot missed its mark, and Charlie, feigning death, fools the officer successfully. In the middle of the check-up to make sure the convict was dead, Charlie kicks him down the hill.
He takes the officer's hiding place (a disguised hole in the rock) while Bergman and his companion come to that same spot looking for Charlie. Charlie sees them and makes a stealthy escape—however, not stealthy enough to alert them at the last moment.
Charlie comes through to the other end of the hole, grabs a police officer's gun, and uses this to threaten the police. Meanwhile, he tiptoes backwards, trips against a stray rock, and accidentally fires at Bergman. The shot was not fatal, but irritates him.
Helpless, Charlie swims towards the deep seas. The policemen chase him in a boat. Of course, they are unprepared for the high tide, and a huge wave knocks them over. Charlie swims over towards a boat where a man is desperately trying to take off his wet shirt.
The scene cuts towards a girl and her lover (Edna Purviance and Eric Campbell). They realize Edna's mother (Marta Golden) is drowning. They go over to help her. Edna begs Campbell to help, but he refuses because of his weight. She jumps in, while Campbell leans against the fence and hawks at her. However, this man's weight causes him to fall in the water.
Hearing the chaos ensuing between Campbell, Edna and her mother, Charlie, who had just found some dry land, decides to investigate. He jumps back into the water and swims over to where he thinks the chaos is taking place. He finds Edna on the shore, frantic, and Edna, seeing Charlie, begs him to save her mother. Charlie saves Edna first, then her mother, then swims towards Campbell and swims circles around him. Finally, he uses his beard to pull himself back to shore.
He then rescues everybody else. The authorities arrive, and Edna's unconscious mother is the first to go into the ambulance. However, she soon gains her consciousness, and Charlie lies to her, and before heading back to rescue Campbell, in the process unintentionally tossing him back into the water. He goes back and rescues Campbell. However, in the process, Charlie hurts himself and lies down on the shore, helpless and unable to walk. However, a policeman saw him, called Edna, and rescues the injured Charlie.
Charlie now wakes up in the house of Edna, the woman he now loves. However, him wearing his striped pajamas, and lying in a bed with bars at the head, makes him think he is in prison, which is cleared when the butler enters with a towel. Edna and Charlie go to the balcony to socialize, where Charlie accidentally kicks Campbell. Campbell thinks it is intentional, however, and kicks him back. They go on kicking each other for a while, till a lady intervenes between Charlie and Campbell. Since Campbell and Charlie had their backs to each other, Campbell couldn't see the lady intervening. Therefore, he kicks her buttock, thinking it's Charlie's he's kicked. He gets embarrassed by his blunder, and the others are bothered by it.
Inside, while Edna plays the piano, Campbell tries getting revenge but to no avail. Charlie sloshes a whole lot of beer on him, and he retreats. However, when he does, he sees Charlie's face on the newspaper, under the headline "Criminal Escapes: Convict Still at Large".
Of course, this was a good way of getting revenge. Therefore, when Charlie talks away with Edna's father, who was Judge Brown, the man who sentenced him to prison, Charlie is scared. But he acts calm, going under the alias "Commodore Slick". However, at the worst possible moment, Campbell barges in, shoves Charlie out and tells Judge Brown to come look at the newspaper. When Charlie comes across the headline, he is scared stiff and nervous. As a last resort, he takes out his pen and draws a beard, so (hopefully) Judge Brown thinks Campbell is the convict.
Of course, Brown falls for the trap. When a determined Campbell stalks in with the judge, he grabs the paper and shows it to Brown. Of course, Brown thinks that this man has got it wrong, and shows it to Charlie. Charlie looks at the paper, and looks back at Bergman.
He talks to everybody inside, trying to blend in after that near brush with Judge Brown. He talks to everybody, including Edna, and then decides to go to the kitchen with Edna.
But in the kitchen, the cook is giving a meal to her policeman friend, so when the knock sounds, the policeman hurriedly goes towards the closet. Charlie and Edna enter just as she is closing the door, so Charlie is curious. He opens the closet, sees the policeman and, in an instant, closes the door and darts out of the room.
What follows is a nerve-wracking chase with some slapstick overtures. Several times, Charlie comes close to getting caught. Several times, he survives by the skin of his teeth. And, in the end, one police officer corners him. It looks like the end, like Charlie will finally be apprehended—until Charlie outwits him. He introduces the policeman and Edna, and when the policeman is taking his police hat off, Charlie breaks away from his grasp and runs away, the police chasing him.
Chaplin broadened the scope of his comedic delivery considerably during his time with Mutual, and this picture is another wherein he made bold choices that departed from the old format of his films. This was acknowledged by a reviewer from The Moving Picture World that began with the byline: "Latest Mutual-Chaplin Comedy Moves Upward in Grade But Loses None of Comedian's Usual Amount of Laughs." He continued: "There is very little of the old slapstick, custard pie type of comedy used in this picture, but the comedian has introduced a generous share of sure-fire comedy business, and he still retains his unmatchable ability to plant a swift kick at any and all times where it will do the most good and the least harm."[1]
A re-release of the film inspired this enthusiastic review in the August 16, 1920 New York Times. This was written during a period in which Chaplin's film output was practically nonexistent.
"On the Rivoli program, and also at the Rialto, is a Chaplin revival. The Adventurer, which makes one wish, between laughs, that the screen's best comedian would get to work and do what everyone knows he is capable of. There is a slap-stick coarse humor in The Adventurer, but also some of Chaplin's most irresistible pantomime."[2]
Sound version
In 1932, Amedee Van Beuren of Van Beuren Studios, purchased Chaplin's Mutual comedies for $10,000 each, added music by Gene Rodemich and Winston Sharples and sound effects, and re-released them through RKO Radio Pictures. Chaplin had no legal recourse to stop the RKO release.[3]
^Chalmers Publishing Company (1917). Moving Picture World (Nov 1917). New York The Museum of Modern Art Library. New York, Chalmers Publishing Company.
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