TheLittleSongbird Am a big fan of Charlie Chaplin, have been for over a decade now. Many films and shorts of his are very good to masterpiece, and like many others consider him a comedy genius and one of film's most important and influential directors. He did do better than 'Between Showers'. Can understand why the Keystone period suffered from not being as best remembered or highly remembered than his later efforts, but they are mainly decent and important in their own right. 'Between Showers' is a long way from a career high, but does have historical significance for obvious reasons. 'Between Showers' is not as hilarious, charming or touching as his later work and a good deal of other shorts in the same period. The story is flimsy and the production values not as audacious, the humour only amusing and lacking freshness at times. For someone who was new to the film industry and had literally just moved on from their stage background, 'Between Showers' is not bad at all. While not audacious, the film hardly looks ugly, is more than competently directed and is appealingly played. Chaplin looks comfortable for so early on and shows his stage expertise while opening it up that it doesn't become stagy or repetitive shtick. The Tramp did become more likeable later but again he was still evolving. Although the humour, charm and emotion was done even better and became more refined later, 'Between Showers' is mildly humorous, sweet and easy to like, though the emotion is not quite there. It moves quickly and doesn't feel too long or short. Overall, far from one of Chaplin's best but not bad at all. 6/10 Bethany Cox

Robert J. Maxwell Chaplin is groomed like the tramp and he looks like the tramp but he could be anybody in this disjointed tale about three mashers, a puddle, and an umbrella.The editing is poor enough to lose the plot from time to time, if there is a plot that extends beyond the individual slapstick-filled scenes.The film has a certain slight charm as an historical curiosity. Here it is -- 1914 in Los Angeles, and what looks like Echo Park might have looked in 1914 Los Angeles.A dog wanders innocently in and out of a scene but nobody cares. The pratfalls are backward somersaults. It's all very casual and lacks poetry.

Michael_Elliott Between Showers (1914) ** 1/2 (out of 4) After a rainy day a woman (Emma Bell Clifton) is trying to get across a muddy street when a man (Ford Sterling) offers to help but soon a Tramp (Charles Chaplin) tries to help as well. Soon the two men are fighting and others jump in. This was Chaplin's fourth film as an actor, the third playing the Tramp and in my opinion the first one where he could call himself the star. It's rather amazing to see how far advanced Chaplin was even though he hadn't yet turned the character into the masterpiece we all know him for. Just look at how Chaplin acts compared to everyone else in the film. I'm certainly not saying the others are bad but they are typical of what you'd see in a Keystone film and then there's Chaplin doing his magic. The first five minutes are the best when Chaplin is losing his balance as he tries to flirt with the woman and eventually has one of his feet fall in. The joke that happens when he pulls his foot out is priceless. The rest of the film is rather routine and I doubt too many will find laughter but if you want to see Chaplin evolve then this here is important.

Michael DeZubiria In Kid Auto Races at Venice, Chaplin first tried on the costume of the little Tramp, and was clearly unsure what to do with it. He wandered around and made himself seen, making it clear that he wanted to be noticed and had something to show the world, but he still wasn't sure what the personality of his character was. In Mabel's Strange Predicament, he tries something new, and finds that it went wrong. Now, in Between Showers, we have another example of the incredible, almost prophetic foreshadowing and symbolism that we saw in Kid Auto Races. Whereas in his last film, he was an obnoxious, belligerent drunk, in Between Showers he decides to try helping people. Not only that, but within the first few minutes of the film, he is literally testing out the waters. And as we would see in the years to come, the experiment worked with phenomenal success.What Chaplin also largely discovers in this film is the hyperbolic fight scene, exaggerated to cartoonish proportions for the benefit of the slightly fast motion and the absence of close-ups, which provides a comic effect sufficient to inspire years of including similar scenes in future films. The plot is simple, as they were in those days, and concerns the varying degrees of possession of an umbrella, with hilarious results, as they say. Between Showers probably marks the last major change for the Tramp that we would ever see, since Chaplin got it nearly perfect here. Let the show begin