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OPEN CLASSIC CINEMA · 655

Easy Street

191719 minUnited States

Video edition: Internet Archive
Original language: No spoken dialogue. Intertitles: English.
This copy runs: 26:23
Subtitles: English

Languages and subtitles

Subtitles off by default

Internet Archive · Charles Chaplin · 1917 · Public domain

Synopsis

Inspired by a mission worker, a wandering man decides to reform and takes a job with the police. His first assignment leads to a street ruled by a bully who seems immune to ordinary force. With little authority beyond a borrowed uniform, the new officer must turn the neighborhood's everyday objects into unlikely tools for survival.

Cast

Charles Chaplin

The New Policeman

Edna Purviance

The Mission Worker

Eric Campbell

The Bully

DirectorsCharles Chaplin

Inspirations

The street set evokes the South London neighborhoods of Chaplin's childhood. Its T-shaped layout makes the whole community visible as a comic stage: poverty, charity, police authority and domestic conflict remain close together, so a confrontation can spread rapidly from one doorstep to the next.

Behind the scenes

Eric Campbell plays the intimidating bully opposed to Chaplin's policeman. Their difference in size is central to the physical comedy. This Internet Archive copy runs approximately 26 minutes; the film's reference running time is 19 minutes.

Reference: Charlie Chaplin Archive Reference: Internet Archive Reference: Wikipedia · running time

Sources and availability

General references identify the work and its copy. A reference beside an editorial section is linked to the claims checked in that section.

Chaplin Office Wikipedia

Work catalogued as public domain in the United States.

The public-domain references concern the original films in the United States. Rights can differ for other countries, editions, restorations, music or translations. Sources are listed on each film page.

Availability checked on September 11, 2026.

Photograph credit

Photographs cropped, resized and optimized as WebP, displayed in monochrome.

Charles Chaplin — Strauss-Peyton Studio, 1921; published in Photoplay no. 3 (1922); National Portrait Gallery / Wikimedia Commons. · Public domain in the United States (PD-US-expired)
Edna Purviance — Unknown photographer, 1923; J. Willis Sayre Collection of Theatrical Photographs, University of Washington Libraries, SAYRE 8372 / Wikimedia Commons. · Public domain in the United States (PD-US-expired)
Eric Campbell — Unknown photographer, by 1917; The Moving Picture World (1918), p. 53; Internet Archive / Wikimedia Commons. · Public domain in the United States (PD-US-expired)

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