The Rink

Charlie Chaplin plays a waiter at a restaurant whose day on the job is full of mishaps and clashes with the staff. When his lunch break comes, he heads to a roller rink, where he runs into one of the customers he has already tangled with, the pushy Mr. Stout, and both men compete for the attention of a young woman. Charlie charms her with his skating and is invited to a party, where the rivalry continues and he causes further chaos. The Rink is a silent comedy that draws its humor from Chaplin's physical skill on skates as much as from the comic situations around him.

The film was released in December 1916 and runs about thirty minutes. Chaplin directed it, his fifth film in that role, following The Tramp and preceding The Cure, and he wrote the screenplay with Maverick Terrell and Vincent Bryan while also producing. Edna Purviance appears as the girl, with James T. Kelley as her father, Eric Campbell as Mr. Stout, and Lloyd Bacon and Albert Austin in supporting parts.

Audience response has stayed positive across the decades: on IMDb it holds a 7 out of 10 from roughly 4,600 votes, while on TMDB it has a 6.6 out of 10 from about 153 votes.