Chaplin on Criterion Through the Decades (1910s - 1950s)

Back in January 2009, just as I was beginning the long trek of blogging my way chronologically through the Criterion Collection, spine #456 (Roberto Rossellini's The Taking of Power by Louis XIV) was the newest release, though titles from Luis Bunuel, Douglas Sirk, Francois Truffaut and David Lean had already been announced for the months ahead. I was still a DVD-only guy at the time, wondering if there would ever be sufficient reason for me to complicate my recently launched quest to collect the entire run of Criterion films by introducing a new format into the mix. My library of discs was probably in the range of two to three hundred titles, but I launched into the pursuit with zeal, making sure that I quickly acquired all the films I needed to have at my disposal to cover the 1920s and 30s, the earliest decades on my list. Having accomplished that, I made it my top priority to plug the remaining gaps with shrewd acquisitions through various websites and local retailers.

By the summer of 2010 I was "Criterion Complete," as my friend Keith Enright eventually christened the exalted status of having our shelves packed with a comprehensive run of spine numbers. My stockpile also included the entire Eclipse Series, that venerable sideline of obscure, overlooked and forgotten films that soon provided a platform for me to carve out my own little niche in this peculiar subculture of film-focused bloggers and podcasters.

Since then, the Criterion Collection has grown enormously, more than doubling the number of titles that I originally included in my list. Though the roster of official CC editions has only added just shy of 350+ entries over the past seven years, the Eclipse Series has tripled from 14 boxes to 44. I've also incorporated their lineup of several hundred Hulu exclusives into my practically insurmountable workload. And then there's a box set like the Zatoichi series that slips in twenty-five separate films via one spine number. That's a lot of movies piled up on my ledger to watch, study, reflect on and review, if I'm ever going to make serious headway on my quest to do some quality writing on the full run of the Criterion Collection. If I had just stuck with that initial roster of CC titles available to me at the time, I would have finished reviewing them all by now, since I've posted nearly 600 written essays on this site and elsewhere since then. But "getting done" was never the point. I was just looking for a focal point of entry in my ongoing adult education in cinema.

Given the finitude of time, at least as experienced by us mortals, I have gradually made my peace with the inevitable futility of this project, as far as producing an entry on each and every film is concerned. Adding to the enormity of the task is the fact that Criterion continues to release films at a pace faster than my own willingness to watch, reflect and write substantively about fine cinema each week can keep up with. Another serious obstacle is that a lot of the stuff they've released over the intervening years debuted at points preceding my current spot in the time line - and one of my rules here is to "never go back" - for practical reasons, I simply need to keep pressing forward in time on this project.

Every so often, I've managed to find a clever dodge to that rule. When Criterion releases an old movie that I want to review, I'll request a promo copy from my sources and post my essay over on Criterion Cast, my second home on the internet. That formula has worked out pretty well, for the most part, allowing me to dig into releases by Satyajit Ray, Alfred Hitchcock, Jean Renoir, Preston Sturges and other cinematic masters that wouldn't have fit into the chronology. But there's been a huge yawning gap, up until now. I haven't had the opportunity to fully engage with Criterion's string of releases from the figure that I now consider the most singular expression of the auteurist ideal in the history of cinema: Charles Chaplin.

That high esteem of Chaplin isn't an opinion that I held even as recently as a month ago, before I embarked on a crash course on his work for the sake of this Criterion Blogathon organized by my friend Aaron West from Criterion Blues and a pair of his online movie blogging pals, Kristina Dijan at Speakeasy and Ruth Kerr at Silver Screenings. When the project was first proposed, I knew I had to come up with something unique. Since pretty much everything I ever post about movies is also related to the Criterion Collection, I'd feel awkward just submitting some random film review, or tagging whatever my latest installment might happen to be here in mid-November as my official contribution. So after tossing a few ideas around, I landed on the notion of immersing myself in all of the Charlie Chaplin films that Criterion has published in one format or another since they first acquired the rights back in 2010. A modestly ambitious undertaking, I must admit.

Though I've long enjoyed Chaplin's most famous films and the Little Tramp persona that is by now so familiar and long-established, I have to acknowledge that prior to this recent extended study, my impressions of the man and his work were, from my current perspective, altogether shallow and under-informed. Over the years I'd seen a few of his classics, the legendary staples like Modern Times, City Lights, The Gold Rush, The Kid, and The Great Dictator, both before and after they bore the Criterion logo, but I only had surface knowledge of the circumstances that led to their creation. Other than a one-time viewing of Monsieur Verdoux after it came out a couple years ago, I hadn't seen any of his post-World War II work, and my exposure to the earliest two-reelers he made for the Keystone, Essanay and Mutual studios was scantily superficial - little excerpts here and there, with no context to plug them into. I was almost entirely ignorant of his personal history, other than the fact that he came from a generally impoverished background in England, experienced enormous success in the early days of Hollywood as a young man, was slow to adapt his filmmaking style after the sound era had been launched, and ran into some problems with the US government during the heights of the McCarthyite anti-communist persecution in the 1950s. I have still never seen the biopic Chaplin starring Robert Downey Jr., nor had I given sustained attention to any of the countless books or comprehensive essays that have been written about the man over the past century since he became a cinematic icon. For the most part, Charlie Chaplin was just a charismatic, photogenic, clever little clown who somehow became legendary in the story of Hollywood.

But I've learned a lot over the past few weeks, through watching and rewatching a generous portion of Chaplin's filmography (including just about everything he made from 1918 until the end of his life) and also surveying several books on his life, a collection of critical essays, and a number of blogs and websites focused on the man and his work. I'll include a bibliography as a comment at the end of this post, for those interested in my sources. Here, I'm going to do my best to sum up what stood out to me the most over the course of watching a whole lot of Chaplin in a compressed amount of time. Short version: I stand truly in awe, and in pity, of one of the most brilliant but troubled souls among all the talented and creative individuals I've encountered over these past seven years of closely watching hundreds of Criterion movies.

Here is the full list of Charlie Chaplin films available through the Criterion Collection:

1915 - The Champion (excerpt, supplement on City Lights)

1915 - A Night in the Show (supplement on Limelight)

1916 - The Rink (supplement on Modern Times)

1918 - A Dog's Life (Hulu)

1918 - Shoulder Arms (Hulu)

1919 - Sunnyside (Hulu)

1919 - The Professor (fragment, supplement on Limelight)

1919 - A Day's Pleasure (Hulu)

1921 - The Idle Class (Hulu)

1921 - The Kid (#799)
1922 - Nice and Friendly (supplement on The Kid)

1922 - Pay Day (Hulu)

1923 - The Pilgrim (Hulu)

1923 - A Woman of Paris (Hulu)

1925 - The Gold Rush (#615)

1928 - The Circus (Hulu)

1931 - City Lights (#680)

1936 - Modern Times (#543)

1940 - The Great Dictator (#565)

1942 - The Gold Rush (re-edit, with narration) (#615)

1947 - Monsieur Verdoux (#652)

1952 - Limelight (#756)

1957 - A King in New York (Hulu)

In appraising the significance and merit of Criterion's Chaplin offerings, it's necessary to point out that if we just go by what's currently available on disc, the casual viewer is likely to draw (like I did) a distorted perspective on his career output and the development of his art. Beginning one's acquaintance with Chaplin by starting with The Gold Rush might give the misleading impression that, in comparison with the masterworks that followed (everything from City Lights forward), this was an "early" film of Chaplin's, in which his techniques were still being refined and developed - when in actuality, it was widely regarded in its time as a stunning breakthrough and exemplary achievement that enlarged the scale and revolutionized the possibilities of what film comedy could do. The fact is, Charlie Chaplin had appeared in 63 films prior to The Gold Rush, writing and directing 47 of them himself. He had already spent nearly a full decade as one of the most famous and instantly recognizable individuals in the entire world. His short comedies of the World War I years (1915-18) had made him fabulously wealthy, celebrated and adored on every inhabited continent by multitudes who found something universally accessible in his Little Tramp character. That cleverly tenacious, charmingly insubordinate misfit consistently demonstrated a mastery of facial expression, body language and impeccably timed physical antics that allowed him to tap into and unleash a wide range of emotions in his audiences, regardless of the cultural barriers that often served to otherwise separate societies from each other.

So even though Criterion has done an extraordinary job so far in creating comprehensive, high quality home video editions of Chaplin's most accomplished works in the six titles they've issued so far, they remain just the tip of the proverbial iceberg. With the exception of a few selections from Chaplin's initial breakthrough phase that are mostly included on the disc releases as antecedents to gags or themes he later incorporated in his mature works, it looks like Criterion will be limited to releasing the films that he made for First National (1918-23) and United Artists (1923-52), since other companies have recently issued collections of his output from earlier years. I do plan to obtain those sets in the near future but for this essay, I'll bypass all that for now.

And given that my insight into Chaplin is just so recently acquired, I'm a bit self conscious in composing a lengthier-than-usual piece about an artist of the greatest renown, who's probably had as much written about him as anyone related to cinema or maybe even any other notable figure of the 20th century. I've done my best to digest it all, but still, I wonder what I might have to say here that hasn't already been opined by others more deeply versed in the subject matter or considered at greater length than these impressions gathered over the past several weeks? I won't attempt to put together a mini-biography, nor do I think it's realistic to write up a bunch of capsule reviews of the 23 titles listed above. (I started doing that, but it got tedious for me and I don't think I'd be doing readers any favors. Maybe I'll post them on Letterboxd some day...) So what I've decided to do is just focus on how the experience of watching all of these films in chronological order gave me the opportunity to observe the artistic rise and fall of a particular man who just happened to become one of the most enduring an and iconic templates for achieving populist global celebrity and a fully realized creative vision in our media-saturated world. Chaplin's journey through his adult life was unusual, to say the least, intersecting with some fascinating events of the broader history he lived through. In many ways, his hidden autobiography on film can be regarded as a quasi-mythic saga of modernity that led him through epochs of creative enthusiasm and romantic zeal, prosperity and dissolution, shrewdly obtained success and prolonged bouts of madness and depression. In short, his enhanced experience of life is one that many of us can relate to as we consider the story of our own lives.

The Champion is the earliest Chaplin film on the list, released in 1915 by the Essanay Company after they had lured him away from the Keystone studio. The main reason Criterion licensed it was for the sake of comparison with a much more famous boxing match that Chaplin included in City Lights. I'm sad to report that we only get an excerpt on the disc, of the fight scene itself, without much of the enjoyable set-up that shows off the young Little Tramp establishing his underdog status as a straggly down-and-outer, a gink desperate enough to pocket a few coins that he's willing to risk getting his face kalsomined. Nor do we get to enjoy his rambunctious workout routine that sets up the closing beer jug gag, and we don't learn how such a scrawny looking specimen qualified for a prize fight to begin with. (For starters, his powers of evasion are sufficiently advanced to avoid most blows, and a well-placed horseshoe in the glove gave Charlie a killer hook punch on the few occasions that he was able to connect.) Though the choreography of this sequence is far less refined than it would become when Chaplin revisited the ring in 1931, it's still quite funny, providing a fine example of the raucous and occasionally brutally violent lowbrow slapstick, mostly bereft of overt sentiment, from which Chaplin's art emerged.

A Night at the Show serves a similar purpose on the Limelight home video release, demonstrating how extensively the latter film drew from Chaplin's memories and experiences of coming up through the British music hall scene. This half-hour skit basically recreates one of the staple routines that Chaplin acted out on stage when he traveled across the USA with the Fred Karno company. It's more of a historical curiosity than anything else, though we do get to see Charlie in two roles, neither of whom are very similar to the tramp. One of them is the "drunken swell," dressed in a fine, if rumpled, tuxedo as its wearer staggers and stumbles near an orchestra pit, creating mild havoc for each theatergoer with whom he comes into contact. Seated above him in the cheap seats, there's Charlie again, dressed up as a rowdy buffoon who gets his moneys worth by spilling drinks on the slickers seated below. Eventually a basket of snakes tumbles onto the stage, stuffed shirt soloists bellow pompously and out come the custard pies. Fun is had with a fire hose before the final curtain comes down. (That stunt would be employed to more poignant effect much later in Chaplin's career.)

Yet another precursor to later Chaplin classics serves to justify the inclusion of The Rink as a supplement to Modern Times. I'm definitely not complaining, since I am quite happy to watch Charlie twirl around on roller skates whenever the opportunity presents itself. Extended demonstrations of his remarkably versatile and comical fluency on wheels is what links the two films together. Though The Rink is fairly slight for the most part, it does show a bit of cinematic progress. The rougher pranks involving food fights and crude physical take downs are dispensed with in the early going, allowing the waiter/Tramp character to develop just a bit. This is the only one of Chaplin's Mutual comedies currently licensed to Criterion, as he continued his quest for fuller artistic control (and much bigger paychecks) while his fame grew exponentially. Viewed in context, one gets the sense of Chaplin's growing ambition to become more focused in telling a story, even though this one winds up in a flurry of a chase scene that sees the Tramp hitching a ride on the back of an old Model T, pulled along backwards down an old Southern California highway on his skates as he eludes a pack of angry gents similarly equipped with wheels on their feet but completely lacking the nerve to match his daring stunt.

Starting with A Dog's Life, Criterion boasts a nearly complete run of everything that Chaplin did on film up until the very end of his career. It's this comprehensive coverage of his personal arc, as expressed through his art, that really inspired me to take on the challenge of this post, despite (or maybe, because) of its sheer magnitude. The few meager samplings we get from the decade when Charlie first burst into prominence aren't really enough to give us a full sense of what he was up to in that most prolific phase of his output, but it at least sets the stage a bit.

When viewed in immediate proximity to the shorts that preceded it, A Dog's Life marks a notable advance in Chaplin's effort to humanize the Tramp and make him a more sympathetic character. His actions seem less motivated by mischievous insolence toward authority, as enjoyable as he was in the role of a carefree mocker. Reduced to sleeping under the open sky in a back alley in the opening scene, his significance in the eyes of society is pretty much equal to that of the stray mongrel that he soon befriends and cares for. If there is a hint of anger and retaliation in his behavior, it's reasonably justified by the oppression he has to endure: harassment by the police, rudely shoved out of his place in line at the employment bureau, mugged by the crooks who stole a wallet full of cash that his dog dug up in the vacant lot he calls home - righteous grievances all! And Charlie is ennobled by his choice to use that money to help out his unfortunate friend Edna, recently sacked from her position at the Green Lantern dance hall. Though the film roars to its satisfyingly hectic climax via a frenetic chase scene, the final tableaux of domestic bliss, after Charlie and Edna escape with their riches and set up house together, inserts a wry twist that pleasantly surprises the viewer. A Dog's Life shows attention to structural details of plot, dramatic tension and resolution that Chaplin hadn't always bothered with in his earlier work.

Shoulder Arms can't really be praised for building on the narrative strengths of A Dog's Life - Chaplin's willingness to sum up the events by resorting to the already stale "it was only a dream" reveal at the end was already a timeworn cop out in 1918. But he still shows a lot of admirable nerve in releasing a sharply satirical spoof on the futility and tedium of military life while American and English troops were still mired in the battlefields of the Great War. It was a controversial project from its inception, and Chaplin's struggles to strike the right balance left him feeling deeply insecure and dissatisfied with the final product. Only the assurance of his friend Douglas Fairbanks that Shoulder Arms would be a hit persuaded him to put it into circulation. That turned out to be a good call, as the film turned out to be his biggest commercial success yet. Loaded with memorable sequences, from the opening "inept marching in boot camp" goofiness, so frequently copied in other, later films, to the hilarious misery of trench warfare (flooded sleeping quarters, poring over sentimental letters from home, an improvised "gas attack" using Limburger cheese, and much more), Charlie as a camouflaged tree, and winding up with an elaborate swapped identity gag in which the trampish doughboy corrals the German Kaiser and his elite inner circle, Shoulder Arms offers one of the first extended disclosures of Chaplin's progressive  and pacifistic political ideals that would cause him so much grief in decades to come.

The unexpected success of Shoulder Arms presumably bought Chaplin some additional time (a then-unprecedented eight months between pictures!) to create his follow-up, and perhaps also gave him further encouragement to follow his muse into new and unconventional territory. As current and future rivals like Fatty Arbuckle, Harold Lloyd and Buster Keaton maintained a steady stream of short comedies, Chaplin floundered in both his professional and private lives. Regarding himself as the unfortunate victim of a forced marriage to an under-age bride, the brilliant artist found himself at his wits end, trying to devise an escape from circumstances that proved to be ultimately out of his control. Sunnyside turned out to be a mixed bag, combining a few strangely inspired dream sequences into an otherwise by-the-numbers pastoral romantic comedy formula. The odd juxtaposition of those scenes provides ripe material for armchair psychoanalysis. In the first, Charlie (playing a "farm hand, etc., etc., etc.") takes a tumble off the back of a runaway steer, landing in a ditch underneath a small bridge. He awakens to see a quartet of nubile nymphets frolicking about, and he's only too happy to join them, in a ritualized dance that is easily read as a euphemism for the sexual conquests that the young, wealthy and endlessly charming Chaplin reveled in, but were now threatened by his reluctant entry into the rigors of monogamous expectations. 

Sunnyside's second dream sequence isn't so obviously announced, as it weaves almost seamlessly into the meandering plot of the tale with none of the hallucinatory affectations of the nymph scenario. It has to do with a romantic rivalry set up between Charlie and a sharply dressed gent just passing through town. Charlie fears that his beloved Edna will fall for the other guy, so he tries his best to impress and that turns out to be a slight variation on the Tramp character with his ill-fitting suit coat and trousers. After suffering humiliation and rejection, he ambles into the path of an oncoming car in a disturbingly unfunny suicide attempt, only to be jostled awake just at the moment of impact. Once again, "it was only a dream." Though the film fails to deliver as much in the way of laughs as other Chaplin titles of this period, the morbidly intriguing weirdness helps Sunnyside to carve out its own distinctive reputation.

A Day's Pleasure is about as close to pure filler as Chaplin ever allowed himself to release for the remainder of his career, and I have very little to say about it other than that it shows him to be literally adrift in his creative process. The flimsiest of story lines involves Charlie and his family on an outing that mostly consists of a short voyage at sea. The camera tilts left and right in an unconvincing simulation of wavy motion and very few of the sight gags connect with sufficient cleverness to generate a response, or many lasting impressions. It has the feel of a casual toss-off, a contract fulfiller that goes through the motions capably enough to fit on a bill as "new Chaplin," but nothing more. Consider that his final efforts of the 1910s were this film, clocking in at less than 20 minutes, and an abandoned sketch now titled The Professor, which was included as a supplement on the Limelight disc (due to its employment of the flea circus routine that Chaplin resurrected in the early 1950s). It's abundantly clear that at the end of what had been a gloriously successful decade, Charlie was running on fumes. The formula had run its course and he needed to dig deeper to find new inspiration.

With this week's announcement that The Kid will become Spine #799 in February 2016, an argument can be made that Criterion has exhausted the list of "must have" Chaplin masterpieces deserving of standalone releases. Personally, there are a few others that I'd like to see get their own editions, but I understand that the audience appeal for films like A Woman of Paris, The Circus and A King in New York is distinctly limited in comparison with The Kid and the other six discs currently available in the CC lineup. In any case, here is the film that I think vaulted Charles Chaplin well beyond the status of being simply an outstanding relic of his era and into a pantheon of the greatest creative geniuses of the 20th century. I won't vouch for The Kid being his most outstanding work - it's not my personal favorite, though the reaction of Tuesday's announcement certainly confirms that for many Chaplin fans, this one is tops. The story of the Tramp's run-in with a youthful counterpart, a protege of sorts who brings out a full spectrum of emotional responses from his caretaker (and the audience peering in on their adventures) offers the clearest evidence yet that beyond the imaginative and physical gifts that Chaplin demonstrated in his films, the magical gift he wielded most powerfully was his ability to manipulate the raw, heartfelt sympathy of a global audience. To achieve this effect, he had to run the risk (and endure the painful ordeal) of revisiting and exposing a host of hard-earned memories of the deprivations and heartaches he experienced as a child and adolescent coming of age in 19th century London. 

A young unwed mother's abandonment of her baby into what she fervently hopes will be a life of material abundance leads to a series of events that drop the infant into the custody of the Tramp, a character that in his previous screen incarnations has given no indication of suitability as a surrogate parent. Indeed, the Little Fellow hardly seemed to have settled into anything resembling maturity himself, and now he had a hungry little mouth to feed. Still, there's something inherently dignified and resolute about this version of the Tramp. Try as he might, he can't dump the Kid off on anyone else, despite his common sense effort to find a suitable caretaker. Over the course of time, a deep sense of attachment develops between the two. Even though the home they set up is grimy and unacceptable in the eyes of the social authorities, no honest observer can deny the strength of their affection or the compelling sense that the unorthodox arrangement suits both of them perfectly. Their tale is replete with heartwarming moments, bits of saucy improvisation and delightful rapport between two intuitively responsive performers, and a syrupy concoction of old-fashioned melodrama that will probably overwhelm some palates with its cloying stickiness. For those who find the admittedly implausible and saccharine ending too much to swallow, Chaplin does at least treat them to another one of those bizarre phantasmagorias that gave Sunnyside its unique twist, except this one is even more elaborate in its production values, and provokes genuine laughter - another deep dive into Chaplin's barely suppressed, richly encoded subconscious, audacious enough in the way he employs angelic/demonic symbolism to still amaze and astonish contemporary viewers even after they know what's coming.

(Nice and Friendly, a short film made for private use as a wedding gift to Lord and Lady Mountbatten in the spring or summer of 1922, will be included as a supplement on the forthcoming release of The Kid. It's a charming bit of ingratiating whimsy on Chaplin's part, an indulgence that mostly amounts to a negligible curiosity for now - at least, that's how it struck me when I watched it on YouTube following the recent Criterion announcement.)

Following the triumph of The Kid, The Idle Class feels somewhat like a regression as Chaplin returned to the conventional (but by then, dying) format of the comedy two-reeler. After one learns of the chaos going on in his personal life and the exhaustion he was working through, he can be excused for resorting to a formulaic approach and for keeping the film short. Still, there's plenty here to enjoy, especially in the provocative semi-autobiographical implications of Charlie's dual-role performance. We first meet him as the Tramp, emerging as a stowaway from a holding bin beneath a passenger railroad car, who smartly alights on a bumper to catch a ride to the nearest golf course. Then we see Charlie once again, this time dressed in an impeccably tailored suit, situated in that very mansion, surrounded by all the baubles of privilege. Though the rich man lives in material comfort, he's pinned down in an unhappy marriage, to a wife who demands that he stop drinking in order for her to return to re-establish a happy hearth and home. Upon receiving this plea in writing from his beloved, the husband slumps his shoulders, back turned to the camera, and his body begins to shake and tremble. Apparently the poor wretch is sobbing as he reckons with the fearsome cost of his alcoholic excess. But no, as he turns around to face the audience, we see that he's simply shaking a fresh batch of cocktails. He toasts the viewers, having made up his mind without an excess of deliberation...

The prelude sets things up for a humorous golf sequence involving the Tramp, in which Charlie shows off a feisty little left handed stroke and impressive marksmanship when he tees off on a ball popped up in midair with boldly casual precision. We get another short mental fantasy sequence, a hobo's dream of domesticated bliss which Charlie presents with the slightest tinge of mockery for saps who cling to such aspirations. From there, the action turns toward a comic romp of mistaken identities, in which it seems plausible to speculate that Chaplin was playing off both sides of the very public identity that he'd created, as the lovable vagabond who just can't resist a young and pretty face, and the scandal-plagued nouveau riche upstart, concealed in a full body suit of armor, wind up brawling with each other for several minutes before all the confusion clears up, allowing the Tramp to dust himself off and escape the chaos with a well-placed kick to his would-be father-in-law's kilted ass.

OK I know that I am going on at quite some length here, and I'm not even halfway through the Chaplin oeuvre! And the movies to come are even more complex and multi-faceted than those I've written about already! So I'm going to just focus on a few highlight scenes from each one, the bits that stick with me the most. They may not convey much to readers who haven't seen the film, but I'm not going to worry myself about that, nor do I feel obliged to give much of a summary of the overall plot. Here goes...

Pay Day is Chaplin's ode to the working man, even more than the justifiably celebrated and canonized Modern Times. Here, Charlie doesn't have the luxury of escaping from the misery of life-consuming, energy draining hard labor into the sweet freedom offered by an alluring pixie like Paulette Godard at the end of his work day. After grinding his way through wacky volleys of bricks tossed up to him from the ground below and dodging perilous hand-operated elevators, the Tramp's consolations are meager - a drunken night out with his pals provides a temporary respite from his horrid nag of a wife, who awaits his stealthy/tipsy arrival in repose, armed with a rolling pin laid across her bosom. Chaplin's editorial message about the toxicity of a bad marriage spills over with undeniable clarity to anyone familiar, then or now, to the ever-growing knot of woman troubles (mostly of his own making) that he was tangled up in at this time.

When the travails of life become too much to bear, there's always the option of turning to religion - either with sincerity or disdain, as a source of inspiration and encouragement or as a convenient source of distraction and amusement at all the buffoonery that goes on in that sphere of society. Chaplin certainly had his share of fun exposing the hypocrisy of small-town piety in The Pilgrim. Though the satire comes across as mild, even benign, in a 21st century context, a star of his magnitude was clearly out on a limb when he went about poking fun at the Sunday morning rituals routinely observed by the majority of everyday Americans. But he'd already shown the knack for successfully slicing up sacred cows in Shoulder Arms, so why not put the Tramp in the role of an escaped convict pulling off a ruse as the newly arrived parson in a town called Dead Man's Gulch, a rustic hamlet still stuck in the mindset of stern 19th century moralism? The worship service, in which Charlie has to manage his jitters as he steps into what feels like a courtroom atmosphere, is the highlight of this 45 minute feature. Chaplin's mimed sermonette, retelling the biblical tale of David and Goliath, is a carryover from his old music hall routines. The rest of the film offers passable entertainment, especially the bits concerning the bratty kid and a tussle over a cigar box full of cash, before drawing to a memorable conclusion that shows the Tramp literally straddling the line between the security of law and order and the tempting but dangerous freedom of simply following his sensual whims. Chaplin had all the pleasures of worldly fame and fortune at his disposal, but was deeply ambivalent about what to do with all that privilege.

As his creative ambitions and artistic confidence grew by fits and starts with each completed project, Chaplin sought new avenues and outlets for his talent. His ability to come up with new scenarios in which to place the Tramp was severely stretched, and he went through long periods of anxiety and distress, wondering whether or not he had lost his touch. One option that he had not yet taken the time to explore was to create a film that not only didn't revolve around some variation on the Tramp, but didn't even include him as a significant player in the film at all. A Woman of Paris, though regarded as a commercial disappointment that thwarted Chaplin's ambitions from going any further in that direction (until the very end of his career, anyway), was the vehicle by which he explored that possibility. He built the movie, subtitled as "a drama of fate," around his former lover and most frequent female lead, Edna Purviance, in the hopes that it might launch her career in a new (and different) direction than the course they'd pursued together up to that time. I found it intriguing and capable of holding my attention, more because of Adolphe Menjou's turn as Pierre Revel, a jaded playboy who toys with the passions that animate his ambivalent mistress Marie, than by the effort put forth by Ms. Purviance. Though he maintains an air of effortless perpetual amusement, Revel's quietly sadistic belittling of Marie nudges her to careen between enjoyment of her lavish lifestyle as a kept woman, and the yearning fantasy of a poor but happy family that she envisions with her former boyfriend. He's an artist tormented by his ideals and the unfortunate setbacks that fate threw in his path. Though she wasn't terrible by any means, the failure of A Woman of Paris to do much more than garner a small cult following in Europe effectively ended her acting career. The experience also convinced Chaplin and his inner circle to stick with the Tramp, even if the films would never be produced at the same prodigious rate as they were in the preceding decade. For all that, the film provides another revealing glimpse into Chaplin's own convoluted ethos of sexual and romantic indulgence. Marie's emotional tug of war with her heart's desires mirrored the confusion and disappointments she had to endure as she saw the man she loved drop her not for merely another woman, but for a rapid succession of them, even marrying one of them with such haste that she learned about it from a newspaper report even though she and Charlie were still actively working together. The real-life context of the film adds a degree of empathetic poignancy that helps modern viewers absorb some of the more heavy-handed melodramatic flourishes. 

At last I arrive at The Gold Rush, a long-delayed opportunity to watch a Chaplin feature on Blu-ray. Sticking faithfully to the timeline, I revisited the reconstruction, offered as a supplement, of what the film looked like when it was first released in 1925. This was Chaplin's return to the screen after recognizing the indifferent response to A Woman of Paris, and he made sure that it was a spectacular re-entry. Inspired by a stereogram photo of a long line of prospectors making the treacherous journey over a rugged mountain pass, Chaplin took this seed of an idea, fertilized with his ambitious desire to be taken seriously as a great artist, and inflated the notion into a legitimate epic of physical and emotional survival in the most desperate of circumstances. Of course the film is loaded with some of the funniest scenes he ever concocted (the boiled shoe, the hallucinatory chicken, the cabin poised on the edge of a cliff) but there's also an intense vulnerability that had never been presented with such stark clarity before in a Chaplin film. These men were emblematic of those who had risk (and often lost) their lives and their sanity in a mad pursuit of gold, and in the course of the film, a character actually dies (even if he's just a villain, Black Larsen's plummet into an avalanche is still not really a laughing matter. And neither is death by starvation, for that matter.) Furthermore, the Tramp, here known as the Lone Prospector, endures more than a few rounds of heartbreaking disappointment as his yearning for love is cruelly mocked by the woman he adores and the rival who sneers at him with dismissive contempt. Chaplin's famous dance of the dinner roles, beyond being a remarkably deft and captivating performance, is made even more emotively affecting in its context: again it turns out to be just the dream of a shy loner, stood up by someone he thought he could trust as a friend, and perhaps something more. The happy ending I regard as a convenient sop, tossed to the masses, but not nearly as convincing as the moments of anguish it was meant to relieve.

Despite its flaws and an especially anguished behind-the-scenes production history, The Circus is the Chaplin film with which I'm the most enamored with after watching them all in this compressed period. It probably has to do with its relative freshness to me, since I had never seen it before and was quite taken by its narrative efficiency and visual dynamism of several scenes. The pickpocket adventure, leading up the dazzling chase scene through the hall of mirrors, is brilliant and funny, and I can't say enough good things about Charlie's high wire act. Wired to a harness, a total impostor who has no business (humanly speaking)  presenting himself as a skilled acrobat, the Tramp nevertheless finds himself cheating at a death-defying game. Sure enough, his fraud is exposed, but that turns out to be quite a delightful spectacle in its own way. The craziness of seeing him up on the tightrope, trousers dropped to the ankles and besieged by monkeys climbing on his head and all over his body, had me falling off my sofa with laughter, and watching it again just now, I busted up just as hard. This amazing sequence is an apt metaphor for the truly frightful perils that Chaplin had to navigate through in his off-screen life, as he went through a scandalous divorce, investigations for tax fraud, suffered through profound depths of despair, isolation and mental illness. These chapters of his biographies are perhaps the most arduously painful to read, and its quite remarkable to consider how he was able to put himself back together to not only survive, but to create some of his most monumentally successful work. His final side kick and shuffle off to the horizon marked an eloquent summation to this dark period of his life and spoke of his resiliency to emerge unbroken and determined from the ordeal.

City Lights is justly revered as the pinnacle of Chaplin's cinematic mastery, and especially in this drive-by grab bag survey of his work, I feel inadequately prepared to elaborate much further on all the grand things that have been inscribed for posterity about this film - especially that ending. But here are a few thoughts: It's the perfect rejoinder from a past master whose relevance in the new world of the talkies has been called into question, extending the virtues of a dying art form into a subsequent era, and demonstrating its superiority in at least a few aspects of evoking a response from its audience. I love how he clowns around on the statues to get things started - the Tramp still has that unconquerable, insubordinate spirit about him even though he's aged a bit and settled into a more mature, well-rounded characterization. It's also fun to note the return of the nude female form that provided a visual focal point at the end of A Woman of Paris just before we get into the blind flower girl plot that drives the rest of the story. That aspect of City Lights feels the most exalted and elusive for me. I'm reluctant to expound on it for some reason. I like the drunken millionaire buddy bits, imagining what kind of hedonistic Jazz Age memories must have informed that characterization. In short, this is Charlie's masterpiece - not necessarily my or everyone's favorite Chaplin film, but the one that sums up everything great about him, without many of the drawbacks that critics and fans alike might levy against the movies he made before and after.

Modern Times was the title that Criterion chose, out of all the possibilities, to be the one that introduced Charlie Chaplin to their collection of "important classic and contemporary films." For all I know, it could have been a demand of the Chaplin estate, or it had the most easily restored elements available, or it just felt like the optimal starting place for a new generation of fans. If I have to choose, I'll go with the last speculation. I think this is a pretty solid entry point for the Chaplin novice. The story line, though notably episodic, feels more prescient and in touch with contemporary sensibilities than any other film that Chaplin ever made, even those he released in the 1950s and 60s. The assembly line technology, the hyperbolic advertising, the multi-media invasions of privacy by snooping bosses, the relentless drive toward automation and efficiency, the repetitive motion injuries - it all speaks to us without much need for translation in the 21st century. Even the way that Paulette Goddard appears on camera, her hair hanging naturally and her unadorned and feisty ideal of feminine beauty more closely resembling today's fashions, makes this film an easier sell to youngsters who might be watching the closest thing to a silent movie that they've ever seen. As for where this fits into Chaplin's personal history, I think the title says it all. He, and the rest of his world, were now fully entered into a new phase of modernity - though there's still an indisputable quaintness from today's perspective to the factory, streetcar, department store and restaurant settings where so much of the action occurs, time has marched on since the Tramp first burst onto the scene. Charlie knows, and the audience now senses, that it's time for him to make his final exit. Mr. Chaplin has survived his ordeals; he's even grown up and matured a little. He has a voice! It's time for him to be heard, even if it's semi-improvised nonsense.

The Great Dictator might be seen as the onset of Chaplin's inevitable decline - I can't convincingly argue that it's actually better than his films of the late 1920s or 30s - but it sure is an interesting descent path that he marked out for himself. By this point in his life, Charles Chaplin had earned the luxury of not having to work until or unless he felt like it. He could afford to wait for the right material, or a compelling inspiration to come along, and his experience had taught him that if he just waited for another manic up phase to strike, he'd be back at it en route to producing another masterpiece. His long dreamed-of aspiration to shoot a film based on the lives of the French emperor Napoleon and his wife Josephine could never quite gel into a cohesive story in Chaplin's mind - he eventually concluded that Josephine was simply too boring to come alive as a character on screen, and he apparently needed some kind of compelling romantic angle in his films to lend them the necessary element of pathos. But as the profile of Adolph Hitler continued to rise in notoriety throughout the latter half of the 1930s, spreading the dark shadow of fascist oppression across the European continent and perhaps eventually further, Chaplin recognized the obvious physical resemblance between himself and the Nazi leader... and he also detected a certain megalomaniac gleam in Hitler's eye that indicated a similar penchant for supreme self absorption like his own. The coincidences were too uncanny and fortuitous to resist. Chaplin had to take on Hitler, in a high stakes battle for dominance on the battlefield of popular culture, in both its contemporary milieu, and also for posterity.

But despite the carnage that Hitler went on to wreak in his hateful, ultimately futile quest for dominance, I think it's a fair assessment to say that Charlie won. The film that resulted was, as I've already noted above, not without its shortcomings in several respects. Much of the old Chaplin movie magic is compromised by having to resort not just to reliance on a plot driven by spoken words, but also the necessity of employing standard supporting cast characters who do their "funny" thing in the conventional manner of the times. The classic set pieces featuring Charlie in (once again) his duel roles as the dictator Adenoid Hynkel and the unnamed Jewish barber (not quite the Tramp, but a version of him) are often outstanding - the opening WWI revisit to Shoulder Arms territory (but without having to recycle the old gags, though he could have), the airplane skit, the earth-balloon ballet, the Hungarian Dance choreographed shaving sequence, the passive-aggressive duels between Hynkel and Napaloni - they're all outstanding laugh generators. In between those bits, the story frequently lapses into exposition that fails to engage or hold my interest, so that the ending of the film (not the barber's final speech, I'll get to that in a minute) fails to provide the kind of uplift and emotive propulsion into an uncertain future that Chaplin (and Paulette Goddard, bearing a heavy load) strives to deliver.  

For all those reservations I just expressed, I still consider The Great Dictator to be quite a triumph, for Chaplin and for humanity. It's rather profound that two of the most overwhelmingly charismatic and influential personalities of the 20th century looked so much alike, and that their power wasn't derived from what any era would consider conventional "good looks." Chaplin and Hitler both possessed unusually effective communication skills, which they employed to pursue radically different goals and achieved divergent outcomes. In the film, Chaplin delivers two extended speeches - one as Hynkel, when the character is first introduced (a comical, sputtering ventilation of rage and exhortation that mimics what must have been a bewildering impression that Hitler made on casual viewers in the Anglo world who couldn't figure out what the Germans saw in the bellowing fanatic), and the other as (initially) the barber, who stands in Hynkel's place after the conquest of Osterlich and delivers his message to the world in a moment of exultant victory. That speech, stuffed to the point of bursting with an unprecedented concoction of utopian idealism, pious zeal, simplistic naivete, smug presumption, egotistical arrogance and altogether too-satisfied self-importance, is still one of the most remarkable and (to me and many others) utterly delightful outbursts in the history of cinema. Yes, viewers had all heard Charlie's speaking voice, in many tones and inflections, for the first time ever over the course of the film. But in this unrestrained, masterfully composed and delivered oration, we witnessed a revelation of the impossible dream that the Little Tramp had been pursuing since he first burst into consciousness twenty-five years earlier. Though I can perceive why critics and detractors of the speech find it insufferable, I totally disagree with verdicts that go so far as to say that it ruined the ending or went too far. It's a brilliant conclusion, and an espousal of values that while probably unattainable in this corrupted world to the point of being mere fantasy, are still noble and true enough in their essence to thrill and inspire me every time I give it another listen.

Even though the 1942 re-release of The Gold Rush is considered the official and authorized version, it feels like a sanitized, revisionist reduction of Chaplin's original vision - a purely commercial foray to keep the money rolling in and to maintain the relevance (in that era) of a film that he obviously cherished. It's interesting to compare the two versions and as pure comedy, this updated presentation of The Gold Rush is certainly still quite entertaining. I deeply appreciate the work that went into salvaging the original cut of the film. Having that first take, with its messier romantic subplot and a more robustly sensual final scene, does provide an extra level of insight that comes from considering the implicit commentary Chaplin delivers in the final cut: what it says about his process when we regard the things he changed and the parts he left out. That's about all I have to say about it right now.

I'll just say it now, before I go much further. These last three films all deserve a richer and more extended treatment than I'm going to give them here, because the backgrounds and origins of each really need to be better understood for them to deliver the full impact they're capable of making. In the estimation of many, Monsieur Verdoux and the rest of the films that Chaplin made from that point on were severely overwrought flops and failures of a washed-up former legend who couldn't find a way to escape the vanity and insistence upon absolute control that had been his formula for success from the earliest stages of his career. I've seen a fair number of criticisms along this line leveled at him by smart writers, qualified experts on the cinema who can make a persuasive case that it might have been better for Chaplin to just retire and get out of the game altogether, leaving the Tramp's legacy untarnished and enjoying the wealth and fame that he'd earned. I can also understand why viewers who come to Chaplin to enjoy the broadly accessible pathos and slapstick of his bona fide classics would be turned off by this later, more overtly cynical side of his creative force. To me, this last phase of Chaplin's work is a helpful, bracing, clarifying counterpoint to the aspects of his earlier films that, in spite of their brilliance, occasionally come across as cloying and too eager to please.  Monsieur Verdoux, the story of a coldly calculating serial killer who exploits vulnerable rich women by taking advantage of their feminine weaknesses and insecurities, in particular shows Charles Chaplin at his most aggressive and combative, openly defiant of standard morality and willing to risk being labeled a misogynist in order to get his point across. Charlie DGAF, indeed. He made the film in the aftermath of the Second World War, when his leftist political affiliations were at their most acute and potentially problematic level, though I have no qualms with that myself.

However, there's no defense, on a personal level, for the coldness and cruelty that Charles Chaplin showed to many women in his real life, and it doesn't surprise me at all that those who were present to observe firsthand some of the damage that he inflicted in his countless affairs, tantrums and beratings of those closest too him found Verdoux insufferable - both the character and the movie itself. But I'm here to observe and respond to art, and I'll leave the judgement of souls to God. The saving grace of this film is discerned when we find a way to see the story through the eyes of a man who's worked hard, produced consistently, been reliably proficient and capable enough to generate wealth that has supported and prospered many others, only to be cast aside when his particular contributions have been deemed passe and easily (and more cheaply) replaceable. That was the fate of Verdoux, the honest bank clerk, who got downsized in the depression of 1930 - and in a sense, it's what happened to Chaplin right around the same time as the age of silent movies came to an end in Hollywood. Both men had to find a new way to apply their talents after the world changed around and beneath them. In observing the mind and body of a man who had presented himself as the incarnation of the eternal plucky, resourceful and indomitable underdog, now occupying the role of a callously manipulative, insincere, homicidal schemer, flaunting half-baked notions about astrology, economics and the philosophy of Schopenhauer, we're disturbed by the inherent challenge of re-evaluating all the warm sentimental feels that Chaplin had imputed to us in his earlier work. Verdoux is obviously a con man and a fraud here, and Chaplin seems all too comfortable inhabiting this character. We can't help but ask the unsettling question: how long has this con been going on? To the extent that these, and other inquiries prompted by a close observation of what Chaplin confronts us with here, stir us out of a complacency that regards his art as "mere entertainment," Monsieur Verdoux serves its audience well, even though we may not necessarily be pleased by what the process of experiencing the film reveals.

Limelight really should come with a prerequisite assignment of reading the earliest chapters of his 1964 publication My Autobiography (the title of which is sufficiently self-explanatory.) Though the book is notoriously unreliable, and receives a necessary correction from parallel examinations of more scrupulously researched bios that have been written over the past two decades or so, it provides invaluable context for Chaplin's mindset and motives when he placed himself as an old man back into the precise time and environment he left behind nearly forty years earlier when he migrated from London to the USA. For those who find the bitterness of Monsieur Verdoux too unpalatable, Limelight marks a return to Chaplin's more nostalgic and sympathetic tendencies, and I do tend to think that this is the zone that he felt most comfortable in, and where he did his best work. (Verdoux, and to a lesser extent, A King in New York, were anomalies in this regard; necessary balances in the larger body of his work, but thankfully limited to a small sample size of the total.)

Here, Charlie gets to play some of his favorite roles, in a more mature setting: the hero, saving a beautiful young woman from suicide; the romantic lead, winning the affection of a beautiful, grateful, blissfully infatuated young woman now half - no, a third! - his age, simply because he is after all, the star, the writer, the director, the producer and the final arbiter of what goes in and what's left out of the story; the idol, an aging clown who knows his brand of comedy is quickly approaching his expiration date but is able to leave 'em laughing as they go one last time before his final curtain call; and the legend, one of the all time greats who mastered his art before the movies were even recognized as such, and still has sufficient clout to recall one of his old comrades and rivals, Buster Keaton himself, in a skit that aspired to be a show-stopper but ultimately settles in as a modestly trivial gesture - heartwarming to behold, but only an echo of past glories. Limelight was clearly intended to be a grand summation of all that had preceded it (and works effectively enough that it could well serve as the last of Chaplin's films that a well-informed cinephile might watch without missing much, bypassing the last two altogether if they so desired, or if circumstances just worked out that way.) But even in this grandiose, could-be swan song to cinema, Chaplin shows simultaneous recognition of the fact that his time occupying center stage has already passed, even though one still gets the impression he's still got more to say. On the verge of settling into a gentlemanly old dotage, Charlie kissed Hollywood goodbye while they were still on the last remnants of good terms.

Strange, enigmatic, insufficiently explored and so much still awaiting discovery - that's my in-a-nutshell comment on A King in New York, which I've still only seen one time, a horrid confession that in my mind disqualifies me from weighing in too heavily with an opinion here... except to say that I was by turns fascinated, amused and relieved to discover that it wasn't nearly as bad as the things I'd read about it had caused me to fear it would be. Released in 1957 and set in New York City, when (ironically enough) Chaplin was living as an ex-pat American exile in Switzerland and filming in England, I think this film matches up quite favorably to many other movies that were released that year, when so many factors were at play in this production that could have led to a pitiful train wreck. His parodies of sensational trailers, corny advertising gimmicks and the hucksters who foist superficial consumerism on the masses registered as a delightful and unexpected surprise. It was fun to see him play his hand at such timely topical humor. Seeing him launch into the role of a leering dirty old man as he makes the acquaintance of a woman who might be his granddaughter might have been more discouraging and deflating for some of his longtime fans back then, who wouldn't have appreciated the reminder of the aging process, but nowadays it seems like an endearing new wrinkle: Charlie as lovable lech. Or maybe not; tastes and mileage will definitely vary here.

As was the case in Monsieur Verdoux, where Chaplin unexpectedly and surprisingly flouted the risk of being at least temporarily upstaged by his co-star Martha Raye, here he's cast another rival for "most memorable performance", but at least this time, he kept it in the family. His son Michael plays the part of Rupert Macabee, a child prodigy of sorts who spouts political rhetoric with nearly the same flamboyance and conviction as his dad summoned at the end of The Great Dictator. As was the case with that film, I found myself largely sympathetic to the ideology and the passion of these diatribes, while also recognizing their implausibility when measured in the cold, rational light of day.

And then there's that last crowning glory, the elevator/fire hose/courtroom scene that, in both its absurd audacity and its petty grudge-settling, serves in my mind as possibly the most glorious kiss-off ever to a life spent on the silver screen and in the glaring eye of public scrutiny. I know that Charlie made one more appearance in a feature film, his cameo in the final movie he ever directed, A Countess in Hong Kong (the rights to which Criterion doesn't own, presumably for easily justifiable reasons.) The last words we hear, as the aged Tramp, now distinguished and in repose, his fortune and freedom restored, as he embraces his son and protege, strike an appropriately elegiac tone: "Poor little fellow, I think the trip would do him good, but of course there are complications." "Let's hope they'll soon be over... This is nothing to worry about."

Summation:

So that's my take. I hope it's thoughtful enough to justify the many minutes I asked of you to read through it all. As much as a protracted excursion into "deep movie blogging" can be, this study of Chaplin over the past month or so has been a transforming process for me, opening my eyes into new dimensions of how experience and perception intersect and are forged into art over the course of a man's lifetime. As much as any figure of the past one hundred years that I can think of, Charles Chaplin has a message for humanity that deserves to be considered, understood and heeded. He pleads with us to remain sensitive, to find those points of connection with each other, to remain hopeful and determined and undeterred when faced with the inevitable discouragements, losses and injustices that the world will throw at us, sometimes with sudden and unforgiving ferocity. At the same time, he's no saint, no paragon of virtue to be emulated in all aspects of how he conducted himself in this world. He was, at the core of it all, a uniquely aware and alert conduit that received the signals of a wacky and convoluted social order, sifted and filtered them back to us in a way that made us laugh at the occasional misfortune, only to set us up for the weeping when we recognize our common struggles and loss. His art encompassed all the great domains of life - love and fear, politics and poverty, pomposity and humiliation, desire and mourning, economics and nostalgia, productivity and madness. In the simplicity of pratfall stunts and the heartwarming affirmation of fairy tales in a m modern setting, Charles Chaplin created a cinematic universe of fascinating depth and detail. We are privileged to explore the realm he left behind.

Post-script: This post won a Daily Award for "Best Portrait" in the Box Sets and Essays Day in the Criterion Blogathon. Thanks again, Aaron, Kristina and Ruth for organizing this wonderful event.

Next: In Cold Blood