And lo, Jerry Lewis did cast his gaze upon Chaplin, and was smitten…

Character Balancing Act.

The Little Tramp joins THE CIRCUS.

A whirlwind story that finds Little Tramp (Charlie Chaplin) visiting a circus and, via a chase involving a pickpocket, being hired as a clown, finding love, learning to walk tightrope, losing love, and eventually leaving the circus in a bittersweet finale.

Written, directed and produced by Charlie Chaplin, THE CIRCUS is a fun diversion, with some pioneering gags (the mirror maze, the carousel chase, the clockwork dummies, the highwire act with monkeys!), however, it is not one of Chaplin’s best. I can’t shake the fact that the last few scenes are absurdly haphazard, and though the movie is praised by critics as a classic – and surely do I constantly raise my voice singing Chaplin’s praises as an auteur! – the finale of this particular movie dismantles his hero’s motivations offhandedly.

After Tramp and a pickpocket are chased by police into the main arena of the circus, and the audience cracks up at him, thinking it is part of the show, Tramp is hired by the Ringmaster (Chaplin regular Allan Garcia), who sees dollar signs in hiring this funny vagabond.

Tramp, on the other hand, only accepts Ringmaster’s invitation because he instantly fell in love with a beautiful woman in one of the wagons – the Ringmaster’s daughter (Merna Kennedy), whom Ringmaster regularly bashes and sends to bed hungry. These scenes are quite jarring to our modern sensibilities. It’s amazing it was acceptable enough back in the 20s to depict it on film so candidly.

Turns out when Tramp is “trying” to be funny – nothing happens. Even lessons from clowns simply turn into chaos. It seems that only when Tramp is trying to help (with magicians, with the highwire act, with a donkey) does he unwittingly keep the crowds laughing. To continue seeing the daughter though, Tramp does train hard, and eventually becomes a fixture in the circus as a clown.

One day, a tall, handsome cliché of a dreamboat joins the circus – the new tightrope walker Rex (Harry Crocker), who sweeps Daughter off her feet. We see this diversion as the “handsome/shallow” trope and think nothing of the fact that Tramp will surely end up with the girl, being the hero an’ all.

But uh-oh.

Despite all his romantic gestures, despite his efforts to retain her love, Tramp loses the girl in the end!

Over the course of days/weeks? that Tramp spies Rex making time with Daughter, he loses his funny bone, and crowds aren’t laughing any more. Ringmaster gives Tramp an ultimatum to find his mojo or be fired.

The worst time to have Schweddy Balls.

Rex is portrayed as hubristic, which causes us to further root for Tramp to end up with Daughter, but in the end it is Tramp himself who suggests that Rex marry Daughter after she is kicked out by Ringmaster. Only by being married to the circus’s star attraction will Daughter be able to return to the circus honorably, and it would also stop her beatings at the hand of Ringmaster, for Woman-Beating Protocol specifically prohibits a man to beat his daughter once she is married – then it’s the husband’s duty. Yes, these are the times that Republicans refer to when they talk about the “good old days” or “making America great again”…

The conclusion would not be such a letdown if it weren’t for the fact that Tramp fought so hard to win her back. Like every movie, our emotions are manipulated to invest in the hero’s goal. He even goes so far as to learn the tightrope, and must fill-in for Rex one night when Rex disappears, but the payoff is not – as we suspected/hoped – winning the girl, but simply performing the tightrope walk with credibility. And monkeys.

Upon learning of the trials plaguing this production (film negatives scratched, studio fire, death of Chaplin’s mother, divorce from second wife, IRS problems), we can empathize with Chaplin on why the movie’s denouement seems rushed. It all seems to wrap in five minutes flat, in the least satisfactory manner possible:

Daughter knows of Tramp’s affection for her, and begs him to take her when he decides to leave the circus, but he refuses, and instead marries her off to Rex. Is it because life on the road is rotten and he doesn’t want to put her through that? (In MODERN TIMES, he is more than happy to hit the road with the angelic Paulette Goddard, admitting that they had nothing but their love.) Or is it just to end the movie with the Tramp unattached for his next adventure? (Again, it doesn’t seem to matter with Paulette Goddard.) Was Chaplin hoping to portray an act of love in his character that surpassed his selfishness? Maybe, but he had an another option…

Ringmaster gave Tramp one last chance to be funny, and we presume Tramp succeeded because Ringmaster invites Tramp back into the circus family after his highwire act with monkeys. But here again, for such an accomplished director, Chaplin displays an uncharacteristic neglect: through the whole highwire act – undoubtedly the funniest scene in the movie – we do not see any audience reaction shots! With Ringmaster’s threat ringing in our heads, we would imagine Chaplin the director would show Tramp winning back the crowd and Ringmaster in cutaway shots. No, the highwire act might as well be performed in the vacuum of space.

Even Flock Of Seagulls owes Chaplin!

And what are we to make of Tramp’s decision not to board the circus train as it leaves, even though he was invited back? Because – being a part of the circus again – he had a regular job and HE could have married the daughter. (He wouldn’t be destitute or homeless any more, and being married to Daughter would stop her father’s beatings as well!) Or is there something darker about the Little Tramp? He walks off, easy-come easy-go, after the train leaves, but does it say something about his character that he can’t or won’t retain a job that he is good at? Does it say something about his fidelity that he is more interested in the chase than the catch?

Despite the inventiveness of all his new gags, and characteristic shotgun comedic timing, it seems Chaplin did not examine too deeply what his Tramp’s actions were saying about loyalty and love. With a job in the circus and Daughter’s love, it could have been win-win, but Chaplin the writer decided to make it loss-loss for no apparent reason. To marry off the daughter to Rex when he clearly had other options makes it seem like Tramp is the shallow one, who was only after quick sex and then ease on down the road.

Let’s leave Chaplin’s private life outa this…

END

Lady and the Tramp.

Kids and animals. Now Chaplin has worked with both.

In A DOG’S LIFE, writer-director Charlie Chaplin makes a tenuous link between a female mutt fending for herself on the streets and his Little Tramp character fending for himself on the streets.

As always, a Chaplin film filled with milky, creamy goodness.

As the little dog lazes in a hideaway and tries to score sustenance, so too does Little Tramp (Chaplin). Just as packs of wild dogs attack the mutt (named Scraps), packs of wild dogs also attack Tramp – oops sorry, those are police attacking Tramp for vagrancy. Can anyone tell the difference? Is Chaplin comparing the cops to animals? I’m watching the same film you’re watching…

Tramp befriends Scraps And that’s about all there is to the metaphor. She’s just his pet for the duration of the short; no more bearing on plot or analogies. She does dig up a wallet stolen by a couple of thieves, which Tramp seizes as his own – until the real thieves thieve it back.

Tramp also befriends a men’s club “entertainer” (Edna Purviance), a woman who is terrorized by her boss to pull in more customers by winking and promising them clothed dances; Tramp will eventually waddle into the sunset with her.

DOG’S LIFE is considered a “short” by today’s standards (it is about 30 minutes long), but in Chaplin’s day, it was standard to release films this long (due to the industry finding its feet on technical restrictions), so it was probably considered just another comedic adventure back then. It’s a straightforward tale, with a few notable Chaplin sight gags – the employment window, where people keep getting there one hot second before the Tramp, and the “fake arms” gag, both gags relying on split-second timing. (They use the fake arms gag on WHOSE LINE IS IT ANYWAY? where the actor’s arms are actually the arms of the man behind him.)

Tramp steals and re-steals the wallet from the two original thieves, who stole it from a rich drunk who looks like the Monopoly guy stumbling down the street. The message seems to be that if it’s a dog’s life, any money is good money, and attaining it in any way possible is fine and dandy. Which is a real life truth that modern censors would never allow; now we understand the metaphor of the police – that we’re all nothing but a pack of animals scrounging for existence…

END

Machinery… because The Future!

The Future Back Then.

Little Tramp meets Little Trampette, and all Industrial Revolution breaks loose!

It’s MODERN TIMES in 1936! The machines are taking over; industrialization is cutting jobs, and those jobs that remain are repetitive, drudgerous tasks that drive men batty. Such is the case with the Little Tramp (Charlie Chaplin), whom we meet working a “modern” assembly line.

Through a series of adventures, that finds Little Tramp joining forces with a street urchin and trying to hold various jobs, the story wends its way through further scenarios fueled by the economy shifting to favor mechanized labor.

Of course, the flavor and funny of any Chaplin movie is not based on its meager plot, but on the inventiveness of the pioneering sight gags Chaplin wrote and directed for himself. In MODERN TIMES, we are treated to the assembly line gags (with Chaplin pulling off clockwork timing), the feeding machine (a commentary on the hubris of corporate thinking), the cog machine (which seems to do nothing except be a machine for cogs); there are the jail gags, the blindfolded skating near the edge of a precipice, the waiter gags, and then the feature of Charlie Chaplin himself warbling a nonsensical song in synchronized sound!

There is even a surprising advocacy for being in jail! When life on the streets and in a factory prove too hard for Little Tramp, he makes a nice space for himself in jail, wishing to return to its comfort when he is ejected, for its relative consistency in times of famine.

Out in the hungry streets, Paulette Goddard, proving there are angels. She plays a “Gamin” (a street urchin), stealing food for her destitute father and sisters. Chaplin’s real life girlfriend at the time, Goddard is so innocently delectable – skin like stretched silk, innocence unleashed, sparkling bright eyes – one can see where the myths of unfathomably exquisite heavenly creatures might have originated. Her father is murdered in a street shooting, and when she desperately steals a loaf of bread, Little Tramp saves her from the law. At one point, we see a closeup of a police report, showing a picture of Goddard looking delectably street-dirty, with a policeman writing “Wanted for vag–” Wanted for vag?! Oh god, yes! Mainly by me– oh, sorry, he’s writing “Wanted for vagrancy”…

It’s MODERN TIMES in the world of silent cinema too: while the rest of the industry had turned to synchronized sound in film, Chaplin staunchly refused, and this movie would in fact be his last technically “silent” film. “Technically” because it is a mixture of title cards denoting dialogue, people overacting silently speaking while a soundtrack jangles under them, and synchronized sound in certain sequences – the boss of the factory, a dog barking, some sound effects, and of course, Chaplin singing. It was regarded widely as an “almost-silent” film.

The title is more about the tenor of the times (unemployment, leading to crime and disenfranchisement) than mechanization replacing human labor, although that seems to be one of the reasons for the high unemployment. There are two scenes that involve factories where giant cog wheels represent “modernization” (and probably “futurism” as well). An alternate title was THE MASSES, and the opening shot of factory workers being compared to sheep was a cutting commentary; it’s a passé dig now, but back then, it was a new concept.

Through the hard times of modern times, Chaplin’s message seems to be that love will see you through, as Little Tramp and Gamin secure a shack together, find a job together, and eventually get kicked out of town together, with Chaplin’s last title card being “Buck up – never say die! We’ll get along.” But the “romance” is played so innocently – it is made absolutely clear that they never share a bed, a kiss or even a dirty thought – that it robs their relationship of poignancy. It’s like watching Just Friends discuss recipes. Who cares? With Smile (Though Your Heart Is Breaking) on a loop, we want to see these two as an item, we want some indication theirs is a mature adult relationship, rather than the gutless go-nowhere censorship version of couplehood. But they walk off into the sunset arm in arm like brother and sister. Just goes to show that not everything is modern about the times…

END