City Lights

In the late 1920s film stars, directors and producers faced a dilemma. 1927’s The Jazz Singer had opened the world’s eyes and ears to the talkies; movies with sound and the revolution had taken off quickly, brushing former silent stars aside and ushering in a new era of spoken dialogue. Arguably the biggest star of the silent era was Charlie Chaplin. His films had been hugely popular in every corner of the globe, from London and Los Angeles to Leningrad and Lahore. His universality came not only from his popular and identifiable Tramp character but because people from any country could understand the language of the film. Each film’s themes and jokes worked in any language and were loved by all.

It was because of The Tramp’s universality as a silent character that caused Chaplin to shun the talkies for a decade after they first became the norm. City Lights was his first film produced after The Jazz Singer and he stuck to his guns, despite outside influence, and kept The Tramp silent. The movie’s opening scene gently mocks the new medium at a statue unveiling. The City Mayor proudly strides to a podium to dedicate a new statue and when he speaks an amusing Donald Duck type noise is emitted from his mouth. His lady wife then takes the stand with similar, higher pitched results. To me this is Chaplin’s way of proving his point to the English speaking world. We can’t understand what the characters are saying so how would his fans in France, Russia or Brazil understand him if he spoke? With this opening scene we not only have our first laugh but also a taste of an ever maturing Chaplin, a man who isn’t afraid to express his opinions on screen.

The Gold Rush

Imagine being a big fan of The Beatles who doesn’t like Hey Jude or a car enthusiast that isn’t keen on Ferraris. That’s the situation I find myself in when it comes to The Gold Rush. I’ve never met as big a Charlie Chaplin fan as myself and doubt I ever will. His 1925 film saw the beginning of his golden period, a period which lasted fifteen years before his deportation from the US and witnessed the production of some of his most successful films. Chaplin remarked in his own splendid autobiography that he wanted The Gold Rush to be the film that he was remembered for and to an extent it is. Why is it then that I don’t love his Ferrari, his Hey Jude, his Gold Rush? The Gold Rush was amongst the first Chaplin films I saw and I had high hopes for it. When I was initially discovering Chaplin’s work it was obvious that this was one of his most famous and as a result, surely one of his best. Many people would argue that it is. I was instantly disappointed though with a film that I felt was short of laughter and featuring a plot which I cared little for. The story certainly beats some of his earlier shorts and it’s better written and deeper than say his follow-up The Circus but it doesn’t really do anything for me. It feels like the plot of a short that has been stretched to breaking point and isn’t as sweet, dramatic or sophisticated as the likes of The Kid or City Lights.

A Woman of Paris

Charlie Chaplin’s 1923 film A Woman of Paris is a film full of firsts. It was his first films released by United Artists, the company he had co-founded four years earlier. It was his first dramatic film, featuring no slapstick comedy at all and it was his first film in which he did not star. It was also a film of lasts. After a fruitful eight year relationship, this was Chaplin’s final film to feature Edna Purviance and it was also his last purely dramatic picture. The movie was warmly received by critics who praised its bold themes, underplayed acting and assured direction but for the public it was a different matter. It’s difficult to quantify Chaplin’s appeal and fame for modern audiences but up to that point no person in the movies was paid more. Upon his first return to London after his American success, literally hundreds of thousands of people turned out to welcome him home. It is arguable that no entertainer has ever been as famous as Charlie Chaplin was in the first half of the twentieth century.

So, when audiences eagerly flocked to their cinemas in 1923 for the latest Chaplin feature only to find that the man himself wasn’t on screen, it’s easy to understand their disappointment. Imagine paying for another Pirates of the Caribbean film only to discover that there was no Johnny Depp and no pirates. Now image that the Pirate of the Caribbean films were actually good and you get some understanding of the disappointment audiences must have felt. To his credit, Chaplin did attempt to get word out that this was going to be an atypical film with flyers handed out to the long cinema queues and the film actually opens with a disclaimer stating that “I do not appear in this picture” and that it is intended as a “serious drama”. Had the audience been aware of this before the film opened, their reaction might have been very different but instead it was a commercial failure and wasn’t seen again for over fifty years when Chaplin reissued it with a new, self composed score in what was to be the final piece of work before his death in 1977.

The Pilgrim

Charlie Chaplin’s shortest feature or longest short, depending on which way you’d like to view it, is important for a number of reasons. Not only was it his final short film before moving to features permanently but it was also his last film to co star Edna Purviance. Purviance stared in over thirty of Chaplin’s films and was his leading lady for eight years but The Pilgrim was her final major onscreen appearance with Chaplin*. The movie also bought to an end a fruitful relationship with The First National Film Company. Following this film Chaplin would produce his final films with United Artists, the company he founded with D. W. Griffith, Mary Pickford and Douglas Fairbanks. Those films would go on to define Chaplin’s long career.

Besides the above reasons there is little worth remembering about The Pilgrim and for me it is a bit of a blot on an otherwise successful era for Chaplin. The Pilgrim begins slowly and never kicks into a high gear. There is very little humour or comedy of any sort and the story, while occasionally attention-grabbing, didn’t do anything for me. The ending was nice but The Pilgrim isn’t a film I’ll be returning to in a hurry. In a typical case of mistaken identity an escaped convict (Charlie Chaplin) dresses as a preacher and takes a train to Texas where he is immediately taken for a small town’s new Church leader. His past comes back to haunt him though as an old friend makes a surprise appearance.

Pay Day

A Chaplin short made during a lull in production by the former prolific film maker, Pay Day is an above average and clever film that finds Charlie Chaplin as an expert bricklayer on pay day. Following building site shenanigans Chaplin discovers that his pay is short and that his overbearing wife wants more than her share. After managing to hide some from her he heads out for a night on the town.

Chaplin once described Pay Day as the favourite of his short films which is a bold statement as he made over seventy of them. This isn’t my favourite Chaplin short and it is far from his funniest but it’s a very clever film which features some intriguing camera and editing processes and a fine story plus just enough jokes to keep the audience laughing.

The Idle Class

Arriving on the back of his first great film The Kid, Charlie Chaplin’s The Idle Class feels weak and thin in comparison. The writer in Chaplin was struggling for ideas before he got the spark for The Kid and it almost feels as though he is back to square one while writing the two reel The Idle Class. A Tramp (Chaplin) gets off a train, and not how you’d expect him to, before heading for a day at the golf course. Meanwhile a wealthy wife (Edna Purviance) also disembarks expecting her well to do husband (also Chaplin) to meet her at the station but he is drunk at home. Following some hi jinks at the golf course there is a case of mistaken identity at a ball at which Edna takes the Tramp for her husband.

For me The Idle Class lacks the depth which made The Kid great and also lacks the direction and laughs that are found in the likes of A Dog's Life or Shoulder Arms. It occasionally takes a more dramatic route but this often fails to match even Sunnyside for dramatic narrative. The film is saved by a middle act on the golf course which is brilliantly inventive and funny but is unfortunately bookended by a beginning and end which did little for me.  

The Kid

Undoubtedly Chaplin’s finest film of the period and one of the highlights of his long career, The Kid was not only his first feature film but also in my opinion his first great work. Produced at a difficult time in the star’s life, The Kid is the first of several Chaplin films which perfectly balanced comedy, drama and pathos. His previous films had often contained at least one of these elements and earlier films such as A Dog's Life and The Immigrant had provided at least two, but for the first time in 1921, despite personal tragedy and pressure from his studio, Chaplin created his first true masterpiece.

Production began in 1919 just ten days after the death of Chaplin’s baby son Norman. Chaplin, who had been struggling creatively, was instantly hit with an idea that was to become The Kid. As his Tramp character Chaplin finds a baby who has been abandoned by a poor single mother (Edna Purviance). The Tramp ends up raising the child alone and when he is around six or seven the child (Jackie Coogan) helps his adoptive father in his window repair business. The father follows the boy around town as the boy breaks windows. Soon after being smashed, the man turns up to repair them. All is well until the boy falls sick and a Doctor realises the Tramp is not the natural father. Soon after Social Services arrive to take the boy from the man in what is one of the most gut wrenchingly moving scenes in cinema history.

A Day's Pleasure

Although often regarded as Chaplin’s least funny First National film, A Day’s Pleasure is a simple but effective two reel comedy which considering the circumstances behind its creation, is something of a triumph. While Chaplin was busy working on his first great film, The Kid, the studio were growing impatient with his lack of output so he hastily put together A Day’s Pleasure, a seventeen minute romp set around a family outing aboard a boat. While the film lacks the sort of story and romance of the films Chaplin was capable of producing at the time, it does feature some clever slapstick and laugh out loud moments.

The movie is notable for two brief cameos. The first is a shot of The Chaplin Studios, seen in the background of the opening scene. Although only briefly glimpsed, you can clearly see its isolation, allowing one to note how L.A has grown over the last ninety years. The second cameo comes from Jackie Coogan, the boy made famous by his heartfelt performance in Chaplin’s next film, The Kid. Coogan is barely seen though and has no role other than to sit in a car and get carried onto the boat by his father. The only other actor to have much of a part is Tom Wilson, a man who appeared in four of Chaplin’s films as well as D.W. Griffith’s Intolerance and Birth of a Nation as well as over two-hundred more. Wilson plays a man with whom Charlie fights following a spousal mix-up. Even Edna Purviance goes without character here, perhaps going to show how rushed the production was.

Sunnyside

When a workshy farmhand (Charlie Chaplin) misplaces a herd of cows the local town of Sunnyside suffers the consequences. The young farmhand has even more trouble on his hands when a well to do city boy (Tom Terriss) arrives in town and has his eyes firmly set on the hand’s girl (Edna Purviance). Chaplin’s forth film for First National was preceded by the hugely successful Shoulder Arms and proved to be one of his least successful of the period. Despite this the film holds up fairly well today and has a first act which is of some note. Unfortunately though the film misses a step with the introduction of the romantic plot from which it never truly recovers.

The first thing I noticed about the film is that unlike almost every Chaplin film to come before, there was an actor on second billing. Most of Chaplin’s early title cards read something along the line of “Charles Chaplin in…” or “….. with Charlie Chaplin” but Sunnyside reads “Charlie Chaplin in Sunnyside with Edna Purviance”. I don’t recall seeing another actor’s name so prominently placed on a title card before this film and it perhaps shows Chaplin’s ever increasing belief in his leading lady as an actress. As it turns out, Purviance’s role isn’t really much larger than in the likes of Burlesque on Carmen, The Vagabond or A Dog's Life but it feels like she is the focus of attention for a larger part of the film.

Shoulder Arms

Set partly amongst the trenches of the First World War, Shoulder Arms was a bold film for Charlie Chaplin to make in 1918 given the wide reaching criticism he received for failing to sign up to fight. He was advised by close friends to abandon the film for something less controversial but Charlie battled on and despite the possible outrage and backlash the film became Chaplin’s most critically acclaimed and financially successful film up to that point, was particularly popular with returning Doughboys and features a couple of scenes which may well be recognisable to people who have never even seen a full Chaplin film.

Charlie plays a young recruit who is sent over to France to join the war. Despite typical problems to begin with he soon discovers that he is a more than competent soldier and after numerous brave exploits ends up in the house of a French woman (Edna Purviance) who tends to his wounds. With the help of his new love and a dear friend from the trenches, Chaplin ends up winning the war for the allies. Or does he?

A Dog's Life

Charlie Chaplin’s first short for First National Pictures was released in April 1918, six months after his final film for Mutual. Chaplin in his Tramp character befriends a local mongrel dog called Scraps and together they go about causing mischief and mayhem. Later, Scraps comes to the aid of the Tramp when he gets into trouble with some thugs and helps his master set up a new life for himself and his new lady friend, a bar singer (Edna Purviance).

What was immediately obvious about this opening First National film was its quality. The sets, costume and story are all far superior to pretty much anything seen in a Chaplin film before. The sets especially look as though they may well have been real streets. There is a much more rounded story which incorporates comedy as one aspect rather than relying solely on kicks up the backside or doffing caps to curbs. The film is still funny but this isn’t one of Chaplin’s finest works. What it is though is one of his finest stories to date and overall one of his best short films.

The Cure

An improvement on the comedy of Easy Street but a film with much more of a slapstick nature, The Cure finds Charlie Chaplin playing an inebriate who checks into a health spa in order to get sober. His huge suitcase though is full to bursting with bottles of liquor which find their way into the health spa’s well with disastrous consequences. Along the way Chaplin befriends Edna Purviance after saving her from the clutches of the wicked Eric Campbell.    

This is a short that is packed full of gags, some of which are a little repetitive but many hit the nail on the head. It also features a larger role for Chaplin regular John Rand who appears in most of Chaplin’s Mutual Films but usually just has a walk on role. In The Cure he has almost as much screen time as Campbell and Purviance but doesn’t make as much of an impact on the film as Chaplin’s two main collaborators. The story is tight but not wide reaching and is a lot more basic than many of the films from the same period, but what it lacks in story it makes up for with laughs. Chaplin’s dizziness following his turn in the revolving door also gave him the same symptoms as he showed nearly twenty years later in Modern Times when he ‘took’ cocaine. His walk and spinning was almost identical and equally amusing.

The Rink

A waiter (Charlie Chaplin) gets into trademark mischief at work and then goes to a skating rink on his lunch break. There he meets a pretty girl (Edna Purviance) and the two of them hit it off. The waiter has a confrontation though with a customer (Eric Campbell) who recognises him from the restaurant and the two start bickering and fighting while skating. Having left the rink, the girl invites the waiter to her skating party that night but instead of revealing his real job he tells her that he is Sir Cecil Seltzer. Later, at the party, people who had met during the day once again meet up as various strands of the story come together, resulting in a fast paced chase ending.

I was a little bored by the first half of this film which was set mainly in a restaurant, but my enjoyment grew as the action turned to the rink. There Chaplin was able to showcase his remarkable skating skills and ability to bully his co star Eric Campbell in an ever changing variety of ways. The second half more than makes up for the lacklustre opening and left me with a smile on my face if not a laughter induced stomach ache.

The Pawnshop

Charlie Chaplin’s sixth film for Mutual is one with very high highs and disappointingly low lows. It features a scenario and story which doesn’t really go anywhere but also features several moments of slapstick that are amongst his best to date.

Chaplin stars as a pawnshop assistant and gets in a long running fight with fellow employee John Rand. Typically inept at his job, Chaplin is eventually fired only to be taken back on straight away after his boss Henry Bergman has a change of heart. Meanwhile Chaplin’s attentions are drawn to Bergman’s daughter Edna Purviance who is busy baking in the back of the shop. Trouble appears late on as a thief, Eric Campbell enters the shop intent on taking it for everything it’s got.

The Immigrant

Charlie Chaplin’s 1917 short film The Immigrant features Chaplin’s Tramp character aboard a ship to America and later penniless on a New York street before a final set piece in a restaurant. Along the way he meets Edna Purviance, also an immigrant, and the two strike up a relationship.

The film’s most enduring scene features The Tramp and other immigrants being herded like animals and cordoned off as they arrive in America. During this scene, Chaplin kicks an immigration officer, something which was later held against him when he was accused of Communism and anti-American sentiment during the McCarthy era.

The immigrants corralled by the authorities in an overtly political scene

Although only twenty minutes long, the film features some tremendous sight gags and stage direction and Chaplin’s Tramp is a fully formed character by this point in his career. The makeup is also fantastic. I am a big fan of the white face/dark eye makeup of early cinema. Another area where the film is superb is in its direction and cinematography. Despite being fairly new to moving pictures, Chaplin’s mastery of the camera is clear to see. This is especially so in a scene in set aboard the boat featuring the whole cast eating soup in which Chaplin slides across a slippery floor as the ship rocks from side to side. Suspense is built towards the end of the film when The Tramp after seeing a man beaten for being 10c short on his bill, realises he has lost his money. His attempts to find money and or escape while under the watchful eye of a burly waiter are comic genius.

On the downside some of the scenes on the ship are a bit stale. These were actually filmed later than the final scenes as the film was written and performed as and when Chaplin came up with the ideas. The card game was boring but it did allow Chaplin to give Purviance’s character his winnings, thus introducing himself to her. I unfortunately watched a 1946 print of the film which contained some very annoying sound effects associated with the era. By the 40s with silent films long out of fashion, many earlier silent films had annoying sound effects added to them to give them a more up to date feel. This almost ruined the film for me. Most of the effects appear to have been produced using kazoos and slide whistles and are unnecessary and irritating. I also have a feeling that the film was lacking its original score. It’s a good idea to try and source early films without added sound effects and with their original musical accompaniment.

For Chaplin fans, this film is a must watch, however if you only have a passing interest in him or the films of the era then perhaps you’d be better off searching out the kick scene on YouTube.The film can be watched for free on YouTube here.

7/10

Modern Times

1936’s Modern Times finds Charlie Chaplin’s iconic Tramp character at work in a modern, mechanized factory. He struggles to keep up with the ever quickening pace of the production line where he screws nuts onto bolts and suffers a mental breakdown. After being released from hospital, The Tramp finds himself as the accidental leader of a Communist rally and is thrown in jail. Once released he finds life in the Depression ruined 30s difficult but meets an orphan girl with whom he develops a friendship. The film then follows their ups and downs as they try to scrape by and stay out of jail.

Modern Times is one of Chaplin’s best remembered films and features some wonderful set pieces. Just some of the iconic scenes include; when he gets caught up in the cogs of the factory machines, when he mistakes cocaine for salt, when he roller skates blindfolded and when he is used to test a new feeding machine. All of these scenes are laugh out loud funny. While the film features some of Chaplin’s funniest moments, the laughs are spread more thinly than in some of his earlier films. This is much more of a comedy/drama than out and out comedy.

Chaplin’s politics are obvious to see throughout. The opening scene shows sheep being lead out and then cuts to men streaming into a factory. Once inside, the workers are worked to exhaustion and we see the harsh conditions of the unemployed. Chaplin is later falsely accused of leading a Communist march and gets thrown in jail, an eerie premonition of what later happened to him. It is obvious that Chaplin blames modern industrialization for the conditions of the Great Depression and understandable why it came under scrutiny at the time.

Chaplin is joined on screen by the beautiful Paulette Goddard, who was also his wife at the time. Despite playing a homeless orphan she still manages to dazzle and is also superb in the more touching scenes. Chaplin as always is sublime. There are little touches in every scene that cement him as cinema’s greatest entertainer.

The beautiful Paulette Goddard

The film is still considered ‘silent’, despite it containing ‘talkie’ moments. Most of these moments come from inanimate objects or from one or two characters but I wish it had been one way or the other. It’s a bit of a cop out to be a mixture of silent and spoken but by 1936 silent films were considered very old fashioned so its understandable why the decision to introduce some dialogue was made.

Unfortunately, Modern Times was one of Chaplin’s final films and the last to feature his Tramp character. For that reason its ending carries even greater significance and is wonderful. The film contains some of Chaplin’s best moments and is a wonderful reminder of his genius and the class of his film making.

Farewell to The Tramp...

10/10