“The Circus” - Charlie Chaplin (1928)

Charlie Chaplin’s” penultimate silent film, The Circus (1928), was an extravagant display of slapstick and a big hit at the box office, but it has not stood up over time as one of Chaplin’s great silent classics, such as The Kid (1921), The Gold Rush (1925), and City Lights (1931).  Indeed, Chaplin, himself, didn’t even bother to mention The Circus in his 1964 autobiography [1].  This neglect might be partly attributable to the fact that this film had a slightly different and more somber undertone than his other works.  The Circus doesn’t just feature comedy; it is essentially about comedy and its often essential connection with loneliness.

This more serious underside may have been connected with the difficult circumstances affecting Chaplin at that time [1,2].  Chaplin’s mother died that year, and he was going through a difficult divorce lawsuit with his teenage wife, Lita Grey.  In addition, he was facing costly financial demands from the IRS concerning back taxes.  There was also a major fire in Chaplin’s studio during production that burned some of the negative and ended up necessitating some reshooting.  And, of course, there was always Chaplin’s ever-turbulent romantic relationships, which inevitably must have complicated his life.  All of these things must have piled up on Chaplin and interfered with his meticulous film-production tendencies.  As a result, it took Chaplin about two years to complete the production of The Circus.

Chaplin, being the production perfectionist that he was, served as usual as the film’s producer, director, writer, editor, and lead-actor – and in 1967 he even composed a musical score for a re-release of the film.  The result was a hit.  Upon the original release of the film in 1928, it was nominated for four Oscars (US  academy awards) – for the following categories:

• Outstanding Picture
• Best Director, Comedy Picture 
• Best Actor (Charlie Chaplin)
• Best Writing, Original Story

Nevertheless and despite the film’s obvious virtues, there are a couple of limitations that keep this work from achieving greatness.  The two main narrative threads in the story – (1) the Tramp’s relationship with the girl horseback rider and (2) the Tramp’s progress in securing employment with the circus – don’t really go anywhere.  They merely serve primarily as vehicles for a disconnected sequence of slapstick set-pieces.  These set-pieces, it is true, are meticulously crafted, featuring amazingly adroit and subtle coordination between Chaplin and the person with whom he is interacting.

The story of The Circus plays out over four movements.

1.  Joining the Circus

At the outset a traveling circus is shown, with its overbearing and short-tempered Ringmaster (played by Al Ernest Garcia) berating the glamorous circus horseback rider Merna (Merna Kennedy), who is the Ringmaster’s step-daughter, for some minor shortcomings in her performance. He tells her that as punishment she can’t have food that night.  Then we shift to seeing the Tramp (Chaplin), penniless and hungry as always, lurking about the circus’s sideshows.  There his back pocket is furtively used by a pickpocket as a temporary stash for a stolen wallet, and we move into the slapstick Pickpocket Sequence.  Naturally, the Tramp is accused of the theft and comic confusion reigns.  When the Tramp tries to flee the scene, he stumbles into the sideshow’s hall of mirrors, and we quickly move into the slapstick Hall of Mirrors Sequence.  

Still fleeing the cops, the Tramp runs into the circus ring and messes up the circus magician’s performance in the slapstick Magician Sequence.  The circus crowd, which had been bored with the circus’s routine acts, is delighted by the Tramp’s antics in the circus ring, assuming his appearance there is a staged act.  They immediately call out for more pranks from this “funny man”.

All three of these hectic slapstick scenes – the Pickpocket Sequence, the Hall of Mirrors Sequence, and the Magician Sequence – are brilliantly performed, and they represent an early highpoint of the film.

Later, after the circus’s show, the still-hungry Tramp meets the equally-hungry Merna, and they share some food together.  The Ringmaster doesn’t want to see his step-daughter eat, but when he sees the Tramp and remembers the crowd’s demand for more of him, he calms down and decides to give the Tramp a tryout to join his circus show.

2.  The Tryouts
The Ringmaster tells the Tramp to rehearse some of their routine comedy acts, but the Tramp botches all of them.  Fed up with the Tramp’s incompetence, the Ringmaster fires him.  However, shortly thereafter the circus’s property men (they set up and dismantle the staged acts
in the ring) collectively quit just before the next show.  Desperate to have his show go on, the Ringmaster then rehires the Tramp to be a property man.

Again, the Tramp botches up all the performances, this time before a live audience.  But the crowd assumes this is all staged hilarity, and it expresses its enthusiastic approval.  The Tramp is now the unwitting star of the show.  His property-man bungling gets incorporated as a regular feature of the circus.  When the Tramp finally realizes he is the new star, he successfully demands from the Ringmaster a higher salary and that he stop bullying Merna.

Later, when the Tramp is chased around by an enraged donkey, he seeks refuge in a circus wagon, not realizing he is entering a lion’s cage.  The ensuing slapstick Lion’s Cage Sequence is fascinating, because it shows Chaplin in close and exposed proximity to a lion (and also even a tiger).

During all this time the Tramp has sometimes been meeting up with Merna and shyly succumbing more and more to her feminine charms.

3.  A Newcomer Arrives
Merna visits the circus fortune teller, who tells her she is about to fall in love with a handsome man near to her.  The Tramp surreptitiously overhears the fortune being told and jumps for joy.  After all, he thinks to himself, he is handsome, isn’t he?  He even hurriedly buys a wedding ring so that he can propose to Merna her at once.  But soon a handsome tightrope walker, Rex (Harry Crocker), joins the circus troupe, and Merna immediately falls for his charms.  The Tramp is crestfallen, and his resulting morose demeanor ruins his previously energetic circus performances.  The crowd no longer finds him funny, and once more his job status with the circus is in jeopardy.

Now the Tramp is consumed with jealousy, and he imagines himself, in a creative double-exposure shot, flooring Rex with a couple of punches.  When he watches Rex doing a difficult turn on the tightrope, he hopes that Merna’s handsome suitor will fall.  He even ridiculously strings up his own tightrope a couple feet above the ground so that he can practice walking on a tightrope himself well enough to match his rival’s prowess.  But it is obvious that all his efforts are hopeless.

However, one day Rex fails to show up for work, and the show-must-go-on Ringmaster, having seen the Tramp practicing on his makeshift tightrope, orders him to take Rex’s place on the high wire.  The Tramp is scared, but given his shaky job status and his fervent desire to impress Merna, he goes ahead.  There follows the most famous slapstick scene in the film – the Tramp’s Tightrope Sequence.

One can only marvel at how Chaplin managed to stage this amazing scene.  Although the Tramp tries to cover himself by wearing a harness attached to a hidden safety wire manned by a prop man, the wire comes off and the Tramp is left on his own on the hire wire.  Then, while the Tramp is trying to balance himself, a bunch of monkeys crawl out on the wire and climb all over him.  They clamber all over his head and even remove his pants while the Tramp is still struggling to keep his balance.  Chaplin needed over 700 takes to complete this incredible scene, which concludes with the Tramp riding a bicycle down a wire to the ground successfully [3,4].

4.  Shutting Down
When the Tramp gets back to the circus offstage, he sees the Ringmaster physically abusing his step-daughter again, and he angrily punches him out.  This, of course, results in his permanent dismissal.  We next see the Tramp sitting alone that evening on the outskirts of town, but he is surprised to be joined by Merna.  She tells him she has run away from the circus and wants him to take her with him.  This is surely what the Tramp had dreamed of, but now mindful of his own impecunious circumstance, he here shows a hitherto unseen altruistic side of himself.  He rushes off to summon Rex and get him to marry Merna, knowing this would be better for her.

The marriage takes place the next day, and with the circus troupe ready to depart, the Ringmaster is mollified enough to accept Rex, Merna, and even the Tramp, back into his circus.  But as the circus wagons start rolling out of town, the Tramp doesn’t climb aboard.  Instead he just watches them pull away, and with a melancholic and resigned look on his face, walks off alone into the sunset.

The Circus is primarily memorable for its extremely well-crafted slapstick sequences:

• the Pickpocket Sequence
• the Hall of Mirrors Sequence 
• the Magician Sequence 
• the Tramp’s Tightrope Sequence

Each of them shows off Chaplin’s extraordinary agility and coordination with respect to his complicated surroundings of people and artefacts.  But as I mentioned, the film overall is about the nature of comedy and its connection with loneliness.

In this film the Tramp is at all times fundamentally alone.  There is noone in the story with whom the Tramp fully resonates, not even Merna. Although the Tramp sometimes laughs in this film, noone laughs with him.  He laughs alone.  Everyone laughs at the Tramp.  He is a perpetual object of derision.  People put up with him only insofar as he can make them laugh at him.  The Tramp gradually learns that this is his fate, and he reluctantly comes to accept this at the end of the film.

In many ways when we laugh at something, we are often distancing ourselves from and dismissing something as absurd nonsense.  Even when we laugh together, we are expressing our isolation from the object of laughter.  Perhaps this was an existential revelation that Chaplin, himself, was coming to.  The sound-movie era was already beginning – The Jazz Singer (1927) was released several months prior to the release of The Circus [4].  Chaplin probably knew that the silent-movie medium was doomed, and along with it its way of arousing the viewer’s empathy purely by visual expression.  So his The Circus was a laugh-riot, but also something of an elegiacal swan song to the silent-film era.
★★★½

Notes:

1. Alan Vanneman, “Looking at Charlie: The Circus: An Occasional Series on the Life and Work of Charlie Chaplin”, Bright Lights Film Journal, (30 April 2008).   
2. Roger Ebert, “The Circus”, Great Movie, RogerEbert.Com, (20 October 2010).   
3. Christian Blauvelt, “Film Review: The Circus”, Slant, (12 July 2010).   
4. Sam May, “Revisiting The Circus: Charlie Chaplin’s troubled comic triumph”, Little White Lies, (27 January 2018).   

“The Kid” - Charlie Chaplin (1921)

Charlie Chaplin’s first feature-length film, The Kid (1921), was a breakthrough for the young actor/filmmaker.  Although he was already famous for his many “two-reelers” (approximately 20-minute-length films) that featured his patented slapstick comedy, Chaplin wanted to move into the realm of more ambitious films by making a six-reeler that offered more sophisticated storytelling. What he came up with was a superb mixture of comedy and sentimentality that was an immediate hit at the box office and still stands as one of Chaplin’s most popular films.

The distributor to which Chaplin was under contract at the time, First National, was impatient for more popular two-reelers, but the perfectionist producer-director-actor-writer-editor Chaplin took his time with the production of this film to fashion what he wanted [1].  He riskily borrowed $500,000 and then spent about nine months shooting and reshooting scenes for this film (and about eighteen months in overall production time) to get just the kind of end result he was looking for [2,3].  In fact Chaplin’s shooting ratio for this film (the ratio of total camera footage shot to footage of the released film) was 53:1, an extraordinarily high figure for any scripted production.

The story of The Kid concerns Chaplin’s familiar “Tramp” character circumstantially forced into adopting an orphan newborn and then somehow raising the boy despite the Tramp’s impoverished circumstances.  Along the way, the two of them develop a unique bonding that lies at the heart of the film’s appeal. 

Chaplin’s choice to immerse himself into this narrative was undoubtedly affected by the recent tragic death of his own newborn child.  His 17-year-old wife Mildred had just given birth to a malformed son who had died due to birth defects after only three days in July 1919.  Chaplin was apparently traumatized by this event, and in response he almost immediately began working on the script and the casting for his new feature film about raising an abandoned child.  In this connection Chaplin was fortunate to stumble upon a four-year-old vaudeville performer, Jackie Coogan, who turned out to be just perfect for the role of the waif that is the Tramp’s adopted son in The Kid.  Coogan’s performance in this film is still considered to be one of the greatest and most appealing child screen-acting performances of all time.

An early title in The Kid announces that this is

"A picture with a smile—and perhaps, a tear"

and the film is largely devoted to combining these two sentiments.  However, there are a couple of underlying themes in this tale that are worth discussing in this story’s context.  One concerns Chaplin’s Tramp character, himself, and how he differs from Buster Keaton’s usual silent-film character.  Keaton’s character is invariably an earnest, middle-class innocent who, however inexperienced and ill-equipped he might be, wants to do the right thing according to the given social mandate.  His problem, though, is that he is often faced with overwhelming external, “natural” forces that threaten to annihilate him.  Chaplin’s Tramp, though, is not middle-class at all; he is an impoverished bum at the bottom of society.  And the Tramp is certainly not innocent; he is a relentless poseur who ludicrously pretends to be what he is not – a dignified man worthy of respect.  And he will cheat his more powerful adversaries in any way that he can.  But the Tramp’s adversaries are not natural forces but a human society that has always stacked the deck against people like him.  So the viewer sympathizes with the naughty Tramp in his endless struggle against big bullies and social prejudices.  However, in this film under discussion, the inner nature and evolution of the Tramp’s own personal outlook on life becomes an issue.

Another and related underlying theme in the film concerns how the moral fabric of society as a whole is buttressed by the religious beliefs commonly held in society.  Although most religions assert that their principles have absolute, divinely-sourced authority, we know that the specificity and structure of these principles are actually human-made and subject to the limitations of human frailty [4].  Chaplin, who was evidently an agnostic [5], alludes to the artificiality (i.e. non-divine) nature of these principles in this story (particularly towards the end), but he doesn’t completely debunk them, either.  Instead, he seems to point to something deeper and more intrinsic about human nature that moves us to act with loving compassion for no apparent practical reason.  And the way Chaplin portrays this is what makes The Kid a great film.

The story of the film has six unequally-sized sections to it.

1.  An Orphan is Adopted

In the beginning we see The Woman (played by Edna Purviance, who was romantically involved with Chaplin before and around this time) who has just given birth to a child out of wedlock.  In a panic that she doesn’t have sufficient means to support the child, she desperately looks for a way to pass the baby onto someone who can take care of it.  When she walks by a luxurious sedan, she surreptitiously stashes her baby in the backseat and then hurries away.  However, the car is then stolen by car thieves who, after discovering the baby in the back, dump the child near a trash bin in a city slum.

The Tramp (Chaplin, in his signature shabby outfit) happens to walk by and see the baby.  He picks it up and looks for the baby’s owner, or at least for a mother who can take care of it.  But in a series of slapstick misencounters, he fails to unload the baby on anyone, after which he comes under the suspicious eye of a watchful policeman (Tom Wilson) walking his beat.  During this sequence The Tramp seems to have little concern for the baby and seems primarily concerned with getting out of trouble.  However, in the end The Tramp’s efforts come to naught, and it looks like he will just have to look after the baby himself.

Meanwhile the distraught Woman has second thoughts about giving away her baby and is distressed that she cannot find it.

2.  5 Years Later
The story moves forward five years in time, and we see The Tramp and his reluctantly adopted child (Jackie Coogan), who has been named “John”, living together in The Tramp’s shabby flat.  It is clear that the two of them are now a team and get on well with each other.  They have worked out a business together, whereby John throws a rock breaking a random apartment’s window, and then The Tramp, operating as a street-vending glazier, just happens to walk by and offer to repair the window for a fee.  Of course doing this requires dodging the watchful eyes of the policeman on his beat.  Things get more hilarious when they unknowingly break the window of the policeman’s own flat, and The Tramp, while negotiating his glazier fee, brazenly flirts with the policeman’s wife.  Just then the policeman returns home and, seeing what is going on, gets into a violent slapstick scuffle and chase with The Tramp.

We also see that The Tramp, even though he makes money through duplicity, has somehow become a more responsible parent and has brought up John to know how to cook pancakes for breakfast, to say grace before meals, and to say his prayers before going to bed.  In fact John appears to be more organized, industrious, and sincerely moral than The Tramp, himself.

Meanwhile John’s mother, The Woman, is shown to have now become a star opera singer, but her newfound wealth does nothing to assuage her sorrow over her lost child.  She tries to relieve her feelings of guilt by handing out gifts to children in the slums.

3.  The Big Bully
One day an obstreperous bully steals a favorite toy from John, and the two of them get into a fight.  The Tramp rushes over to break things up, but when he sees John surprisingly winning the fight, he lets them go ahead.  But just then the bully’s muscular adult brother, whom we shall call “The Big Bully” (Charles Reisner), shows up and starts a fight with The Tramp.  This is a major and extended slapstick scene in the film and features an epic, presumably one-sided, struggle between the ruthless roughneck, who can knock out a policeman with one punch, and the terrified Tramp, whose ducking and feinting just manage to save him from The Big Bully’s roundhouse blows.

After awhile The Woman happens to show up on the scene, and she gets The Big Bully to halt his aggression and show Christian compassion.  She tells him,

“if he smites you on one cheek, offer him the other.”

This The Big Bully dutifully does, but The Tramp merely uses this as an opportunity to deliver some sucker-punches.  Again we see The Tramp’s disregard for conventional morality.  He naughtily goes his own way.  And Chaplin is suggesting here, too, that conventional morality is often unrealistically impractical and often just used as an instrument of oppression.

The fighting continues, and The Tramp’s ballet-like dodging and darting gradually enable him win the fight.  Afterwards, The Woman approaches The Tramp and informs him that she has found his “son” John, whom she does not know is actually her own son, and discovered that the boy is seriously ill.

4.  The Officials Intervene
Now “the system” enters the picture and causes trouble.  A pompous doctor comes to treat John, and seeing The Tramp’s shabby household, informs the orphanage officials to come and take the boy away.  The officials come, and although The Tramp and John temporarily fight them off, John is eventually taken away by force.  It is here that we have the most moving scenes in the film, because it is here that it becomes clear that both John and The Tramp love each other.  The poignant image of Jackie Coogan (as John) tearfully reaching out towards The Tramp as he is taken away is perhaps the most lasting image one has of the film.

However, The Tramp now breaks away from the police, scoots away from them over the rooftops, and boldly rescues John from the abducting orphanage authorities.  He and John then take cover for the night in a local slum flophouse.

However, meanwhile The Woman has discovered that the ill boy she had recently seen was actually her own long lost child, and she has placed an ad in the newspaper offering a big reward to anyone who can help her find him.  When the flophouse manager happens to read this ad, he steals John away from his bed while the boy and The Tramp are sleeping, and then he forcibly takes the boy to the police station. The Woman is duly notified, and when she arrives at the police station, she is thrilled to be reunited with her lost son.

When The Tramp wakes up and discovers John missing, he spends the rest of the day fruitlessly searching for the boy.  Finally, exhausted, he returns to his now locked-up doorstep, falls asleep, and starts to dream.

5.  Dreamland
The dreamland that The Tramp now enters has been criticized by some viewers as a frivolous insertion to the story that has no meaningful connection to the existing narrative.  But actually I think it has some connection to the two underlying themes that I mentioned earlier.

In The Tramp’s dreamland, he finds himself in “heaven” – everyone has feathered wings, and they are all dancing joyfully about playing on their harps.  Many of the people we have seen earlier are there, including the policeman and The Big Bully, but now they are all ridiculously festive and benevolent.  Indeed this product of The Tramp’s imaginings is an absurd caricature of the heaven of popular culture.  And like the rest of The Tramp’s world, it, too, is subject to corruption.  Soon some sprightly demons sneak into the dreamland and sow the seeds of temptation and jealously.

A flirtatious angel (played by 12-year-old Lita Grey, who in real life would marry Charlie Chaplin three years later) naughtily induces The Tramp to kiss her, and her boyfriend in this dreamland, The Big Bully, gets jealous.  Soon The Big Bully and The Tramp are fighting, just as they had done in The Tramp’s wakeful state.  Again we are treated to more slapstick theatrics between The Tramp and The Big Bully.  But when The Tramp finally tries to escape the fight by using his wings to fly away, the hitherto (in the dreamland) benevolent policeman fires his gun at him and shoots him dead.

6.  Restoration
The film now shifts back to the “real” world, and the policeman, finding The Tramp sleeping at his doorstep, wakes him up.  Then, without explanation, he takes The Tramp away in his police car.  But instead of taking him to the police station, he takes him to wealthy mansion.  When the mansion door is opened, The Tramp is greeted by The Woman and John, who joyfully welcome him to their home.


So in the end, happiness reigns.  And the source of that happiness, Chaplin seems to be telling us, is not from following the artificial rules of society.  All those explicit rules and guidelines of human society are just man-made concoctions that have their limitations.  Even our religious principles that supposedly emanate from spiritual masters or divine inspiration are still artificial contrivances that have arisen from our imaginations. They are all restricted by the finite resources of the human mind.  And the dreamland of this film is Chaplin’s exaggerated illustration of just how far our heavenly imaginations differ from the infinite.

But the spontaneous love that arises from The Tramp and little John is something that transcends those limitations of the human mind.  It is something that is heavenly.  We cannot express it; we can only feel it when we see the visual narrative and relate it to experiences from our own lives.  This is what elevates The Kid to a high level.  Those images of John and The Tramp reaching out to each other to preserve (or frantically scrambling to support) their spontaneously evolved heartfelt connection are what stir sympathy in our hearts.
★★★★

Notes:

1. Mark Bourne, “The Kid: The Chaplin Collection”, The DVD Journal, (2004).   
2. Andrea Passafiume, "The Kid (1921)", Turner Classic Movies, (n.d.).    
3. David Robinson, “Filming The Kid”, CharlieChaplin.Com, (2004).
4. Yuval Noah Harari, Sapiens, A Brief History of Humankind, HarperCollins Publisher, (2015), Chapter 12: The Law of Religion, pp. 209-236.
5. David Duprey, “The Kid (1921): A Brave Rescue”, That Moment In, (1 October 2014).   

“The Gold Rush” - Charlie Chaplin (1925)

Charlie Chaplin, whose own life reflected the classic story of the underprivileged underdog succeeding in a disdainful world, went on to make a string of classic silent-films that presented that narrative in comic form.  In these films he always played the role of “The Little Tramp”, who mischievously managed to get around the imposing bullies blocking his path.  One of his most famous works along these lines was The Gold Rush (1925), which was an immediate hit at the box office and was ranked on the British Film Institute’s 2012 poll of international film directors as the 91st greatest film of all time [1]. 

The story of the film is set during the famous Klondike Gold Rush in Yukon, Canada (1896-99), during which some 100,000 eager prospectors were drawn to the region hoping to make their fortune [2].  Conditions in that far north region were cold and bleak, and lone prospectors faced the threat of death due to starvation and exposure to the elements.   Mindful of these conditions, Chaplin originally chose to shoot the film entirely on location in Truckee, California, in the Sierra Nevada mountains, which was the site of the famous Donner Party tragedy (1846-47), where early stranded migrants were reduced to cannibalism.    

Chaplin’s shooting style was leisurely – for creative purposes, he shot his films in sequence and often made things up as he went along [3].  So the production of The Gold Rush took fifteen months to shoot [4].  He originally cast his own 15-year-old mistress and soon-to-be wife, Lita Grey, in the role of the female lead, Gloria.  However Lita’s increasingly evident pregnancy proved to be incompatible with the slow pace of production in Truckee, and Chaplin chose to replace her in the film with Georgia Hale and reshoot everything back in the Hollywood studio [5].  So the final, released version of the film had very little of the original location footage.

What most people recall when they comment about the film, though, are several slapstick comedy scenes, which have been carefully choreographed for maximum effect.  But what makes The Gold Rush, along with Chaplin’s even greater City Lights (1931), truly outstanding works is the balance between humor and pathos that courses throughout the story [3].  In both those films there is a wistful romance that is treated with surprising delicacy and subtlety.  This is brought about by making the female lead more than just a simpering beauty; she is a person whose own nontrivial emotions are an important element in the story.  So Gloria Hale’s expressive performance turned out to be an important component in the film’s success.

In Chaplin’s narrative world, there are basically two separate and contrasting arenas in which a struggle takes place:

• Survival in the World  
  This is a man’s world, and The Little Tramp is a lone, penniless waif whose only resource is his cheeky spirit.  He is surrounded by oversized bullies who dismiss him as a no-account.  The Little Tramp is innocent and a seemingly hopeless underdog, so the viewer’s sympathies are with him.
   
• Love    
  This is a world seeking a woman’s love, and The Little Tramp’s innocent naivety seems even more hopeless in this arena.  He doesn’t offer manly virtues but only undying gentlemanly tenderness and affection. 

In The Gold Rush we switch back and forth between these two separate arenas as the story proceeds through five unequally-lengthed acts. 

1.  Surviving the Storm
The film opens by introducing the Klondike Gold Rush and showing The Lone Prospector (played by Charlie Chaplin and whom I will refer to as The Tramp) wandering alone in the snowy mountains.  Chaplin is shown, of course, with his signature cane, derby hat, and shabby vest.  Here we are in the Survival arena and The Tramp faces two oversized brutes who are also lone prospectors – Black Larsen (Tom Murray) and Big Jim McKay (Mack Swain).  Black Larsen is a murderous outlaw wanted by the Royal Canadian Mounted Police.  Big Jim McKay is a burly prospector who at the film’s outset is shown discovering a fabulously rich lode of gold ore for which he is ready to stake his claim.

Just then, though, a furious snowstorm comes up, and The Tramp and Big Jim separately stumble for shelter into a lone cabin occupied by Black Larsen, who wants to get rid of the two intruders.  There are several slapstick scenes in this act that people remember (in fact most of this act consists of slapstick struggles).  One involves Larsen and Jim struggling over possession of a rifle which, despite the constant movement and chaos, is always pointed at The Tramp, no matter what he does to get out of the way.  Things finally settle down between the men, but since the blizzard continues unabated, the men run out of food and begin to starve.  In this connection there is a memorable scene showing The Tramp cooking and serving one of his boots to eat.  To Jim’s astonishment, the starving Tramp seems to relish the cooked boot sole as if it were a fine epistolary delicacy. 

Later the starving Jim becomes delusional and has hallucinations of The Tramp turning into a tasty human-sized chicken.  He is just about to shoot The Tramp with his rifle and eat him when he finally returns to his senses for a moment.  Their continuing struggles are finally interrupted by an intruding grizzly bear, which The Tramp manages to shoot with the rifle, thereby solving their food shortage. 

By this time, Larsen, who had gone off alone to find food, comes across Jim’s gold-ore lode. Meanwhile Jim and The Tramp, now fortified with food, leave the cabin and part company.  Jim heads back to his claim site, while The Tramp heads towards the local mining town.  When Jim gets to his claim site, Larsen hits on the head with a shovel and knocks him out cold.  However, the murderous Larsen soon falls off a cliff to his death. So now of our three original lone prospectors, two of them are out of commission, and only our Tramp seems to have survived.

2.  Meeting Gloria
The Tramp makes his way to a mining area boom town and wanders into the local dance hall there.  Now the narrative enters the Love arena, and again there are three principal figures:

• Jack, a tall (6'4"), self-confident ladies’ man admired by all the dance hall girls,
• Gloria, the most beautiful dance hall girl,
• The Tramp, the modest little guy (5'5").

Gloria is attracted to Jack, but chafes at his rude possessiveness of her.  To spite Jack, she chooses the nearby and unassuming Tramp to dance with her.  The Tramp is immediately smitten and doesn’t realize that he is just a pawn in Gloria’s game with Jack.

Later the still-impoverished Tramp is asked to look after a miner’s near-to-town cabin while he is away.  Gloria and a group of her dance-hall girlfriends having a friendly snowball fight pass by and are invited inside by The Tramp.  Remembering the occasion when she danced with the gentlemanly Tramp, Gloria shows warm cordiality towards him.  When he shyly invites them all for dinner on New Year’s Eve, Gloria accepts his invitation for all of them, and The Tramp is thrilled.  After the girls depart, he leaps about for joy, almost trashing the cabin, in an acrobatic slapstick scene.

On New Years Eve, The Tramp has made elaborate preparations for dinner, but the girls don’t show up, and he falls asleep and dreams.  In the dream the dinner party goes ahead, and Gloria shows some affection for The Tramp.  The dream scene is highlighted by The Tramp’s puppet-show dance performance of “Oceana Roll” with a pair of forks poked into baked buns.

Meanwhile the New Year’s festivities are proceeding at the dance hall, and the partying dance hall girls have forgotten all about The Tramp and his dinner invitation.  After midnight, though, Gloria remembers, and she invites her girlfriends to go over to the foolish Tramp’s cabin for a little more “fun”.  On the way there, Jack asks Gloria if she loves him, and she says yes.  When they arrive at the empty cabin (The Tramp has gone to town looking for the girls) and Gloria sees The Tramp’s elaborate preparations for a dinner party, she feels remorseful and is not in the mood for  Jack’s horseplay.  When Jack arrogantly tries to forcefully kiss her, she slaps him in the face.

3. The Next Day
Big Jim McKay is shown finally having come to and found his way back to town.  But he is still suffering from memory loss and cannot remember where his claim site is. 

At the dance hall Gloria, upstairs, writes a love note to be passed to Jack, sitting downstairs, apologizing for what she did last night and swearing her love for him.  But when Jack reads the note, he laughs it off and shows it to the other girls (he always has his retinue of girls around him). Then, as a mocking joke, he has the waiter pass the intimate note to The Tramp, who is standing nearby.  Gloria looks down on this disdainful behavior in horror.  The Tramp, thinking the note was intended for him, is thrilled to read it and rushes about looking for Gloria. 

But just then, Big Jim shows up in the dance hall and upon seeing The Tramp realizes that the little man can lead him back to his claim site, which was near Black Larsen’s cabin.  So, promising to share his future wealth with the little man, he grabs The Tramp and starts to forcefully drag him away.  Just before they depart, The Tramp sees Gloria and promises to her that he will make his fortune and return to her.

4. The Cabin (Again)  

Jim and The Tramp make it to the cabin and there are more shenanigans, as the Survival scenario resumes.  Another big blizzard hits, and the cabin is blown down a hillside and finally stops teetering on the edge of cliff.  There is more slapstick as Jim and The Tramp struggle to keep the teetering and rocking cabin from plunging off the cliff.  But after some breathtaking moments, they finally get to safety, and Jim finds his claim.

5. Millionaires on the Way Home
The scene now shifts to a ship on the way back to the States.  Big Jim and The Tramp are now both millionaires decked out in fancy clothes and attended to by servants.  But it turns out that Gloria is alone and on that ship, too, down in the lower third-class deck.  And happenstance leads them to meet and establish their happy union at last.


There is no coverage in the film as to why The Tramp had not met up with Gloria after he and Big Jim had returned from the cliff to stake their claim and become fabulously wealthy.  We just have to assume that circumstances had kept The Tramp and Gloria apart until their later meeting on the ship to the States.  Some people might feel this absence of account to be a narrative flaw in the telling.  But in the context of the Love scenario, this temporal jump forward works well, and Chaplin made the right choice to tell the story this way.

As already mentioned, the numerous slapstick comedy bits, mostly inside the cabin, are what people cite when praising “The Gold Rush”, but it is the intermingling of the Love with the slapstick Survival scenario that makes all these scenes poignant.  The Love scenario is especially interesting because of its presentation of Gloria.  There is no denying that Gloria is, for a time, in love with two men at the same time.  And this is something that occurs more often than most people care to admit. But it does sometimes happen in the ever-shifting course of human relationships.  People can love two people at the same time.

Gloria loves the alpha male Jack, whose manly virtues and swagger are evidently attractive to her.  We know this, because she has explicitly confirmed to him that she loves him, and she doesn’t look like the kind of person who would make such avowals lightly.  But early on she bemoans the fact that she has been unable to find a man who truly stirs her heart.  There seems to be no real depth to her relationship with Jack.  When she encounters The Tramp, his sincerity and innocence offer a different and more authentic kind of relationship to her, and she apparently finally comes to realize this.  She doesn’t articulate these gradually changing feelings in words, but she expresses them in her gestures and emotive facial expressions.  This is what help makes the film an expressive work of art.  And it offers a lesson as to what can be accomplished even in the purely visual domain of silent film.
★★★★

Notes:

1. “Directors’ Top 100", Analysis: The Greatest Films of All Time 2012, Sight and Sound, British Film Institute, (2012).  
2. Even today Yukon’s population is only a fraction of that figure.
3. Alan Vanneman, “Looking at Charlie — The Gold Rush: An Occasional Series on the Art and Life of Charlie Chaplin”, Bright Lights Film Journal, (1 November 2007).     
4. Tim Dirks. "The Gold Rush (1925)", Filmsite, (retrieved 24 April  2018).        
5. Dan Harper, “The Gold Rush”, Senses of Cinema, (October 2002).    

Charlie Chaplin

Films of Charlie Chaplin:

• The Kid - Charlie Chaplin (1921)
• The Gold Rush - Charlie Chaplin (1925)
• The Circus - Charlie Chaplin (1928)
• City Lights - Charlie Chaplin (1931)

“City Lights” - Charlie Chaplin (1931)

Charlie Chaplin, perhaps the greatest movie star ever, was an inimitable film artist who went his own way and single-handedly fashioned his brilliant career.  Looking at his greatest work, City Lights (1931), offers one the opportunity not only to see a fine film, but also to get some insight into Chaplin’s creative genius. 

Chaplin’s own life is a fascinating story in its own right.  Born in 1889 in London into extreme poverty, Chaplin was practically an orphan – his father was always away and his struggling mother couldn’t make ends meet and was eventually sent to a mental institution when Charlie was 14.  His formal schooling, which had always been minimal, ended permanently at the age of 13 when he dropped out to seek employment in music hall and stage performing.  He managed to work with a company that toured the American vaudeville circuit and eventually wound up acting in American silent-film comedies in 1914.  He was such an immediate success that by 1917 he was a multimillionaire and one of the highest paid people in the world [1]. He soon took an interest in all phases of film production, and by 1922 was moving from one- and two-reelers to feature-length film production.  By this time Chaplin was the ultimate auteur: not only starring as the lead actor, but also writing the stories and producing, directing, and editing the films, too. Since he was enormously wealthy and his own producer, Chaplin could be a perfectionist and take however long he wanted to finish his productions [2,3].  This made him difficult to work with, but he had the ultimate response to any objections – his films were almost invariably successful.

In 1928 Chaplin began working on the story for his masterpiece, City Lights.  Although the first sound film, The Jazz Singer (1927), had been released the year before and the movie industry felt that silent films were doomed, Chaplin felt that the bulkiness of sound production equipment and procedures was too limiting for his kind of expression.  So he persisted with the idea of making a silent film. For this work he was the producer, director, lead actor, script writer, film editor, and music composer (the music was orchestrated by Arthur Johnston and Alfred Newman and incorporated a theme by José Padilla).  And, of course, by this time Chaplin was even more of a perfectionist than ever, reshooting many scenes over and over to get just what he was looking for – the shooting ratio was an extravagant 38:1. Things took so long that by the time the perfectionist Chaplin finished and released City Lights in 1931, silent films were clearly a phenomenon of the past.  Nevertheless, Chaplin’s artistry was so effective that the film was his greatest hit at the box office.

Actually, City Lights is not truly a silent film.  It has no (intelligible) spoken dialogue, but it does have a synchronous sound track to convey diegetic noises and contextually-appropriate music.  There are a few textual intertitles, but the film effectively conveys its narrative content by means of gestures and facial expressions.  (For a latter-day retake on some of the themes and methods of City Lights, I refer the curious to check out the more recent Indian film, Pushpak (1987)).

There are a couple of key aspects to Chaplin’s work that are first worth considering.  One concerns the nature of comedy, itself.  Many times comedies are just a disconnected string a jokes.  Admittedly, the jokes are usually presented within a particular setting and context, but the jokes are still mostly insular.  Chaplin’s comedies tended to feature longer narrative threads, and this is what makes them hold up over the longer length of a feature film.

Another key aspect to Chaplin’s work was the nature of the character that up to this point he almost invariably played: the Tramp.  Chaplin’s Tramp character was an odd mixture of British and American funkiness, with his disheveled waistcoat, bowler hat, and cane serving to bedeck essentially a bum.  This character, though, had several attributes that were essential to what made him interesting [4]:

• In search of dignity. 
  Despite his rumpled appearance, the Tramp is always concerned about his dignity and whether he is being shown proper respect.  This we might think of as more of a British theme than an American one.  I have remarked elsewhere on the subject of dignity and why I believe it is seriously incorrect to think of dignity as a basic human right [5].  But dignity can still be important to the individual in terms of how he or she sees him or herself.  It is basically a personal matter, but Chaplin’s character effectively externalizes his concerns about dignity when he feels he is subject to smirking mockery by people around him.
  
  
• Cheekiness. 
  At the same time and in the reverse direction, the Tramp has all the impudence of a naughty boy.  This serves to ruffle the feathers of those who look down at him, and it suggests to me more of an American theme of wiseacre-ness.
  
  
• Pathos and sympathy. 
  The Tramp suffers many indignities, but he shyly suffers empathetically for others, too. He often wants to help but lacks the means to do so. This is what makes him a sympathetic character.

City Lights concerns narrative threads that bring out these features of the Tramp character.  A major theme in the film is seeing – seeing the true nature of people and the world.  Sometimes people look, but they don’t see.  The story is presented in nine 8-to-10-minute segments, and this typical length may have been influenced by Chaplin’s earlier experience with one- and two-reeler films, since the average length of a 35mm film reel was about 11 minutes.  The overall pacing and tempo is fast, and yet there are a number of lengthy shots in the film.  These shots are full of action and had to be carefully choreographed, a requirement which must have been a major contributor to the number of scene re-shoots and the high shooting ratio.

1.  Introducing the Tramp
In the first segment, the viewer is introduced to the Tramp (Chaplin) and his perilous but casual life on the street.  He is shown taking a nap on a statue that is about to be unveiled in a pompous civic ceremony, and later (in an 83-second shot) he unknowingly dances around a sidewalk elevator while he gazes at a nude statue in a store window.  Later he happens onto a pretty “Girl” (Virginia Cherrill) selling flowers on the street.  When he notices the Girl is blind, he can’t help but use one of his last coins to buy a boutonniere from her. In these brief scenes we see the major elements of the Tramp’s character – cheekiness, quest for dignity, and empathy.

2.  Dockside Encounter

In the evening when the Tramp is about to sleep on a bench by the river, he notices a well-dressed man – the “Millionaire” (Harry Myers) – about to drown himself in the river.  The Tramp stops him from doing so and when the Millionaire comes to his senses, he declares the Tramp to be “his friend for life”.  He takes the Tramp to his wealthy home, where the two of them proceed to get drunk on whiskey.  This includes a 100-second shot of the two of them sharing (and spilling) their drinks.   After a second suicide attempt is also blocked by the Tramp, the Millionaire, now deciding to live life to the fullest, insists that the two of them go out for a night on the town.

3.  The Nightclub
The third sequence features various slapstick scenes at a posh nightclub.  This includes famous cigar-lighting (53 seconds) and spaghetti-eating (60-second) shots that are frivolous but amusing.

4.  Returning Home

On the way back to the Millionaire’s home in the rich man’s Rolls Royce, the Tramp notices the Girl selling large flower bouquets.  He borrows $10 (worth $150 today) from his friend and returns to the girl in the Rolls Royce to take her home.  To the blind Girl, the Tramp seems to be a wealthy and courtly gentleman, not a tramp.  Back at the mansion, though, the now-sober Millionaire doesn’t remember his life-saving encounter with the Tramp, and has him thrown out on the street.

5.  Afternoon
The Tramp is back on the street and again penniless.  But he runs into the Millionaire, who is once again inebriated and can again recognize and remember his “lifelong friend”.  The Tramp is invited to a party at the Millionaire’s home, and again there are more hijinks involving the Tramp’s accidental swallowing of a whistle with disruptive consequences.  In the morning and the return of sobriety, the Millionaire, who is about to leave on a trip to Europe, again cannot remember anything about the Tramp, who is once more thrown out of the home and back on the street.

6.  Helping the Girl
So far, more than halfway through the film, the story has mostly been a string of well-crafted visual jokes triggered by the back-and-forth relationship between the Millionaire and the Tramp.  Now things shift in the Girl’s direction.  The Girl is ill with fever.  In order to help her, the Tramp gets a job as a lowly street cleaner.  During his lunch breaks, he visits the Girl, masquerading, verbally, as a wealthy gentleman.  On one such visit he reads to the girl a news item about a Viennese doctor who can cure blindness.  He promises to send her their for the operation.  Since the Grandmother (Florence Lee) is always away during these visits, there is noone to tell the Girl that her visitor is a lowly tramp. Just when the Tramp learns that she and her Grandmother are about to be thrown out of their flat due to unpaid rent, he gets fired from his street-cleaning job.  So the Tramp is now desperate to help her.

7.  The Boxing Match
By serendipity, the Tramp gets lured into a boxing match, the earnings from which could save the Girl’s apartment.  This is a famous 14-minute scene with a number of twists and turns and extended boxing-match shots, all choreographed to perfection.  Despite impossible odds, the Tramp almost pulls things off, but in the end he is back penniless on the street.

8.  The Millionaire Returns
On the street the Tramp runs into the Millionaire who is back from Europe and again inebriated.  The Millionaire takes the Tramp home and willingly gives him $1,000 to help the girl.  However, thieves hiding in the Millionaire’s home interrupt everything, knocking out the Millionaire in the process.  Though the thieves are routed, the arriving police think the Tramp stole the Millionaire’s money.  When the Millionaire regains consciousness, of course he doesn’t recognize the Tramp (he never does when he’s sober).  But the Tramp manages to flee with the $1,000 cash and gallantly deliver it all to the Girl.  When she asks when she can meet him again, the Tramp resignedly says it will be awhile.  Shortly thereafter the Tramp is cuffed by the police and sentenced to prison.

9.  9 Months Later
9 months later we see that the Girl’s sight has been restored, and she is now running a posh flower shop with the Grandmother.  The Tramp is released from prison, but he looks more tattered than ever and doesn’t know anything about the girl.  He gets into a scuffle with some delinquent boys with pea-shooters in front of her shop, and the now-sighted Girl looks on from her store window with amusement.  The Tramp is stunned to see her and joyfully speechless.  When the Girl condescendingly offers him a coin, he refuses, so she insists and puts it into his hand.  Of course she doesn’t recognize his face, but she does recognize the touch, and she now knows that it is her mysterious benefactor. But this disheveled derelict before her is not the polished gentleman she had imagined him to be. The emotional look on her face, and the return look on the Tramp’s face, is one of the most moving closings in film history. 


There are two noteworthy elements of Chaplin’s mise-en-scene in City Lights that make the kind of story-telling in which he is engaged particularly effective:

• Music 
  Although there is no spoken dialogue, sound is especially important in this film, because it used to convey characteristic leitmotifs associated with the principal characters.  These leitmotifs drive and energize the visually presented segments, and so they sustain the dynamic tempo of the film.
   
• Eyes 
  Since seeing the true nature of things is an important theme of this dialogue-less film, Chaplin’s focus on the eyes and facial expressions is crucial to the presentation.  The Tramp’s eyes and eyebrows are characteristically highlighted with makeup to emphasize his innocence.  His is not a blank stare, but instead often a look of openness.  The sightless Girl’s visage is always searchingly directed outward.  She, too, is a perceiver.  And look, too, at the facial expressions of some of the other important characters, such as the mercurial Millionaire and the Tramp’s ruthless boxing-match opponent.

But it is that closing scene of the Tramp and the Girl coming together that makes City Lights the classic that it is – even though that scene has been the subject of varied interpretations [6].  Does the girl’s final look of compassion represent sad resignation to the realities of this world? Or does it represent a sense of recognition to the realities of what love really means?  And the Tramp’s final look is one of apprehension and hopeful expectation.  You have to see it for yourself.
★★★★

Notes:

1. David Robinson Chaplin: His Life and Art, Paladin, (1985).
2. Gary Giddins, “City Lights: The Immortal Tramp”, The Criterion Collection, 11 November 2013).  
3. Alan Vanneman, “Looking at Charlie: City Lights: An Occasional Series on the Life and Work of Charlie Chaplin”, Bright Lights Film Journal, (31 January 2009).
4. Roger Ebert, “City Lights”, RogerEbert.com, (21 December 1997).  
5. I have commented elsewhere about the pseudo human “right” of dignity.  See for example my reviews of  The Last Command (1928), Bicycle Thieves (1948), and Tangsir (1974).
6. Marilyn Ferdinand, “City Lights (1931)”, Ferdy on Films, (2012).