So maybe I should have been doing this before my Edinburgh show, but I am becoming a bit obsessed with Charlie Chaplin. Not only am I working my way through his autobiography, but I have a big box set of his films and had only watched "The Great Dictator" before today. This afternoon I had a look at "The Kid" and I enjoyed it.
I have never been a massive fan of the Chaplin stuff I had seen as a child, much preferring Laurel and Hardy, possibly because they embraced the talkie in a way that Chaplin didn't. But I am liking Charlie's stuff much more than I thought I would. He was, I suppose, in the fortunate position to be one of the pioneers of movie comedy and thus not have to worry about being derivative of anyone else. As the first he could make the most obvious jokes and his working method seemed to be to get inspiration from a prop or a location and then see what business he could come up with. What if the Tramp had some golf clubs? Or a dog? or a baby?
In spite of this though the jokes are often subtle and imaginative and don't patronise their audience. I was genuinely surprised and amused by the opening business in which Chaplin, approaching from a distance just avoids rubbish being thrown from a first floor window, gets closer to the camera (where we the audience are anticipating his discovery of an abandoned baby) only then to get the contents of a rubbish pan thrown over him from above. It's perfectly timed and cleverly constructed and rather lovely. I also enjoyed the joke, again subtler than one might expect from such unsophisticated times, when Charlie brings the baby home for the first time. A group of women ask him if the baby is his and he nods that it is. "What's its name?" one of them asks (a question posed through one of those old fashioned subtitle boards). Charlie looks momentarily confused, asks for a moment, goes inside and then comes out and says "John!" He has, of course, had to go and check the sex of the child before he can answer. It could easily be missed if you weren't paying attention, but I guess the assumption was that the audience were not stupid and would be paying attention. Would the same joke be made so subtly in an Adam Sandler film? Or would he make a big pantomime of looking down the child's nappy and perhaps comment on the size of his penis in relation to his own? In the 1920s you might have thought the unsophisticated audience might be more likely to be patronised, but the truth is that they were more on top of things than we are.
The relationship between Charlie and the cute Jackie Coogan, the Kid (who unbelievably went on to play Uncle Fester in the TV version of the Addams Family) is brilliant and I loved the part where Chaplin is trying to evade a policeman and pushing Coogan away with his foot to try and disassociate himself from him, but Coogan keeps running back. It says so much with such economy. It's worth looking back at these old masters, they have so much to teach us.
But as usual I can't stop myself thinking that everyone in this film must now be dead. It's not quite a negative thought, as it's wonderful to still be able to see their work, but it's just strange to think that everyone is gone. I guess there's a chance that some of the babies in the film are still going. Silas Hathaway plays the Kid as a baby, apparently - I looked it up - and is very good, giving a more subtle performance than most of the overacting adults. But The Kid is his only film according to imdb.com and I can find no further information on him. He'd be about 90 if he is still alive. Anyone know? He'd be the Harry Patch of the film.
I am coming to love Charlie Chaplin, even if it's a little weird the way he kisses Coogan on the lips in the film, and the fact that he uses a 12 year old actress (who he will go on to make his second wife) as the flirtatious vamp in the angel scene towards the end. That's all a bit odd, but aside from that I like his work ethic and his commitment to creating something worthwhile rather than just churning out the crap, which he would certainly have got away with. The fact that the films are so clever and original and still largely stand up today is enough of an accolade. His genius and this new medium collided at just the right time and he became possibly the most successful entertainer of all time as a result (and the silent nature of his films and the universality of his themes means his work can be enjoyed by everyone in any place, at any time). Even though there is a selfishness and nastiness to the character (he initially tries to dump the baby - even thinking about putting it down a drain - and makes his living repairing windows that the child has deliberately broken) or possibly because of these things (there is a part of us that would like to get rid of a crying baby by putting it down the drain, but like Charlie we resist that temptation), we like him. It would be hard not to be touched by his anguish as his child is taken away from him, or his heroic rooftop race to rescue his distraught boy. Even if he just does it so he can snog him in his mouth.
Times were different then.
You should watch this film if you haven't already. Though I have just blown all the best gags. It's good to see this blog is so up to date as to be reviewing films that are nine decades old. That's the power of the internet!
I guess that part of my affection for Chaplin is that he reminds me so much of my grandad. Or rather, I suppose, that my grandad must have been a big fan and thus copied Charlie's mannerisms and gags. He even, as I have mentioned before, had a thin, grey toothbrush moustache, which must have been a homage to Chaplin (hopefully rather than Hitler). But the facial expressions and the glint in the eye are the same things that I remember from my old grandad and it's comforting if slightly unsettling to see them again. My grandad was the first person to make me interested in comedy. He made me laugh and made me want to make him laugh and I thought he was the funniest man in the world. It's interesting to realise how much he (and thus by proxy I) had been influenced by Chaplin. I sometimes realise that I am pulling the same faces as my grandad did when I am attempting to entertain a small child. Chaplin has pervaded my comedy without me even knowing it.
But I ended up feeling nostalgia, both for my own childhood and for a time before my birth.
I vaguely wondered if the internet might be the modern equivalent of those pioneering days of the movies. Might it be possible for someone to use this medium for comedy in the same way that Chaplin did. I idly wondered if I might be that person.
But I think, like Chaplin, whoever harnesses this unwieldy beast will be young and full of vigour. And it will also be hard to find a way to make millions of pounds out of it, which I suppose was the remarkable thing about Chaplin's ascendancy.
Of course if the modern day Chaplin is on the internet he might be a bit distracted from his work by easy access to child porn. In fact he's probably in prison already.
