Chaplin: The Political Tramp
Written By: Michael Carlisle
Motion-picture comedy began with a simple comic situation, in the Lumiére Brothers’ L’Arroseur arrosé (Watering the Gardener, 1895) in which a young boy steps on a garden hose as a gardener waters a lawn, cutting off the water, only to step off just as the gardener looks into the nozzle with incredible curiosity and thus is sprayed with the water that is restored.
The silver screen had shared many laughs by the time Charles Spencer Chaplin had acted in his first comedy. In Europe, a great French company known as Pathé Frères made comedic films as early as 1896. As hard as it is to believe today, Chaplin was not the first comic star of the cinema. In France a man known as Max Linder, made films for Pathé as early as 1905 and became Cinema’s first international star. The distinction of being the first American comic film star goes the pudgy and cheerful John Bunny, who had made a variety of popular films for the Vitagraph Company from 1910 to 1915.
The most successful producer of American comedies, and the company responsible for making Charles Spencer Chaplin a star, was The Keystone Film Company (1912- 1935). Founded in Edendale, California in 1912, it was run by Mark Sennet who was consistently billed as “The King of Comedy” throughout his lifetime.
When Chaplin joined Keystone in December 1913, the company was producing twelve one-reel comedies plus one two-reel comedy a month. The comedies also were simple, but joyful. Often the fast pacing of comedic slapstick gags would have more importance placed upon them than developing characters or creating riveting plots.
Chaplin personally disliked the fact that he was making simplistic comedies. He hated the chase because it scatters the personality and thus the audience doesn’t really have anybody to connect with in the film. This created great conflict between Chaplin and his director Henry Lehrman. Chaplin desired to be in slower paced films that had loads of character development, whereas Lehrman could care less. Due to his past theater work, he was also confused to why the film was shot out of narrative order. Unfortunately regardless of Chaplin’s disgust, he had felt his first film was butchered during the editing process, Making a Living was well acclaimed when it was first released in February, 1914.
The second film Chaplin starred in, and perhaps the most important in his Keystone career was called Mabel’s Strange Predicament, it was the first film in which Chaplin would dress in his now iconic Tramp costume. This particular costume was an inspiring mixture consisting of a derby hat, toothbrush moustache, bamboo walking stick, baggy trousers, tight cutaway coat, and oversized boots. These boots would be extremely helpful to Chaplin’s comedic routine, because they gave him his legendary penguin-like walk. His costume was influenced by tramp comedians of the British music hall as well as real-life tramps Chaplin had encountered in his impoverished childhood. He knew that a distinctive costume which would foster immediate recognition was traditionally a necessary part of the success of a circus clown or music-hall comedian, so therefore his costume would need to raise eyebrows. Inspired by the laughs he received from his peers regarding his funny costume, he explained the dubious character to Company founder Mark Sennet, “You know this fellow is many-sided, a tramp, a gentleman, a poet, a dreamer, a lonely fellow, always hopeful of romance and adventure. He would have you believe he is a scientist, a musician, a duke, and a polo-player. However, he is not above picking up cigarette-butts or robbing a baby of its candy.”
Of course the Character known as “The Tramp” would be introduced in Chaplin’s third film for Keystone, known as Kid Auto Races at Venice. It was a film with a rather simple plot, Chaplin makes a nuisance of himself at the Auto Races while film-makers try to film the event. It is not exactly known as “great”, but rather “important”. Kid Auto Races is the first record of an audience’s reaction to the character. As The Tramp acts silly, the audience, a number of real spectators, smile, laugh and even hold their bellies in sheer delight. Some people, like Pulitzer Prize-winning critic and author Walter Kerr, suggest that this was the beginning of a new comedic revolution. If Keystone wouldn’t become character driven themselves, then Chaplin would have to inject character into his films himself. His comedy would be more polished and refined yet remarkably spontaneous.
In less than a month of seeing The Tramp on screen, the mainstream public would embrace him. Keystone would also receive an outstanding amount of orders for films featuring Charles Spencer Chaplin and his newly created character. Chaplin would become incredibly popular, though not a household name yet, he was at least able to have creative control over his films and thus make the character driven films he wanted to make. An extraordinary aspect to Chaplin’s popularity was the he became popular without the use of radio, television, or internet to publicize or advertise the Tramp. Many exhibitors simply cut out a cardboard figure of the Tramp and placed it outside the cinema with the phrase “I am here to-day”.
It is not difficult to understand why The Tramp became so popular so quickly. To many people, Chaplin’s tramp character is known for much more than just being funny looking and hobbling like a duck. The Tramp is an everyman who relates to- and stands up for- the poor regardless of his situation. We first see the political side of The Tramp in The Immigrant (1917), a film which shows the hardships of the immigrant experience, Chaplin’s character controversially kicks an immigration worker in the butt. The film is quite genius because it blends comedy and drama perfectly, it is a film that you can laugh and cry at, it is exceptional because it is truthful to this day.
Artistic intellectuals felt that The Tramp was an ingenious creation because he embodied no national identity and spoke no mother tongue, therefore he had touched the hearts of spectators from all corners of the Earth and all walk of life. Remarkably he is one of the few silent era characters, along with Buster Keaton, that is still known to this day.
Though Chaplin’s Tramp was built on action rather than dialogue, the arrival of sound into motion pictures would be inevitable. In 1927 the Warner Brothers Company would produce The Jazz Singer, the first ever feature length motion picture with synchronized dialogue sequences. The film’s very release brought about the rise of the “talkies” and the decline of the silent sound era. Though during the early years of “talkies” synchronizing sound would prove increasingly difficult and thus lead to a decline in overall quality in individual films, there was great public demand for them. The public demand for “talkies” was so great that many of the film stars who couldn’t, or refused to, convert to the new technology would fade from the spotlight and fall into obscurity. The careers of major silent film stars like Norma Talmadge, John Gilbert, Harold Lloyd and the captivating Louise Brooks effectively ended this way.
The fact that Chaplin was still able to make a silent film (City Lights) four years after the arrival of sound was a true testament to his popularity, artistic integrity and his wealth. The arrival of sound films was a bigger challenge for Chaplin than for any other actor or director. Chaplin knew that his audience had certain expectations for The Tramps voice and he was afraid that he could not meet those expectations and fantasies. He did not want to lose what made him so popular by embracing sound, but he also didn’t want to become penniless and irrelevant. He had won world fame with the universal language of pantomime and if he made a sound film he knew he would lose a large part of his international audience that couldn’t understand the English language. In a 1931 interview Chaplin would completely dismiss dialogue, predicting that it wouldn’t last more than half a year. It wouldn’t be until after City Lights and his world tour (1931-1932) until Chaplin would re-consider.
As evident in The Immigrant, Charles Chaplin had displayed a great political consciousness that frequently, if not always, sided with the proletariat community and was very critical towards the upper class and the people who were in charge of the lower class. However it wasn’t until after his world tour (1931-1932) that his social consciousness went into overdrive, inspiring him to create Modern Times, his film criticizing technology over humanity, and The Great Dictator, his personal attack against Hitler and the notoriously evil Nazi Regime.
By the mid-1930s Chaplin’s political opinions were well known to the public, thus they became essential to his image as a star. During his tour, in which he had visited pretty much all of Europe, China and Bali, incredibly famous and influential men willingly met with Chaplin to discuss world politics. This was not a shock to Chaplin as he had always been adored by great thinkers, often being the host to luxurious and decadent parties. While he was relentlessly pursued by great thinkers, he was also stalked by a foreboding presence, the American Federal Bureau of Investigation. The FBI had a file on him since 1919 and was waiting for him to slip up. Though Chaplin’s political views were not that controversial, at worst they could be considered “Marxist”, he didn’t really like to tell people about which party he belonged to, in retrospect that may have been the best thing for him to do as he was denied re-entry in 1952 because the FBI said they had a “pretty good case against him”.
While Chaplin was on his world tour it seemed like an incredible amount of history was happening around him. Back in America the depression which began in 1929 with the collapse of the Stock Market was getting worse and reaching farther corners of the globe, Hitler and his Nazi regime were gaining great influence over the lives of the German people, and Gandhi civil disobedience was driving England mad. Chaplin was learning more about the world’s suffering, thinking more about real socio-economic issues and reconsidering his views. Of course, it wasn’t until his meeting with Gandhi did his political mind get a real intellectual boost and perhaps change the course of Chaplin’s entire life.
On September 22nd, 1930 the world famous Comedian named Chaplin met with the considerably more famous Mahatma Gandhi in a poor neighborhood in London. Chaplin initially remarked to Gandhi, “I should like to know why you’re opposed to machinery. After all, it’s the natural outcome of man’s genius and is part of his evolutionary process.” Gandhi would disagree, stating that, “I wish to make our people independent of industry, which is the weapon the Western world holds over us.” Though Chaplin refused to agree with Gandhi at the time, the conversation with the Mahatma stuck with him and he would reflect on it for the rest of his life. His next film Modern Times (1936) would be a clear sign that Gandhi's words had given him a new outlook on life, as the entire film is a bold cry against authority and the machinery that had ruined the lives of many men.
By the time he came to prepare Modern Times it seemed like Chaplin had changed his mind about the use of sound. In the Chaplin Archives there is a script which features dialogue for every scene in the film. The dialogue he had considered for his own character was nonsensical and humorous; however after a day of rehearsal Chaplin was dissatisfied about the results. Though the majority of the dialogue would be cut. Chaplin did proceed with sound effects and took great personal interest in their creation. For a scene involving flatulence, he enjoyed found a way to create the sound by blowing bubbles from a straw into a pail of water. The very fact that he was willing to experiment with sound showed an interesting evolution regarding his willingness to use newer technology.
While Modern Times is mostly silent, there are very brief sequences of human sound. It is very interesting that the first words heard in a Chaplin film should come from the greedy and powerful boss of the factory where The Tramp works. “Quit stalling, get back to work!” Right from the start we get a sense of the power of sound and the downside of it. The fact that this sound, and many other authoritative sounds in this film is amplified by use of technology also shows Chaplin’s disgust for modern technology itself.
The vile boss of the factory is obviously based on American industrialist Henry Ford (1863-1947) founder of the Ford Motor Company which created automobiles that the average American could afford to buy. He also had perfected the development of the assembly line and made it acceptable for many other companies to use it similarly. It was actually when Chaplin visited a Ford factory and met the dictator himself that his previous conversation with Gandhi rang true. In these factories men were treated poorly, they were worked like machines and were expected to work a continuously fast pace over long hours or be replaced by somebody who could work even harder. The Tramp’s nervous breakdown in the beginning of the film is not a scene of fiction, many factory workers of that era experienced similar emotional and physical breakdowns due to the extreme stresses that were present in the sinister factories.
The theme of Modern Times, which is essentially about the oppression of the individual by the industrial complex, can be simplified as the use of the individual for something other than what he/she has intended. Chaplin has a variety of jobs, none of which he can stand, but all of which he performs rather well. It’s rather interesting that every frustration in The Tramp’s life is caused by the workplace and other institutions. These institutions are supposedly created to help and satisfy, at least provide money for a decent meal. However, Tramp’s jobs seem to last less than a day, his job as a mechanic lasts precisely half a day. When his job is over he seems to accidently land himself in jail.
Indeed when The Tramp is not working like a machine, he finds himself incarcerated. To be idle in a working society seems like an impossibility, as if it’s against the law or as if idleness must take place in an institutional setting like a jail. An irony f this film is that even though idleness is discouraged, it seems like the workplace encourages it despite being created in order to enforce work ethic.
The world of Modern Times is unfortunately quite topsy turvy. It is where honesty is punished and dishonesty is rewarded. One example of this is early in the film when Tramp picks up a flag that has dropped on the ground; he picks it up and tries to give it back, but unwillingly becomes part of a protest that is violently interrupted by police. He is immediately arrested as a conspirator. The way Chaplin portrayed the police’s ferocity toward the protesters was not an invention of his own, this what was actually happening to protesters in the 30’s. An example of dishonesty being rewarded is seen during every successful acquisition of food. It’s as if basic survival was dependent on breaking the law and thus creating freedom from institutions.
Modern Times would not be the last film which took place in a backwards world; Chaplin would soon turn his attention to the Nazi Regime which was slowly conquering Europe with great force. This doesn’t seem like a shocking move as he had strong hatred for authoritarian government in general , mostly because it was very dehumanizing, like the machines of Modern Times. His public statements made it clear that this was not simple publicity game, he hated fascism with a passion.
Unfortunately for Chaplin, The Great Dictator may be the only example in his career of when he was ahead of the times. Hollywood clearly wanted to avoid the European politics at the time and simply pretend that they could avoid the Nazi mess. At the time many movies like Wizard of Oz were created as escapist films that didn’t really have an insightful political message. America itself was slightly anti-Semitic, the most famous example being American industrialist Henry Ford, who often gave expensive gifts to Adolf Hitler. Because of this, many Directors strongly discouraged Chaplin from making the film and their opinion definitely weighed heavily on his mind.
It’s quite interesting that this “sound” Chaplin had avoided most of his career, which was introduced into film by Jews in a Jewish movie named The Jazz Singer which was essentially about the lives of Jews, would be manipulated by an evil dictator who would attempt wipe out the Jews. Though Chaplin had a lot to lose when making this film; was this the time for comedy? He not only risked killing off his artistic persona known as The Tramp but also risked making a picture that just wasn’t funny. His solution was to create a “mistaken identity” picture, to twin his Tramp with the Tyrannical Hitler.
Perhaps the funniest aspect of The Great Dictator is Chaplin’s exploitation of sound. Chaplin obviously did a lot of studying in preparation for this film, mainly looking at Hitler’s infamous rallies. As Hynkel he has the real dictator’s movements and gestures down to a tee, even the tone of voice is consistent with the way Hitler talked. “Ah the big booben!” He speaks gibberish and mixes up a few English words that don’t quite fit into a serious speech. “Cheeze n daz crackers!” Interestingly enough his mockery doesn’t just include Hitler, later in the film there is also a bumbling and stumbling resemblance of Italian dictator Mussolini in the mix. The narrator throughout Chaplin’s speech is also quite hilarious.
The most important and well known scene in the film is Chaplin’s magnificent speech. It is incredibly powerful, but out of the blue and doesn’t fit with the comedic aspect of the film at all. However, at the time the words were needed to be said. In Chaplin’s response to his critics he says, “To me, it is a logical ending to the story. To me it is the speech that the little barber would have made-even had to make. It would have been much easier to have the barber and Hannah disappear over the horizon, off to the Promised Land. But there is no promised land for the oppressed people of the world. They must stand and we must stand.”
Unfortunately getting The Tramp to speak also meant putting to death the character that had made his creator famous and taking the risk of exposing himself without a mask. This film ended Chaplin’s reliance on slapstick comedy and perhaps for the first time, his character was willingly putting himself into danger instead of accidently falling into it. Did the speech at the end of the film compromise Chaplin’s ability to sustain a comedic tone throughout the film? Chaplin was aware of these issues, but as he claims, The Great Dictator was the “First picture in which the story is bigger than the Little Tramp.”
Bibliography
1. Vance, Jeffery. Chaplin: Genius of the Cinema. New York: Roy Export, 2009. Print.
2. Chaplin, Charles. My Autobiography. New York: Simon & Schuster. 1964. Print
3. Modern Times. Dir. Charles Chaplin. Charles Chaplin Productions, 1936. Film.
4. The Great Dictator. Dir. Charles Chaplin. Charles Chaplin Productions, 1940. Film.
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10. Winokur, Mark.” Modern Times and the Comedy of Transformation.” Literature/Film Quarterly, Vol. 15, No. 4 (1987) 219-226. Print.
11. Kamin Dan and Hooman Mehran. Audio Commentary. The Great Dictator. Dir. Chaplin. Perf. Charles Chaplin and Paulette Godard. Criterion Collection. 2011. DVD.
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