BEFORE: Chaplin film #3 - once my Chaplin chain is over, I will have seen 91 out of the AFI's Top 100 American films, and 361 of the "1,001 Movies To See Before You Die" (with plans to watch at least another 12).
AFTER: Well, I didn't know Chaplin did so many "ass" jokes - the whole first comic sequence is about the Tramp being found sleeping on a statue as it's unveiled, and in trying to climb down from the statue, his butt ends up in one marble statue's face, and then in the hand of another. He also gets his clothes caught on a sharp marble sword, but from the back, so it's awfully close to showing him being impaled on the sword, in a very personal way. Later in the film, he works as a street-sweeper, and there's some poop humor - he refuses to go down a street where a number of horses have been, and then for the payoff, he walks by a random elephant.
But this is really about mistaken identity - the lovely blind woman has an interaction with the Tramp, and we can assume that he sounds pretty cultured (just look at how he dresses!) so when she hears a nearby car door slam, she assumes that he's driven off in his car. Later in the film she visits him at his friend's mansion, so naturally she assumes he owns the place.
The Tramp's "friend" is a man he saved from drowning - and by "saved" I mean he did a bit where he talks him out of suicide, then falls into the river with him in comic fashion, only to climb out and stumble back in, again and again. He's a millionaire prone to drinking, and when he's drunk he treats the Tramp well, but each time he sobers up, he can't remember who he is and has him tossed out of the mansion, DJ Jazzy Jeff style.
He also gives the Tramp his car, and later a sum of money, but can't remember doing this either once he's sober. Most people who drink to excess aren't this bi-polar, and most eventually remember what they did while drunk, so this is another case of a filmmaker tailoring the way the world works for comic effect. Similarly, when the Tramp reads about a doctor in Europe who can cure "blindness", that's probably a gross simplification, because no doubt there are different kinds of blindness, and I'm supposing that whatever cure that doctor has would only work on certain kinds.
But let's put all that aside, and admire how elegantly all of the pieces fit together on this one. Every gag is neatly set up, right down to the newsboys who torment the Tramp at the start of the film, which doesn't pay off until the very end - but if they hadn't been there at the beginning, then the end sequence wouldn't have made any sense. The burglars in the millionaire's home seem to come a bit out of the blue, but even they serve a purpose in setting up the payoff to the "I don't know this man" bit.
The best sequence is probably the boxing match - the Tramp enters into a match prepared to take a dive for some easy money, only to have his opponent rush out of town. His new opponent doesn't honor the same agreement, so our hero is forced to fight for real. He uses his slapstick moves to try and win the fight by unconventional means, which leads to comic situations like confusion with the referee getting mixed up in the fight, and then getting the rope to the bell tied around his neck, so that the bell rings to stop the fight whenever he gets knocked down, and then rings again to start the fight every time he walks away.
I was starting to wonder why, if the main character is a Tramp (aka hobo, aka homeless guy) he dresses so nicely. But I think I've cracked the Chaplin code here - the character needs to travel in both worlds, that of the rich and the poor. He needs to look elegant enough to get a job, or to not look out of place when circumstances take him to a fancy party or restaurant, but then once bad fortune comes his way again, and it inevitably does, he needs to be able to grab his hat and cane and waddle off to the next adventure. He's the conduit between the millionaires and the flower girls of the world, between the rich prospectors and the dancing girls.
Also starring Virginia Cherrill, Harry Myers, Florence Lee.
RATING: 6 out of 10 eviction notices
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