BEFORE: I'm suspending linking again tonight, on the suspicion that this is quite nearly an identical film to "Big Daddy" when all is said and done. Not that I'm comparing Adam Sandler to Charlie Chaplin, or saying that the later film was a direct remake of the earlier film, but you know what I mean. I was looking for a way to work the most iconic Chaplin films in, and the opportunity presented itself - I'll do something similar for the lead-out. In a year where I already cracked the code on Woody Allen and Hitchcock, why not work in one more Hollywood auteur?
AFTER: It might seem shocking to hear that I've never seen a full Chaplin film to date ("Do you like Chaplin?" "I don't know, I've never Chappled before..."). Clips of them, sure, who hasn't? But for some reason they didn't cover his work in the NYU film program, and I've always gravitated more toward Buster Keaton and didn't see the need to expand. I suppose before I'm done next year I'm going to have to watch some Marx Brothers films if I'm really going to do this right.
Anyway, this film now becomes the oldest one covered in the project, and for that reason, some allowances need to be made. I have to acknowledge that filmmaking during the silent era was a much different process, it was a product of its time and was designed to appeal to the audience of its day, which had really just gotten used to seeing images of locomotives coming toward them on-screen, without being killed by them. Special effects weren't really around yet, the timing of comedy had to allow time for audiences to read words from cards, and acting had to be at a level of over-expressiveness that wasn't seen again until someone invented Disney Channel sitcoms.
Even the concepts used seem quite over-simplified by today's standards - this character is good, this one is mean, this one is rich and that one is poor. There wasn't much time for shades of gray or complex character motivations, especially since films tended to be on the shorter side, to allow for newsreels and cartoons, I suppose, and to allow for more showings per day at the Nickelodeon. These simple short films allowed Chaplin to develop his "tramp" character, which was an icon by the time he appeared in feature films with monster running times like 68 minutes.
This film was ground-breaking in so many ways, first of all its blend of drama and comedy. Before that, according to the terms of Shakespeare, something had to be labelled as one or the other. I guess dramatists felt that if a story had both elements, the audience was likely to be confused about how they should feel. It seems so simple nowadays, because after all, life is a blend of both of those elements - so why did it take so long to make films that reflected the way life is?
Secondly there is the portrayal of a woman having a child out of wedlock, probably a shocking subject matter for 1921. Obviously we see the pressure this woman feels as she leaves the charity hospital, and has to walk RIGHT past a wedding ceremony. (Subtlety, apparently, was not invented until the 1930's.) Her solution to her dilemma is to abandon the baby in an expensive-looking car in front of a mansion, only she couldn't have predicted that the car would be stolen. (The word "carjacking" wasn't even invented until the 1990's, after all...)
Chaplin's tramp cares for the boy for five years, during which time they become partners in crime, with the kid throwing rocks through windows, and the Tramp appearing coincidentally on the scene just moments later. (And no one figured out that scheme? I guess nomadic glaziers were just more common back then.)
It's an extraordinary set of coincidences that gets the errant mother, now a successful opera star, back in touch with her young son. Sure, she does charity work in the slums, probably out of guilt, but how did she know her child was even still alive, or still in that part of town? Also, DNA testing hadn't been invented yet, so I don't know how anyone back then knew for sure who they were or weren't related to.
I think people had to rely on facial resemblances, which seems sketchy at best.
I'm not sure about the "Dreamland" fantasy sequence seen near the end of the story - the Tramp imagines his rundown part of the city populated by angels and devils, and I don't really see the point of all that, especially how it relates to his relationship with the kid. It seems like they were trying to pad the story a bit so they could advertise it as a 6-reel film instead of a 5-reeler.
Also starring Jackie Coogan, Edna Purviance.
RATING: 4 out of 10 pancakes
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