Charlie Chaplin'sWorld of Comedy

Wes D. Gehring

BALL STATE MONOGRAPH NUMBER THIRTY

Charlie Chaplin'sWorld of Comedy

Wes D. GehringAssistant Professor of Film

BALL STATE MONOGRAPH NUMBER THIRTY

Ball State University, Muncie, Indiana 47306

1980

This publication is not for sale.

© Wes D. Gehring 1980Library of Congress Catalog Card Number: 80-68717

Dedication

To my wife, Eileen, my family, and in memory ofmy grandfathers, Wallace McIntyre, Sr. and Lawrence Gehring, Sr.

Thanks

The Museum of Modern Art and Blackhawk Films providedstills for this study, with additional photography assistancecourtesy of Joe and Maria Pacino, Department of Telecom-munications, and Michael Thielen, Educational Resources(Ball State University). My wife and Janet Warmer typed thevarious drafts of this manuscript. Gertrude Kane was invalu-able in her reading and advising on the editing of the manu-script. And though they were not directly involved in thisstudy, I feel a special thank you is also in order for Dr. TimothyLyons, my first film professor, who encouraged my interest inChaplin, and Dr. Richard Dyer MacCann, who guided mygraduate film years and, more than anyone else, makes proj-ects like this possible. •

Contents

Introduction 1

I Chaplin's Tramp in Relationshipto American Humor 3

II In Search of Chaplin on Comedy 17

III Chaplin's Comedy and Film Theory:Everyone Makes Room for Charlie 27

IV Chaplin and Comedy Theory:Towards a More Meaningful Approach 39

V Conclusions 50

Selected Filmography 51

Selected Bibliography 53

The Gold Rush (1925)Too often Chaplin's trampis seen as a loser at love,as well as life in general.Yet the still to the right,from the film's close,finds him metaphoricallystriking gold with the heroine,after literally hitting paydirtwith his mining partner.This success is especiallypertinent in The Gold Rush,because this is the filmChaplin most wanted to beremembered by, as well as beingprobably his most acclaimed work.More often than not,the tramp is capable,which he also sometimesunderlines with the audiencethrough the direct addressof his eyes.

The Gold Rush (1925)As the above stills show, Charlie moves from the bottom of societyto millionaire status and also gets the girl.

Introduction

"I am here to-day." Chaplin's popularity wasso great in the teens and twenties that theatreowners had only to display a cardboard imageof the tramp with this short statement to drawa large audience.

My purpose is to examine the film world of Charlie Chaplin fromthe neglected vantage point of the mechanics of his comedy; just why ishe funny? This examination will necessitate probing his comedy careerin terms of (1) the tramp figure in relationship to general historicaltraditions in American humor; (2) Chaplin's own changing perspectiveson his comedy; (3) his comedy from a production and aesthetic point ofview, according to film's most important theorists; and (4) a moremeaningful and workable comedy theory for his body of work.

Though much has been written about film's greatest comedy figure,the comedy theory material is often no more than enthusiastic: "Hisfunniest film. . . ." and "His best routine. . . ." These are standardsthat apply to much of film comedy history in general. Chaplin merelybecomes an excuse to recite plot synopsis without integrating thepieces to a larger comedy whole.

On those occasions when Chaplin's comedy is the focus of a study,there seems to be a propensity to slip into rather nebulous and/or pre-tentious rhetoric, such as Parker Tyler's Chaplin: The Last of theClowns and David Madden's Harlequin's Stick—Charlie's Cane, or tohave some political ax to grind, as in Sergei Eisenstein's long Marxistessay, "Charlie the Kid."'

Because of Chaplin's huge initial success in films, both criticallyand commercially; the longevity of his career, over fifty years; the Dic-kensian nature of his childhood, which he played upon both in and outof his films; the question of political affiliation, a special danger in theMcCarthy "red"-colored 1950s; and several messy scandals, especiallyJoan Barry's long paternity suit in the 1940s, much of what has beenwritten about Chaplin manages to avoid comedy altogether. TimothyLyons, in his "An Introduction to the Literature on Chaplin," sum-marized the situation best when he noted that only since the recentdeath of the comedian (Christmas Day 1977) has there been a chancefor "a period of more objective analysis [where perhaps] some under-standing of this artist and his art will be brought to light." 2

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One final reason for scholarly neglect is that comedy study in gen-eral is something of a stepchild in art appreciation. Comedy is consist-ently given a back door to the more -serious" subjects. Quite possiblythis neglect started with Aristotle's early definition of comedy as the- imitation of baser men," often drawn from subjects of -deformity." Aneven more telling accident of history also involves Aristotle: althoughmankind has managed to preserve his work on tragedy, his research oncomedy has somehow been irrevocably lost.

The feeling of comedy as something inferior has not been limited toancient history. In this century, from Henri Bergson's Laughter (1900)to Walter Kerr's Tragedy and Comedy (1967), major theorists who havemade otherwise great contributions to comedy theory continue tohedge in giving comedy parity with tragedy. 3

Ironically, this second-class identity has often been subscribed toby comedy artists themselves, including Chaplin. As early as 1922 arti-cles such as -Charlie Chaplin, As a Comedian, Contemplates Suicide"reported his preference for tragedy. 4 Even today, America's leadingcomedian, Woody Allen, has found it necessary to make the most de-pressing of movies, Interiors (1978), to prove his artistic credentials.

In today's problematic world, however, the old stereotype of com-edy's inferiority is not only wrong but backwards. As Wylie Sypher hasnoted in his -The Meaning of Comedy": -The comic now is more rele-vant, or at least more accessible, than the tragic." 3 I hope that mystudy of Chaplin represents not only further insight into his comedybut also a general celebration of all that is comic.

Notes

1. Parker Tyler, Chaplin: The Last of the Clowns (1947; rpt. New York:Horizon Press, 1972); David Madden, Harlequin's Stick —Charlie's Cane(Bowling Green: Bowling Green University Press, 1975); Sergei Eisenstein,-Charlie the Kid," in Film Essays and a Lecture by Sergei Eisenstein, ed. JayLeyda (New York: Praeger Publishers, 1970), pp. 108-39.

2. Timothy J. Lyons, -An Introduction to the Literature on Chaplin,"Journal of the University Film Association (Winter 1979), p. 9.

3. Henri Bergson, Laughter, in Comedy, ed. Wylie Sypher (GardenCity, New York: Random House, 1975); Walter Kerr, Tragedy and Comedy(New York: Simon and Schuster, 1967).

4. -Charlie Chaplin, As a Comedian, Contemplates Suicide," CurrentOpinion (February 1922), pp. 209-10.

5. Wylie Sypher, -The Meaning of Comedy," in Comedy, ed. WylieSypher (Garden City, New York: Random House, 1975), p. 6.

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Chaplin's Tramp inRelationship to American Humor

Before examining the comedy aspect of Chaplin's work, it is im-portant to underline the huge initial impact Chaplin's comedy had onthe public as well as the staying power of that comedy. 1 The almostimmediate acclaim his tramp figure received in 1914 made him quitepossibly the first world media star. Because of the universality of silentfilms, he was even more of an international star than any comparablefigure of today.

During the teens it seemed as if the world revolved around CharlieChaplin. Isabel Quigly notes that European soldiers marching off toWorld War I often sang about the comedian:

For the moon shines bright on CharlieChaplin,

His shoes are cracking,For want of blacking,And his little baggy trousers want

mendin'Before they send himTo the Dardanelles. 2

At the same time the world's children had numerous songs about theirfavorite figure, from one in Puerto Rico about "Chali Chaplin - andkitties, to an English version set to the music of "Gentle Jesus - :

Charlie Chaplin meek and mildTook a sausage from a child.When the child began to cryCharlie slapped him in the eye. 3

His popularity grew so quickly that as early as 1915 Motion PictureMagazine devoted a two-part series to "Chaplinitis. -4 This popularitytouched off marketing schemes that are still with us. There were Char-lie Chaplin lapel pins, spoons, statues, paper dolls, squirt rings, com-ics, and whatever else his likeness could be reproduced on.

"Chapfinals- was fed all the more by countless other entertainers,from assorted media, who cashed in on Chaplin's popularity. Theatre,vaudeville, and film suddenly had an overflow of tramp imitators,while Tin Pan Alley cranked out such songs as the "Chaplin Waddle, -

the "Charlie Strut, - and the "Chaplin Wiggle. - Even the nonper-

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former got a chance, via the Charlie Chaplin look-alike contests held infilm theatres across the country. However, unlike other -overnight"successes, Chaplin would continue to be news for over the next halfcentury.

Chaplin's lengthy film career covers much of the history of the artform. He made his first film for Mack Sennett's comedy company in1914; it was aptly titled Making a Living. Chaplin would do just that infilm for the next fifty-two years. His last film, The Countess from HongKong, was made in 1966 and starred Marlon Brand° and Sophia Loren.Between these two dates he made some eighty-one films.

Many of these works were made in Chaplin's first decade in theindustry. In that first year for Sennett he made thirty-five films. Thisperiod represented an important apprenticeship for Chaplin. Besideslearning everything he could about movies, he very quickly assertedhimself both in front of the camera—an early version of his tramp actu-ally appears in his second film—as well as behind it. He was soonwriting and directing some of his Sennett films. After 1914 Chaplinwrote and directed all his films, making him one of film's first artists inthe classical sense, exercising nearly total control in an industry stilloften defined in collective terms.

Chaplin's career should be approached with five periods in mind:(1) the apprenticeship with Mack Sennett (1914); (2) the film shorts forthe Essanay company (1915-1916); (3) the film shorts for the Mutualcompany (1916-1917); (4) the shorts for First National films (1918-1923);and (5) the ten feature length films (1923-1966), the majority for UnitedArtists, a company he helped found.

The dominant character in the majority of these films is what hascome to be called his - tramp" figure, though the films are often morelikely to show him as employed. He remains in this role from Kid AutoRaces at Venice (1914) through Modern Times (1936), with his tooth-brush mustache, baggy pants, floppy shoes, derby hat, and ever-activecane becoming symbols synonymous with comedy the world over.

Chaplin retired the tramp, the last holdout from the silent era,after Modern Times, because he did not want to threaten either thefigure's universality by having him speak or believability by having himsolve problems in a manner that the world had grown too cynical toaccept. But it would be misleading to claim no vestige of the trampremained after this point in Chaplin's work, because the tramp is con-stantly coming to mind, from the Jewish barber (Chaplin) in The GreatDictator (1940), who speedily shaves the customer in strict time toBrahm's -Hungarian Dance No. 5," to deposed King Shadov (Chaplin)in A King in New York (1957), who finds it necessary to mimic a stur-

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geon while ordering caviar. Any focus on Chaplin's comedy must beginwith the tramp figure.

Though much has been written about Chaplin's tramp, little ornothing has been done in examining his comedy world in relationshipto basic traditions in American humor. A key factor in this neglect isthe question, Is the tramp essentially a capable or an incompetentcomedy hero?

Incompetent would seem the most obvious answer. In thinking offilm comedy, one first sees a - little fellow - in baggy pants, derby hatand floppy shoes shuffling down a dirt road. This image is also probablycinema's most famous icon: Chaplin's defeated tramp going down stillone more road as the film comes to a close. Certainly every student offilm has a favorite variation on this theme, whether the dusty road ofThe Tramp (1915) or the abandoned grounds of The Circus (1928).Through film compilations and picture book anthologies of memorablescreen moments, this image is equally well known to the most casual offilmgoers. It is also an image fully chronicled by film scholarship,starting with the very dean of American film historians, Lewis Jacobs:

[The tramp is] a humble and pathetic figure in search of beauty, thebutt of jests, harassed by poverty, the law, and social forces that hecan neither understand nor resist. 5

All this is not to say that film scholarship has completely neglected thetramp's capable side; however, thirty years after Jacobs wrote The Riseof the American Film, Raymond Durgnat still felt called upon to note:

So heavily has the stress been laid on Chaplin as waif, as asentimental clown . . . and so on, that criticism has all but lost sightof the complementary pole of his inspiration. . . . 6

In recent years this inclination to focus on the -sentimental clown"has emerged in a rather unusual position—the happy ending of thetramp films. It is as if so much has been made of the traditionally sadelements of Chaplin that it is now necessary to question the too-happytramp film endings for inclusion in the -superior" listing of tramp filmswith pathos. The classic revisionist example until recently has beenGerald Mast's statement that the happy conclusion of Easy Street(1917) was a -Pollyannaish hoax. -7 That is, when a comedy deals with agenerally negative situation, any sort of happy conclusion is not realis-tic and therefore not appropriate. John McCabe, in his recent biogra-phy of the comedian, expands upon this tactic by questioning thehappy endings of four other Chaplin films: The Vagabond (1916), ADog's Life (1918), The Kid (1921), and The Gold Rush (1925). 8

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This negation of Chaplin endings is a dangerous precedent to con-tinue because it ignores the basic pattern of the comedy genre itself,which moves toward the happy ending after overcoming some initialproblems, just the opposite pattern of the tragedy. The very origins ofcomedy are tied to ancient fertility rituals and the rites of spring,events that are commensurate with rebirth, with marriage, with a newworld, and with the happy ending. Moreover, as Northrop Frye has sonicely articulated in his Anatomy of Criticism, the comedy happyending is not there to impress the audience with truth or reality butrather to give them what is desirable, a happy ending. No matter howunlikely the manipulation, it is inseparable from both the comedygenre and the audience anticipation of that genre.

The bittersweet closing icon of the defeated tramp has, therefore,become overextended. Defeat does not represent a fair commentary onall of Chaplin's tramp films and film endings, or even a sizeable num-ber of them. A close examination of the majority of his films, from theshorts at Keystone, Essanay, Mutual, and First National, to the fea-tures at United Artists, Attica-Archway, and Universal, indicates quitea different situation. 9

Chaplin's tramp milieu is much more likely to be quite upbeat. Anddespite his English background, his screen tramp is heavily immersedin American humor. Chaplin adjusted quite readily to a country hefound to be very much like himself, young and ambitious. Chaplin'sclose friend, writer Max Eastman, remembers the comedian sayingquite early: -Of course, I am essentially American. feel American,and I don't feel British—that's the chief thing." 1 ° Similar feelingswould be repeated over forty years later (1964) in Chaplin's autobiog-raphy, even after his experiences with McCarthyism. Because of thetramp's immersion in American humor, if one were to divide Americanscreen comedians into a simple dichotomy of -winners" and - losers,"the tramp would most definitely be in the former category. A filmdichotomy of this nature would follow the traditional breakdown al-ready established in American fictional humor, which gravitates towardtwo types. There is the nineteenth-century capable -winner," often

associated with - the Yankee," the beginning point of American humor,and the twentieth-century incompetent loser, the comic antihero. Thelatter category first fully blossomed in the late 1920s in both The New

Yorker magazine, especially in the writings of Robert Benchley,Clarence Day, James Thurber, and S. J. Perelman, and in the films ofLeo McCarey's Laurel & Hardy. 11

The antihero, who tries to create order in a world where order isimpossible, is actually not new to American comedy; few comedy types

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are. The antihero existed in earlier forms of American humor butusually not at center stage, which was reserved for the seemingly ra-tional world of the capable hero.

Chaplin first appears on screen in 1914 when the capable comedyhero is still dominant in American humor. Though some elements ofthe antiheroic are no doubt in his work, the guiding comedy forcethroughout is that of the capable figure. The only possible exceptionwould be the frustrations of Modern Times. Chaplin himself underlinesthe uniqueness of that film situation by the fact that he retires histramp character after this film. It is almost as if to say: The trampcannot continue to exist in a world where his capableness would be inquestion.

A thorough study of these two figures, the capable versus the an-tiheroic, indicates that they differ in five essential ways. As far as timeis concerned, the capable type is usually employed, whereas the anti-hero has a great deal of leisure. The former is involved in politicalissues; the latter ignores the subject of politics. The first is successful;the other is constantly frustrated. The individual is a father type; theantihero is a child figure. And finally, the capable figure is from thecountry, and the incompetent is from the city.

In order to dislodge some of the tramp's one-sided discoloring—theimage of a defeated figure—it would seem fruitful to examine his workwith relationship to these five characteristics that represent the Ameri-can comedy dichotomy. First, with regard to the tramp's use of time,the logical choice would be to put him in the leisure class. Thestereotype of the Chaplin character would suggest that he is nothingbut a tramp; actually, he is more often gainfully employed. RobertSklar has stated:

No comedian before or after him has spent more energy depictingpeople in their working lives: his first motion picture was theprophetically titled Making a Living. 12

One might also add the title of one of Chaplin's Essanay films, Work(1915).

In Chaplin's Mutual films (1916-1917), which rate special attentionbecause they -were Chaplin's most fertile years, his most sustainedcreative period . . . where he made twelve almost perfect comedies,"he manages to play a fireman, a floorwalker, a carpenter, a pawnshopclerk, a waiter, and a cop. 13 Moreover, The Immigrant (1917), anotherMutual film, ends just as he and the heroine have acquired jobs. Muchof the same occurs in his feature films, from the prospector in The GoldRush (1925) to his collection of positions in Modern Times (1936): fac-

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tory worker, maintenance apprentice, night watchman, and waiter-singer.

Even in City Lights (1931), where plot demands make more of anissue of his tramp state in order to juxtapose him with both his wealthyfriends and the blind girl's belief that she has a rich benefactor, em-ployment still manages to be a major focus. The tramp needs money sothat the blind girl can have an eye operation. This need results in-Charlie" becoming first a streetcleaner and then a boxer.

The second manner in which Chaplin follows the characteristics ofthe capable figure is that his films often center on politics. One mightcall them a primer of social issues. This is particularly true of theMutual films, which appeared at the culmination of the ProgressiveEra in America, a time of great reform for individual rights, 1897-192O.'

In eleven of the twelve Mutual films, Chaplin places the tramp insituations that focus on, and possibly in the case of alcohol capitalizeon, Progressive issues. These films are best divided into five socialareas: (1) urban corruption, The Floorwalker and The Fireman; (2) theplight of the urban poor, The Pawnshop, Easy Street, and The Immi-grant; (3) the idle rich, not a specific concern of Progressives but atangential area to both urban poverty and corruption, especially whencontrasted with Chaplin's image of the poor, The Count, The Rink, andThe Adventurer; (4) elitism, Behind the Screen, which endorses theantistrike stance of the Progressives; and (5) alcoholism, One A.M. and

The Cure.Questions might be raised about the inclusion of alcoholism, since

comedy and drinking go back to the Greek god of wine Dionysus andto the very origins of comedy. Chaplin also combined drinking withcomedy in later films. Yet alcohol was such a topical issue at the timethe Mutual Films were made (Progressives favored Prohibition, and in1917 Congress passed first the whiskey-limiting Lever Act and thenthe Eighteenth -Prohibition" Amendment and submitted it to thestates for ratification), that given Chaplin's -understandable aversion toalcohol, which had brought such tragedy to his family," 15 the subject ofalcohol seems a legitimate final category of the Mutual Films.

Not everything Chaplin did at Mutual fit smoothly into the Prog-ressive mold. In The Immigrant he plays upon irony in the promise ofAmerica and the Statue of Liberty juxtaposed with the cattlelike treat-ment the newcomers receive on their arrival in the new land. In thisfilm Chaplin would seem to take a big city problem—the plight of theunderprivileged immigrant—too far for many Progressives. The typicalProgressive was Nativist in viewpoint and felt immigration restriction

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was the answer; legislation along these lines was eventually passed inthe early 1920s, It is only fitting that Chaplin, the most famous immi-grant of the day, should express the plight of less fortunate immigrants.

Even here, however, Chaplin makes entreaties to the Progressives'nonimmigration stance, playing upon their belief that immigrants wereinherently inferior, because, other than the innocent heroine (EdnaPurviance) and her mother, the rest of the immigrant passengers areportrayed in a largely negative light, as comedy antagonists for Chap-lin. Their behavior entails gambling, fighting, the drawing of a pistol,and the robbing of an elderly woman. Moreover, once Chaplin's immi-grant character is in New York, he has no job and no money. It is onlythrough the kindness of an artist that he receives employment as amodel, which one assumes can only be temporary. To many Prog-ressives this sympathetic portrayal was an example of why they felt theimmigrant was a drag on American society.

Chaplin's Mutual films represent a neglected comic survey of sev-eral Progressive issues at the very close of the era. Occurring too lateto be called Progressive muckraking in the tradition of Upton Sinclair'sThe Jungle or Ida Tarbell's History of the Standard Oil Company, theMutual films were instead a final summing up of what the ProgressiveMovement had tried to be.

Chaplin continues to touch on political stances in his later features,probably best exemplified by the close of The Great Dictator, wherehis Jewish barber, mistaken for the -great dictator- Hynkel, steps outof character and gives a speech against totalitarianism directly to theviewer. Yet, it is only through the - Progressive - Mutual films thatsome semblance of a political form is brought to the broad-basedhumanism of Chaplin's films.

The third reason the tramp is more logically placed in the realm ofcapable comedy is that he is generally successful at what he does,which also flies in the face of the image of the pathetic little tramp. Toexamine his tramp films closely is to discover a character generally soadept at the task at hand that the - loser- label seems to represent moreof a taunt to his larger antagonists than a genuine description of a truestate of affairs. In The Rink, -Charlie- quite literally skates ringsaround his perpetual antagonist of the Mutual Films, Eric Campbell.In The Adventurer even the police find him impossible to catch, inpart due to his metamorphic abilities; at one point he loses them byimitating a hall lamp. Even in the most basic task, from carrying chairsin Behind the Screen (1916) to stacking bricks in Pay Day (1922), hisskills are amazing.

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.,.nlat■•■■1

His comedy counterpart, the antihero, is most often frustrated by awife and/or machines. Such frustration is generally not the case with-Charlie." Indeed, to break one more misconception, the stereotype ofthe tramp as a loser at love is largely false. He rather consistently winsthe heroine's hand, from the Mutual films with Edna Purviance to thelater feature work with Paulette Goddard. These films also literallyavoid what has become a traditional comedy premise, the battle of themarried" sexes, by seldom going beyond the courtship period.

Chaplin seems to underline this luck at love in the close of theMutual film Behind the Screen when, after -Charlie - has defeated theanarchist strikers and won Edna's heart, he steps out of character byfacing the camera and winking at the audience, just after kissing Edna.It is as if to ask, Was there ever any doubt? Much the same effect isalso achieved at the close of the last -tramp" picture, Modern Times,

when -Charlie" goes down one final road, this time accompanied by alovely gamin (Paulette Goddard). By now, no wink is necessary toexplain what the student of Chaplin has seen occur repeatedly—thegirl is usually the tramp's by the final fade-out. Exceptions, as in thesolo close of The Circus, are often a result of a deliberate decision bythe tramp to remain alone.

The tramp's interaction with mechanical objects, the other usualfrustration of his antihero counterpart, is more problematic, though hisdexterity almost always wins out. Frustrating moments can occur, suchas the alarm clock that suffers a fatal operation at the hands of Chaplinin The Pawnshop or the debilitating conveyor belt of Modern Times.But for every such stumbling block there are numerous mechanicalvictories: the Chaplin cop of Easy Street, who so adeptly manages toetherize the giant bully (Eric Campbell) with a gas street lamp, or theChaplin soldier of Shoulder Arms, who converts a Victrola horn to abreathing device so he can sleep underwater in his partly submergedbunker. Often when -Charlie" does not pursue a mechanical mess,such as the dismantled clock in The Pawnshop, it is because of apersonal whim rather than incompetency; he has fun taking apart acustomer's clock but has no particular need or desire to put it backtogether. In contrast, antiheroes like Laurel & Hardy would not beable to put a clock together even if they wanted to.

With the exception of Modern Times, the film world of Chaplin'stramp has actually not yet reached the mechanized state of Laurel &Hardy's situation, and Chaplin is just not as surrounded by gadgets.However, as has been implied, if and when the tramp desires it, he isquite capable. He literally flaunts this ability in Police (1916), when he

breaks into an icebox as if it were a safe.

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If the situation demands, Chaplin is even capable of inventing me-chanical gadgets, which is in the best tradition of Yankee ingenuity.This ability is exemplified by the day care center for one that he con-structs in The Kid. Anticipating the eccentric inventions Buster Keatonwill later feature in some of his 1920s' films, the tramp's -baby ma-chine- replaces the conventional rocker with a baby-sized hammockwithin easy access to a rope-suspended baby bottle, which is actually aconverted coffee pot and rubber glove. Underneath all these contrap-tions, and specifically under baby's posterior, is a potty-chair fashionedfrom an old seat and a spittoon.

-Charlie - is generally a master of every situation. Huff, whose 1951Chaplin biography is still often considered the best work on the tramp,capsulizes this finesse, as well as Chaplin's tendency to place the char-acter in a professional setting:

Super-waiter, super-skater, super-boxer, super-policeman, super-tightrope walker . . Chaplin's best effects have been gainedthrough super expert professional dexterity. 16

The fourth characteristic, as the baby-oriented mechanics of TheKid suggest, is that the -capable - tramp is also something of a fatherfigure. Certainly there is a large dose of child in all comics and in allcomedies, and Chaplin's tramp films represent no exception. Yet, inhis filmic interactions with society the tramp generally cares for others,instead of being cared for himself as the antihero must be. His re-lationship to women is constantly as father to daughter, protecting andcaring for the waif figure of the woman, again in direct contrast to theoften amazon -boss - females of the antiheroic world, probablyexemplified best in the film world of Laurel & Hardy.

This fatherly role is reiterated throughout Chaplin's tramp career,with the most memorable example (after The Kid) probably his care forthe blind girl in City Lights. It is in the celebrated Vagabond, whichhas been called -a prototype of The Kid," that the parental duties aremost thoroughly marked out. 17

The tramp's fatherly treatment of the girl (Edna Purviance) in theVagabond also nicely contradicts one more Chaplin-directed cliche,that the girl in his films was always an idealized object on a pedestal.After all, the care and maintenance of a child is rather distant from anyidealized perch. In a wonderfully thorough scene on personal hygiene,-Charlie- vigorously washes her face, taking special time to roll acorner of his washcloth into a dipstick of sorts to get at the alwayselusive ears and nostrils. He then proceeds to give her scalp a carefulexamination for fleas, not calling a halt to this extensive project until

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after he has set her hair with homemade curlers. The film also managesto present -Charlie" in such parental roles as fixing supper and settingthe table. The Vagabond model anticipates his care for the girl in theoften neglected feature The Circus, especially the scene in which he-lectures" her on the dangers of eating too fast. The Chaplin fatherfigure missed few tricks.

The fifth and final characteristic that places -Charlie" more com-fortably in the capable comedian category is that he is seemingly ruralin origin. The world of Chaplin's tramp, which itself is an outgrowth ofpastoral America, depicts the nineteenth-century and early twentieth-century view of the city, which, as seen by rural America, is a dirty,corrupt, and dangerous place. And as the earlier comments on politicsand the Progressive Era suggest, -Charlie" constantly seems to be inthe midst of this urban blight and/or decadence. Yet, this focus is keptquite plausible because the tramp often seems to be new to eithersetting, as an apparent stranger in a small rural town and/or as an im-migrant to the city.

Much of the humor in these situations evolves from the quick-witted country tramp's rapidly adjusting to meet each new urban chal-lenge, from curbing the street fighting of the Easy Street slums topassing as upper crust at the society masquerade in The Idle Class. Inprobably his most pointed expression as a stranger in difficult cir-cumstances, -Charlie" manages in The Immigrant to get a free meal inthe toughest restaurant in New York where giant Eric Campbell is thecombination waiter-bouncer, to acquire a job, and to marry a beautifulgirl, all on his first day in America.

As with the work of Dickens, which always fascinated Chaplin forthe parellels he saw between it and his own rags-to-riches story,portrayals of the country were equally significant yet fleeting. 18 In con-trast to the lengthy exposes of city problems and ugliness, the countryreferences are times of restoration and safety and female beauty. InThe Tramp both the setting and the country girl who cares for -Char-lie's" wound from the foiled robbery very much resemble the settingand Dickens' young Rose who cares for Oliver Twist's wound duringhis sojourn in the country after another bungled robbery. 19 As is to beexpected, such juxtaposing gives high praise to the country, the placeof the capable hero's origins and/or aspirations. And though no settingis without problems, such as the tough farmer in Sunnyside (1919),with whom Charlie the hired man must contend, director Chaplin'simage of the country is generally one where the tramp's -church [is]the sky and his altar the landscape." 2°

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It is appropriate that late in Chaplin's career he should underlinethe significance of the country by the title song he composed for the1959 re-release of The Pilgrim (1923), which appeared, along with ADog's Life and Shoulder Arms (1918), in a special film compilationcalled The Chaplin Review. This often repeated title song, -Bound forTexas, - referred to being tired of the city and the factory and ready forthe wide open spaces.

As a final postscript on the uniqueness of the country to the worldof Chaplin's tramp, it should be remembered that numerous authorshave seen the magic of Charlie in terms of a modern Pan—the god offields and forests in Greek mythology; for example, Robert Payne's1952 work, The Great God Pan: A Biography of the Tramp Played byCharles Chaplin. Such comparisons were actually being made so earlyin Chaplin's career that it is assumed they caused the rather self-conscious, though delightful, dream sequence of Sunnyside, whereCharlie dances with four lovely wood nymphs in the meadow.

Because of the five characteristics enumerated here, the propensityof Chaplin's tramp to be in a profession, to be political, successful,fatherly, and rural—all characteristics closely associated with America'scapable comedy figures—the tendency to see the tramp as only a de-feated figure is very misleading. In fact, one is tempted to counterat-tack revisionists such as Mast with their own weapon. Whereas Mastfinds the happy conclusion of Easy Street too happy, a -Pollyannaishhoax, - or contrived answer, I find the cliched conclusion of a defeatedtramp, after all the finesse that has come before, a Brechtian, whomMast alludes to, hoax.

Why, then, has this defeated tramp image so persisted? The mostprobable reason is that only with Chaplin, when he does allow ashadow of sadness to slip over his work, e.g., the haunting close-up ofthe tramp in City Lights, can his pathos reach the same heights as thatof his comedy. The balancing of a successful comedy persona with mo-ments of equally successful pathos seems to be impossible for otherAmerican film comedians, though they keep trying. Bob Thomas goesso far as to call the urge the -Chaplin disease, - because so many havefailed trying. 21

Chaplin's unique achievement receives uneven praise, though notunexpectedly. Between pathos and laughter there has never beenmuch competition. Pathos, the near tragic, the dramatic, has almostalways been the center of attention of author or audience. America'sgreatest literary humorist, Mark Twain, went to his grave convincedthat his Joan of Arc biography was his best work, while American film'sgreatest humorist, Charlie Chaplin, spent an inordinately long time in

13

his autobiography on Napoleon and Hamlet, two tragic figures he al-ways aspired to play but never did, with little space actually given tothe comedy classics he did make. Is it any wonder that the audienceshould focus differently?

It must also be remembered that the tramp was retired to go on tomore tragic figures, such as Verdoux (Monsieur Verdoux, 1947) andCalvero (Limelight, 1953). Though it is quite possible that changingtimes might have forced the tramp into the same tragic mask, he wasgenerally a capable, undefeated figure until the end. Chaplin himselfdescribes best the general ease of the tramp's existence by the cynicalmanner with which only he could kill the tramp: -I could hardly comeon again [after the war] in baggy pants, pretending that life is still allSanta Claus. -22 Yet, for this tramp, though every day was hardlyChristmas, it was far from being the defeated world in which posterityseems bent on placing him. He was an economy-sized champion in atime and place when champions still won. And in that tramp setting, ifevery day was not Christmas, it was the promise of an approachingholiday.

Notes

1. An earlier version of this chapter, entitled -Charlie Chaplin'sTramp—More Than a Defeated Figure, - was presented by the author at theMidwest Popular Culture Association Conference at Michigan State Univer-sity, November 3, 1978.

2. Isabel Quigly, Charlie Chaplin: Early Comedies (London: StudioVista Limited, 1968), p. 8.

3. Gerald D. McDonald, Michael Conway and Mark Ricci (eds.), TheFilms of Charlie Chaplin (New York: Bonanza Books, 1965), p. 13.

4. Charles J. McGuirk, -Chaplinitis, - Motion Picture Magazine (TwoParts: July and August, 1915).

5. Lewis Jacobs, The Rise of the American Film (1939; rpt. New York:Teachers College Press, 1971), p. 247.

6. Raymond Durgnat, The Crazy Mirror: Hollywood Comedy and theAmerican Image (1969; rpt. New York: Dell Publishing Co., 1972), p. 80.

7. Gerald Mast, The Comic Mind: Comedy and the Movies (Indi-anapolis: The Bobbs-Merrill Company, Inc., 1973), p. 83.

8. John McCabe, Charlie Chaplin (Garden City, New York: Doubleday& Co., Inc., 1978), pp. 87, 102, 114, 152-53. For my review of the book, seethe special Chaplin edition of the Journal of the University Film Association,Winter 1979.

9. There were also single Chaplin features made at Keystone, Tillie'sPunctured Romance, 1914; First National, The Kid, 1921; Attica-Archway, AKing in New York, 1957; and Universal, A Countess from Hong Kong, 1966.

14

10. Max Eastman, Heroes I Have Known: Twelve Who Lived Great Lives(New York: Simon and Schuster, 1942), p. 200.

11. For more information on this area see especially Walter Blair, NativeAmerican Humor (1937; rpt. San Francisco: Chandler Publishing Company,Inc., 1960); Wes D. Gehring, Leo McCarey and the Comic Anti-Hero (NewYork: Arno Press, 1980); Jennette Tandy, Crackerbarrel Philosophers inAmerican Humor and Satire (New York: Columbia University Press, 1925);and Constance Rourke, American Humor: A Study of the National Character(1931; rpt. New York: Harcourt Brace Jovanovich, Inc., 1959).

12. Robert Sklar, Movie-Made America (New York: Vintage Books, 1976),p. 110.

13. Theodore Huff, Charlie Chaplin (1951; rpt. New York: Henry Schu-man, 1972), p. 65.

14. A paper on this subject, entitled "Charlie Chaplin and the Progress-ive Era: Neglected Politics of a Clown," was presented by the author at theSecond International Conference on Humor, Los Angeles, August 25, 1979.

15. Huff, p. 18.16. Ibid., p. 296.17. Ibid., p. 70.18. For this fascination with Dickens, see especially Chaplin's Charlie

Chaplin's Own Story (Indianapolis: The Bobbs-Merrill Company, 1916) andto a lesser extent his My Autobiography (1964; rpt. New York: Pocket Books,Inc., 1966). The first text reads very much as if Chaplin were transcribingfrom a copy of Oliver Twist. In fact, it has been noted that "Critics in 1916found this autobiography a mixture of fact and fiction. Because of embar-rassment, the comedian eventually had the book withdrawn from the mar-ket." See Donald W. McCaffrey, ed., Focus on Chaplin (Englewood Cliffs,N.J.: Prentice-Hall, Inc., 1971), p. 27 (footnote). More recent criticism sug-gests Charlie Chaplin's Own Story was ghostwritten. See John McCabe,Charlie Chaplin.

19. Charles Dickens, Oliver Twist (1841; rpt. New York: Times Mirror,1961), pp. 281-89.

20. A film title in Chaplin's Sunnyside (1919). In considering Chaplin'suse of the country in his films, an interesting "coincidence" between his reallife and his art needs to be made. In his autobiography he notes that justprior to his entry into film his goal was to save enough money to buy achicken farm. Over twenty-five years later, in The Great Dictator (1940),Chaplin makes this the goal of Hannah (Paulette Goddard), the girl friend ofthe tramplike Jewish barber (Charlie Chaplin). It is to be their sanctuaryfrom the Nazis. And though the film will go on to show that by 1940 not eventhe country is safe from such dangers (hence the permanent exit of the trampearlier in Modern Times), director Chaplin has continued to play upon themetaphor of the country as haven.

21. Bob Thomas, Bud Lou (Philadelphia: J. B. Lippincott Company,1977), p. 130.

22. Huff, p. 296.

15

Easy Street"Doctor- Charlieadministering gasto Mr. Campbell.

The Immigrant (1917)The trampas an immigrantjust before masteringthe new world.Long time Chaplinheroine, Edna Purviance,is on his right.

Behind the Screen (1916)Charlie and Ednatop Eric one more time.

(Stills courtesy of The Museum of Modern Art)

16

II

In Search of Chaplin on Comedy

Whenever I meet people who ask me to explainthe mystery of -making people laugh" I alwaysfeel uncomfortable, and begin to edge away.'

In this manner Charlie Chaplin begins the article -What PeopleLaugh At" in 1918. The apparent trepidation of these lines is quicklydenied by Chaplin. His comedy magic, he claims, is merely the resultof knowing -a few simple facts about human nature." 2 An examinationof his writing, as well as comments attributed to him by his family,finds Chaplin rather reticent, to say the least, on the subject of com-edy. That comments on humor were occasionally made by Chaplineven the rather egotistical -What People Laugh At" title implies. But,considering his position as film comedy's greatest artist, the longevityof his career, and his propensity to write, Chaplin has left few com-ments on a personal theory of comedy. Those comments he did makeare too often schoolboy-sounding platitudes instead of the desired mo-ments of personal insight.

Examining the comedy nature of Chaplin's films necessitates ex-amining his thought on the subject, since the personal visions of anartist are often the natural starting point for criticism. But in Chaplin'scase they might have more to do with the general misdirection of com-edy theory on Chaplin's work.

To study what Chaplin has written on the nature of comedy, oneneeds to focus on two early magazine articles and his three key books:Charlie Chaplin's Own Story (1916), My Trip Abroad (1922), and MyAutobiography (1964). Two other books were another travelogue, theobscure A Comedian Sees the World (1933), which had appeared ear-lier in a five-part series in the magazine Woman's Home Companion,and the 1974 picture book, My Life in Pictures. What appears to be apromising third article, -Charlie Chaplin Says Laughs Are Producedby Rules," is merely an edited reproduction of -What People LaughAt."

The meat of what he would say seems to appear early, in themagazine articles. The first, which originally appeared as part of -HowI Made My Success" (Theatre magazine, September 1915), is reducible

17

to the most basic of comedy statements: comedy is produced -bystudying my characters and situations in real life. -4 This statement isdefinitely a good start; one can even link it with Aristotle's -comedy isimitation of baser men. - But the article then proceeds to end, insteadof marching onto richer ground. Except for an interesting anecdoteabout studying a real hobo, it is short on comedy and flat on explana-tions. The article's intent was to have been an extrapolation upon suc-cess, not comedy, so it should not be condemned too harshly. Moreshould be expected of the later -What People Laugh At."

This second article is more informative, quite possibly containingChaplin's most sustained comedy comments, but it still seems some-what lacking in personal insights. The strength of the article is in itscontinuation of the real life focus of -How I Made My Success"; e.g.,his discovery of a department store escalator that produced the focus ofThe Floorwalker or his attendance at a prize fight that 'would eventu-ally result in The Champion.

The article also touches on another basic comedy tenet: - it strikespeople as funny when they see someone else placed in an undignifiedand embarrassing situation. -5 Probably the hoariest of all comedytenets, this one is merely a variation on the incident of the man slip-ping on a banana peel. Henri Bergson noted that philosophers ofteneven took their basic comedy definition from this loss of dignity: -Theydescribed the laughable as causing something to appear mean [lowly]that was formerly dignified. -6

For Chaplin, this loss of dignity tenet would seem to representrecycled Mack Sennett. It was no doubt a law of comedy drilled intoChaplin during his film apprenticeship under Sennett , at Keystone in1914. That one of Chaplin's examples for this fall from dignity involves-policemen falling down coalholes, slipping into buckets of whitewash,falling off patrol wagons and into all sorts of trouble - would seem to_point all the more to Sennett and shades of the Keystone Kops. At thesame time this article was appearing (November 1918), a Sennettpiece, -The Psychology of Film Comedy, - was expanding fully on thisfall from dignity tenet. 7

Chaplin puts a more personal stamp on the fall from dignity tenetwhen he takes it a step further: the ridiculous man becomes all thefunnier when he - refuses to admit that anything out of the way hashappened, and attempts to maintain his dignity. -8 In this explanationhe strikes upon the underlying theme of Bergson's Laughter, that manbecomes comic when his actions become mechanical, whether thefierce physical contortions of a Harpo face every time his ire is raisedor the eternal repetition of Jack Benny's verbal - Well- in times ofstress.

18

Again Chaplin has reached a high point in an article, only to closewith a letdown. Beyond this he simply notes the use of contrast, suchas the physical disparity between the tramp and his personal nemesisEric Campbell, and that of surprise. Chaplin is once more recyclingSennett. This fact he lets drop years later in his autobiography: 'Theelement of surprise and suspense' was a phrase dropped every otherday on the Keystone lot." 9

Chaplin's comment on surprise, though again hardly a new comedyobservation, could still have been significant if surprise played a moreimportant part in his work. That is not to deny the humor involved inChaplin's example, from the beginning of The Immigrant, where thetramp is leaning over a ship's rail as if seasick, only to reveal uponturning around that he has been fishing. However, a high proportion ofChaplin's humor is a product of anything but surprise and is insteaddependent upon a camera placement that guarantees the audience afull view of Chaplin's ingenuity at every task and/or with every object.Examples abound: his poker-playing finesse in the very same The Im-

migrant, the wrestling match with the Murphy bed in One A.M., the

balancing ladder act in The Pawnshop, his ability to carry a limitless

number of chairs in Behind the Screen, his grace on roller skates in The

Rink and Modern Times, the brick-stacking magic of Pay Day, his

-sermon" on David and Goliath in The Pilgrim, the cowardly inspired

boxing finesse of City Lights, his attempt to serve a chicken on a

crowded dance floor in Modern Times, his ballet with the globe in The

Great Dictator, the money -counting dexterity of Monsieur Verdoux,

ad infinitum. In each case, to deny the audience the full reality wouldbe to deny the humor.

There is, of course, more to surprise than merely camera place-ment. But even in those Chaplin scenes where camera placement doesnot make any difference in a comic -surprise," the audience is usually

either forewarned of the -surprise" gag or recognizes the routine soonafter its onset; for example, the trapdoor scenes of Behind the Screen,the abandoned baby in The Kid, the cliff-hanging cabin of The Gold

Rush as well as the -back-up please - photographer who causes Chap-lin's fall into steerage, the streamers that resemble spaghetti in thenightclub of City Lights, the open basement that the blindfoldedroller-skating Chaplin is unaware of in Modern Times, the inability ofthe train to stop precisely at the red carpet in The Great Dictator, aswell as Chaplin's failure to get rid of the coins in his meal that willvolunteer" him for danger, and so on.

Later on Chaplin himself undercuts his remarks on surprise, whilechampioning the use of quickly recognizable material:

19

-You can use the unexpected to some extent to get a laugh, - heused to say. -But the gag that is sure to go over is the one where theaudience has been tipped off in advance. That's why I like to use oldgags . . . [Chaplin then relates the dive into shallow water fromModern Times] . . . it's been done so many times everyone is al-ready familiar with what is going to happen. All you have to worryabout is your interpretation.""

Chaplin had no doubt dealt with this personal irregularity—cameraplacement that confuses the viewer—to prove himself as an artistic di-rector as well as a performer. Though Chaplin was almost universallyacclaimed as a performer from the beginning, his use of filmtechnique, most specifically long takes and long shots that negate sur-prise, was generally seen as primitive until the 1960s and the assimila-tion of such realist film theory as Andre Bazin's -The Virtues and Limi-tations of Montage."" When film theorist Rudolf Arnheim wrote hisformalist Film As Art, which indirectly negates realistic silent comedy,in order to praise Chaplin, Arnheim found it necessary to use the sameformalistic example Chaplin uses, the scene of apparent seasicknessfrom The Immigrant, which is so atypical of his films. 12

"What People Laugh At," therefore, does have some rather rockyspots, but for that point in Chaplin's career it seems a most promisingearly comedy articulation. Ironically, this was to be the articulation.Comments on the nature of comedy from his books are not merelydisappointing; they are generally absent, measurable in paragraphs in-stead of pages.

His book from this period (Charlie Chaplin's Own Story, 1916) con-

tains one of the few meaningful comedy comments in his longer works(which is doubly ironic, if the book was indeed ghostwritten). It comesin the form of a delightful reminiscence from childhood of a painful yetmost comic lesson, a pursuit of dignity under duress. In a serious roleon stage everything was going wrong, including a dropped cane and anunruly hat. "The more serious I was, the funnier it struck the audi-ence. I came off at last, pursued by howls of laughter and wildapplause, which called me back again . . . I had stumbled on thesecret—unexpectedly." 13 This is much like Buster Keaton's story ofdiscovering his own comedy secret, his great stone face, as a childperformer. 14

Unfortunately, Chaplin's two later key books are almost entirelydevoid of comedy statements, let alone such refreshing reminiscencesfrom childhood or otherwise. One of the few comedy-related passagesin either book, however, focuses on the same man and the same com-edy theory text, poet-critic Max Eastman and his book The Sense of

20

Humor (1921). 15 This passage appears to be Chaplin's only reference toany text of comedy theory, secondary though it may be. What appearsto offer potential for a final comedy commitment by Chaplin seems todissolve, under closer scrutiny, into one more promenade around theChaplin ego.

Chaplin and Eastman were close friends in the 1920s, and TheSense of Humor was actually written in Hollywood, Eastman confess-ing, -I used to hang around Charlie's studio and watch him make pic-tures, learning much of what I put in my book on humor there." 16 Hemakes much the same statement about a later comedy text he wrote,Enjoyment of Laughter (1936); once again he went to Hollywood tolearn from Chaplin. 17 Author Eastman is thus reduced to Chaplin Dis-ciple Eastman, a fact all the more obvious in his choice of titles for thebooks containing his Chaplin essays, Great Companions and Heroes IHave Known.

Chaplin waits over fifty years to comment on The Sense of Humor,having merely mentioned the title in My Trip Abroad. He dif-ferentiates his position from Eastman's, which Chaplin capsulizes ashumor -derived from playful pain, - without articulating his own. In-stead, one simple platitude is repeated in several variations: humor isthe -subtle discrepancy we discern in what appears to be normal be-havior. In other words, . . . we see in what seems rational, the irra-tional; in what seems important, the unimportant. . . ." 8 Chaplin'sposition is not so nebulous as it is puzzling, for in his 538-page MyAutobiography, that was the only summation of his comments on thetheory of comedy: three vague paragraphs!

As disappointing as this void is, it is not uncommon among Ameri-can comedians. Chaplin shares two other personal foibles that seemrelated to this lack of comedy self-reflection with many of the greatAmerican humorists.

First of all, there is in Chaplin something of a sense of inferiorityrelated to comedy. Not unlike America's greatest literary humorist,Mark Twain, Chaplin seems to find almost anything more importantthan comedy. In his writing he comments on everything but comedy,and, for that matter, everything but film. This inferiority is clothed in arather egocentric manner: his love of name-dropping, often with pic-tures.

Charlie Chaplin's Own Story, his first book, plays an egocentriccover-up game of much more ambitious proportions. In this bookChaplin's deprived childhood is transformed into Charles Dickens'Oliver Twist. Though certain parallels can be drawn between Chaplin'schildhood and Oliver's, Chaplin seems to be literally writing his book

21

with an open copy of Twist before him. Chaplin's story even has anasty Fagin (Mr. Hawkins) who steals a child (young Chaplin) away toslave for him, as well as an Artful Dodger (Snooper) who, of course,steals purses. These flights of fiction were apparently not lost on con-temporary critics, because an embarrassed Chaplin eventuallywithdrew the book from circulation. His childhood also became muchmore realistic in his later autobiography.

It is unfbrtunate, however, to slur this first book, because there is acertain naivete, his flight of Dickens notwithstanding, that can be mostrevealing; e.g., the childhood anecdote on comedy mentioned earlier.There is a freshness here (again, this is 1916) missing from his two laterkey books.

Discarding his literary aspirations, in My Trip Abroad Chaplinmerely records the significant events of his 1921 trip. The result is aseemingly endless repetition of the important books he read and/ortook along, the important people he met, and the generally unprece-dented public response he received in Europe. My Autobiographyfollows the same -Who's Who" format, but this time applies it to alifetime. One would be hard pressed to name Chaplin's occupationfrom the mere reading of My Trip Abroad and My Autobiography.

Second, linked to Chaplin's sense of inadequacy, and quite possiblyacting as the cause of it, is the general lack of narrative outlining em-ployed in the creation of his comedy. Comedy, by nature, has alwayshad less emphasis on narrative, the focus of tragedy, in order to focuson characterization. But the loose and/or nonexistent comedy storylinehas always found especially fertile ground in America; once again,Twain represents this trait quite nicely. In a letter to his friend andadvisor William Dean Howells, he described his style.in writing TomSawyer:

Since there is no plot to the thing it is likely to follow its own driftand so is as likely to drift into mankind as anywhere—I won't inter-

- pose. 19

This is true of all Twain's work. His most celebrated work,Huckleberry Finn, actually begins with the warning: -Persons at-tempting to find a motive in this narrative will be prosecuted . . .persons attempting to find a plot in it will be shot."

This sense of drift is equally true of Chaplin's work. Gerald Masthas likened his films to - three or four beads on a string," a few distinc-tive situations and/or scenes linked by the thinnest of storylines.Chaplin was introduced to film comedy in the Sennett school: -Youdon't rehearse moving pictures in advance. You do that as they arebeing taken." 2°

22

For Chaplin, a natural extension of the loose narrative was a pro-duction technique often based on day-to-day improvisation. Thoughthis observation is hardly new, Chaplin himself noted his need forspontaneity in his first book. 21 This situation was later oftendownplayed by Chaplin. The downplaying eventually even embraceddenial, from the self-confident title of his 1918 article -What PeopleLaugh At- to his 1964 memories of 1918 in his autobiography: -I wasbeginning to think of comedy in a structural sense, and to becomeconscious of its architectural form. Each sequence implied the nextsequence, all of them relating to the whole. -22

His off-the-cuff approach is usually not absent from film histories,but it is often buried under an avalanche of materials on the hugeChaplin shooting ratios or his sporadic shooting schedules. Ratios andschedules are rather misleading because Chaplin's excess film footagewas not limited to multitakes of the same scene with miniscule dif-ferences. He was just as likely to pursue several different potentialdirections for his character, only to end up using one. This pointChaplin indirectly dealt with from time to time when he spoke ofsomeday releasing an anthology of never before seen outtakes. TheChaplin production approach might best be equated with that ofdocumentary filmmaker Robert Flaherty; both shot film to an excess,but their shooting usually followed a wide panorama of possible alter-natives.

The most revealing comments on Chaplin's productions and spon-taneity are those made by his family and/or coworkers; for example,second wife Lita Grey Chaplin, who was part of the production of The Kidand the Gold Rush, noted that -he extemporized a great deal, havinglearned from experience that spontaneous thoughts for a scene can some-times be the best ones. -23

The spontaneous Chaplin could, at times, even take on mysteriousqualities; for example, his son

. . . noticed how he always spoke of himself in the third person, asthough he were two people—one just the commentator, the otherthe real person who did the things and won the applause, and whowas the Little Tramp. 24

On rare occasions, Chaplin might even be made to extrapolate aboutwhat could be called these gifts of inspiration.

For me he [the tramp character] was fixed, complete, the moment Ilooked in the mirror and saw him for the first time, yet even now Idon't know all things there are to be known about him. 25

Eastman's The Sense of Humor, which was so dependent on Chap-lin as a model, actually embraces the spontaneous and/or im-

23

provisational approach: -The position that I have taken is that. . . .The sense of humor is a primary instinct of our nature. . . "26 Thisdefinition also helps explain why Chaplin did not reply to Eastman'stheory for fifty years.

Certainly Eastman's -humor as instinct" theory should representthe culminating piece of evidence necessary to corner the restiveChaplin on the fact that he had no specific approach to comedy theory.Eastman, drawing upon daily observations of Chaplin on the set of TheKid, felt it necessary to define this approach as instinctive. But againChaplin is not to be caught so easily; Eastman quotes the comedian'sdefining laughter as the ability of bringing home to people -by meansof a shock the sanity of a situation which they think is insane." 27

Though Eastman seems happy with this, Chaplin's statement actuallyhedges on being instinctive, as well as contradicting Chaplin's pre-viously quoted remarks on Eastman's theory, from his autobiography.This hedging again reveals Chaplin attempting to define his comedy asan entirely preplanned intellectual act.

Quite possibly Chaplin felt justified in claiming to have articulatedsome personal comedy theory, despite his failure to reveal one pub-licly, by his opinion that the audience had even less of a grasp of themechanics of humor. In an article he wrote a few years after theEastman book, he gives a resounding -no" to the question posed in thearticle's title, -Does the Public Know What It Wants?" Though hedoes not take the derogatorily low opinion of the public that such com-edy contemporaries as Mack Sennett and Fatty Arbuckle did, Chaplinis clearly suggesting that while the public does not have an answer, hedoes. But as close as he gets to disclosing it is, - I prefer my taste as atruer expression of what the public wants. . . . "28

As I have tried to show, just what that taste is Chaplin never really-articulates. He either avoids comments on the nature of comedy, whilewriting voluminously on other subjects, or he touches lightly on themost basic of comic platitudes, often relating them to personaltechniques he used but rarely.

Chaplin's approach to comedy theory did not openly embrace intui-tion until his career was over, in contrast to Philip Rosen's observationon Chaplin's general socio-political thought, i.e., that the comedianconsciously opposed a strong use of reason. 29

This smokescreen on the subject of comedy had been the case,anyway, until an interview he gave after his last film The Countessfrom Hong Kong. For Life magazine, it was called -Chaplin: AgelessMaster's Anatomy of Comedy," but a more logical title, in light of thischapter, would be "Chaplin: Ageless Master's Confessions on Com-

24

edy. - From the first page, with -Comedy is essentially something thatjust comes out of you, - Chaplin for once neither avoids the subject nortalks double talk on comedy." He even admits what one could readearlier between the lines, -I'm not too interested in why peoplelaugh—only that they do. A lot of my comic business was ad-libbed. "31

The whole tone of the interview suggests that Chaplin merelyequals an inspired vessel of comedy, instead of a creating artist. Hislanguage at times parallels that of Socrates' dialogue with Ion on inspi-ration: "In like manner the Muse first of all inspires men herself. . . .For all good poets . . . compose their beautiful poems not by art, butbecause they are inspired and possessed . . . under the power ofmusic. . . "32 Chaplin says, - I think creation comes initially out of amood—music, a calm sea. . . . You don't just come down one morningand begin, because the muses don't work that way. You have to openthe gates for them by mood." 33

Is this just Chaplin playing one more role? No, I think it is a uniquerevelation by film's greatest clown. There is no real way, of course, ofproving it, even by the examination of such nebulous material byChaplin as I have outlined. But later in this interview is a bittersweetreminiscence pointing in the same direction. Chaplin is discussing themystery of performing comedy and slips back into his music hall days.He recalls a week when he could do no wrong and performers gatheredin the wings each night to watch:

And then I lost it. They said, "What's the matter? You weren't asfunny tonight." I could give no answer. 34

Notes

1. Charlie Chaplin, "What People Laugh At," American Magazine (No-vember 1918), p. 34.

2. Ibid.3. "Charlie Chaplin Says Laughs Are Produced by Rules," Literary Di-

gest (May 3, 1919), p. 80+.4. Charlie Chaplin, "The Development of the Comic Story and the

Tramp Character, - in Focus on Chaplin, ed. Donald W. McCaffrey(Englewood Cliffs, N.J.: Prentice-Hall, Inc., 1971), p. 47.

5. Chaplin, "What People Laugh At," p. 34.6. Henri Bergson, Laughter, in Comedy, ed. Wylie Sypher (Garden

City, New York: Doubleday Anchor Books, 1965), p. 141.7. Mack Sennett, "The Psychology of Film Comedy," The Motion Pic-

ture Classic (November 1918), p. 70+.8. Chaplin, "What People Laugh At," p. 34.9. Charles Chaplin, My Autobiography (1964; rpt. New York: Pocket

Books, Inc., 1966), p. 226.

25

10. Charlie Chaplin, Jr., My Father, Charlie Chaplin (New York:Random House, 1960), p. 113.

11. Andre Bazin, "The Virtues and Limitations of Montage," in What IsCinema? (V - 1), ed. and trans. Hugh Gray (Los Angeles: University ofCalifornia Press, 1917), pp. 41-52.

12. Rudolf Arnheim, Film As Art (1933; rpt. Los Angeles: University ofCalifornia Press, 1971), pp. 36-37.

13. Charlie Chaplin, Charlie Chaplin's Own Story (Indianapolis: TheBobbs-Merrill Company, 1916), p. 175.

14. Buster Keaton (with Charles Samuels), My Wonderful World ofSlapstick (Garden City, New York: Doubleday & Company, Inc., 1960), p.13.

15. Charlie Chaplin, My Trip Abroad (New York: Harper & Brothers,1922), p. 149. Also, Chaplin, My Autobiography, p. 226.

16. Max Eastman, Great Companions: Critical Memoirs of Some FamousFriends (New York: Farrar, Straus and Cudahy, 1959), p. 219. Much of theChaplin material included in Great Companions, pp. 207-47, appeared ear-lier in Eastman's Heroes I Have Known: Twelve Who Lived Great Lives (NewYork: Simon and Schuster, 1942), pp. 155-200.

17. Ibid., p. 225.18. Chaplin, My Autobiography, p. 226.19. Justin Kaplan, Mr. Clemens and Mark Twain (1966; rpt. New York:

Simon and Schuster, 1970), p. 180.20. Chaplin, Charlie Chaplin's Own Story, p. 196.21. Ibid., p. 217.22. Chaplin, My Autobiography, p. 224.23. Lita Grey Chaplin (with Morton Cooper), My Life With Chaplin

(New York: Bernard Geis Co., Inc., 1966), p. 56.24. Charles Chaplin, Jr., p. 79.25. Robert Payne, The Great God Pan: A Biography of the Tramp Played

by Charles Chaplin (New York: Hermitage House, 1952), p. 12.26. Max Eastman, The Sense of Humor (New York: Charles Scribner's

Sons, 1921), p. 227.27. Ibid., p. 46.28. Charlie Chaplin, "Does the Public Know What It Wants?" The Adel-

phi (January 1924), p. 704.29. Philip G. Rosen, "The Chaplin World View," Cinema Journal (Fall

1969), pp. 2-12.30. Richard Meryman (interviewer), "Chaplin: Ageless Master's Anatomy

of Comedy," Life (March 10, 1967), p. 82.31. Ibid., p. 83.32. Plato, Ion, in Classical and Medieval Literary Criticism, eds. Alex

Preminger, O.B. Hardison, Jr., and Kevin Kerrane (New York: FrederickUngar Publishing Co., 1974), p. 41.

33. Meryman, pp. 83-84.34. Ibid., p. 86.

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III

Chaplin's Comedy and Film Theory:Everyone Makes Room for Charlie

To fully understand Chaplin's comic art, it is necessary to examinehis comedy in terms of film production and aesthetics, best accom-plished by probing Chaplin's comedy in relationship to the theories ofthe five most influential film theorists: Rudolf Arnheim, Sergei Eisen-stein, Bela Balâzs, Siegfried Kracauer, and Andre Bazin. This approachalso provides one final example of "Chaplinitis, - at the highest level offilm scholarship. Each theorist can be -very creative - in finding waysto include the Chaplin comedy milieu in his approach.

Arnheim, the traditional standard-bearer for formalist film theory,which accents the media over the subject, was fascinated with Chap-lin's comedy, referring to it at length over a dozen times in his Film AsArt (1933). He justified this fascination from four different perspec-tives, which I have labeled (1) traditional formalism, (2) forgivenprimitivism, (3) forgotten rules, and (4) denial of sound.

First, Arnheim's greatest praise for Chaplin's comedy occurs whenthe comedian displays formalistic tendencies, i.e., whenever Chaplindisplays a self-conscious use of the film medium. Arnheim's two pri-mary examples focus on comic surprise through camera placement: theapparently seasick Charlie leaning over the side of the boat (his back tocamera) in The Immigrant and the backside of what appears to be asobbing husband, whose wife has left him, in The Idle Class. 1

In both cases Charlie soon turns around and completely negateswhat the complacent viewer has been tricked into assuming by thecamera placement. In the first example Charlie has been fishing, and arather healthy bite has necessitated that he lean over the side to pull itin. When he turns around, you meet a proud fisherman instead of aseasick tramp. In the second case of the apparently sobbing male whohas lost his wife, Charlie's turn reveals that he is preparing somedrinks in a cocktail shaker, without a thought to sadness.

Arnheim is impressed with this formalistic filmmaking technique,which he emphasizes by making it the first rule of his - Summary of theFormative Means of Camera and Film Strip, - stating that -Every Ob-ject Must Be Photographed From One Particular Viewpointr 2 Yet,with relationship to Charlie's style, Arnheim is misleading. He wouldseem to suggest that such formalistic techniques as camera placementdominate the comedy situations in Chaplin, when just the opposite istrue.

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The Chaplin style is essentially that of a realist. His mime abilitywas so great, his interaction with props so versatile, that he generallyfound it necessary to shoot the majority of his scenes in long take andlong shot and direct camera placement to underline the fact that healone, the performer, was the cause of this veritable comedy magic. Tohave overindulged in editing and tricky camera placements would haveshed doubt on what were indeed real Chaplin skills.

Arnheim indirectly acknowledges this fact by his second justifica-tion for embracing the Chaplin milieu. This justification I have labeled"forgiven primitivism." Chaplin's dominant realistic tendencies areexplained away as part of a very early period of cinema history:

. . . a film style before the "discovery - of the camera and montage.In these early films, camera and montage serve mainly as technicalrecording devices for what is acted out on the scene, and are there-fore unessentia1. 3

Arnheim's phrase for this early film state is -pre-technology." Thus,Arnheim is in the awkward position of pooh-poohing Chaplin's comedyproduction know-how as somehow primitive, just after praising thecomedian for his formalistic, and therefore superior according to Arn-heim, comedy technique.

This qualifying strengthens the misconception that Chaplin, as wellas -early American film comedies" in general, was limited in his tech-nical production abilities, that he was a comedy artist despite thisprimitivism. Arnheim neglects to explain why Chaplin continued this-pre-technology" approach throughout his lengthy career long after heshould have seen the formalistic light.

Arnheim's third justification goes beyond even the rather tenuousnature of the first two, as I have suggested with the phrase -forgottenrules." Arnheim praises Charlie's ability to create -unexpected asso-ciations . . . between very divergent objects," the prime examplebeing drawn from The Pawnshop:

Charlie as assistant to a pawnbroker examines the alarm clockbrought in by a customer as if he were a doctor examining a patient.He puts a stethoscope to his ears and listens to the clock ticking(heartbeat—clockwork), then . . . [he] takes off the back with a canopener (food can—alarm clock). . . . 4

These -unexpected associations," which Gerald Mast has morerecently and more appropriately labeled -metamorphosis," are one ofthe cornerstones of Chaplin's comedy art, his ability to transform anyobject into something else. 5 In recognizing these "unexpected asso-ciations," Arnheim has departed completely from his formalistic shap-

28

ing process and embraced a realistic subject, complete with minimalediting, long takes, and long shots. Whereas before he seemed to bendhis rules for Chaplin, at this point he literally breaks those rules. Hisapparent defense of this inconsistent stance is that a Chaplin metamor-phosis of an object is comparable to the editing process itself.

With Arnheim's fourth Chaplin justification, his position on sound,he is on his most solid ground, though the theorist does not expand itgreatly. Arnheim opposes the addition of sound to motion pictures,with which Chaplin had concurred by keeping the comedy world of thetramp silent, although both acquiesce on the use of sound effects.Chaplin had even written a short defense of the aesthetics of silentcinema entitled -A Rejection of Talkies - (1931). 6 This latter work couldhave influenced Arnheim's book (it predates Film As Art by two years)and might explain his reluctance to expand on the point, since Chaplinhad already dedicated a well-known essay to it.

To defend film as art, as opposed to a simple recording, Arnheimunderlines the nonrealistic tendencies of film and denies the use oftechnical innovations of a realistic nature such as the addition of soundor color, as well as the deployment of realistic techniques such as longtakes and long shots. - For Arnheim, every medium, when used forartistic purposes, draws attention away from the object which the me-dium conveys and focuses it on the characteristics of the medium it-self." The film artist must concentrate on the visual and translate anymessage into this form. If it cannot be translated into the visual, it isnot meant to be a film. When it can be translated, the limitationsplaced upon the medium—in this case the absence of sound—act al-most as a strainer; they create a purified statement. The same formalis-tic argument could be used to explain why sculpture is not painted.

For Arnheim the silent cinema was just such a purified medium.And with regard to Chaplin, speech is translated into purified pan-tomime:

He [Chaplin] does not say that he is pleased that some pretty girlsare coming to see him, but performs the silent dance, in which twobread rolls stuck on forks act as dancing feet on the table (The GoldRush). . . . 8

It is only with this last theoretical stance (on sound) that Arnheim usesChaplin's comedy art as an example in a truly legitimate manner,legitimate in the sense that it was typical of the comedian's work.Otherwise, Arnheim is rather -creative- in his use of a favored artist.

The second major theorist to consider is Sergei Eisenstein, whoseinitial writings and film work first appeared in the 1920s, actually pre-

29

dating Arnheim. I have placed him second, however, because Eisen-stein, also a formalist, does not really come to grips with Chaplin theo-retically until late in the 1930s, specifically in the essay "Word andImage" (1938). 9 Prior to this, Eisenstein's work is most often associatedwith a montage of collision, his unique approach to film editing.

For Eisenstein the editing process is what made film an art form.But instead of what was then, in the 1920s, the traditional approach toediting, the linking of content-related shots of film to advance a narra-tive, Eisenstein placed conflicting shots together—hence, collision—toproduce a new meaning, e.g., in his film October (1927) he shows Rus-sian President Kerensky to be pompous by juxtaposing his image withbusts of Napoleon, and later that of a peacock.

Such an approach to film as art has little to do with the minimalediting of Chaplin's long take work. J. Dudley Andrew has noted:

Early [1920s] in his career he [Eisenstein] chided filmmakers whoused extensive takes. What could be gained by continuing to gaze atan event once its significance has made its imprint?"

Thus, there is little of Chaplin in Eisenstein's early writings. Only laterwith Eisenstein's revision of his montage approach in "Word andImage," under the more self-explanatory title of "Montage 1938," isChaplin legalized in Eisenstein's world of theory."

Eisenstein's revised look at montage, no doubt due in part to theSoviet government's disapproval of his 1920s' formalism, negates tra-ditional editing and concentrates on the movements of the film actor.These individual actions of the performer constitute, for Eisenstein, ametaphorical sense of montage. Appropriately enough, at a time whenhe is turning his traditional approach to montage upside down, his de-finition of this new montage of acting is based on Chaplin. Eisensteinquotes George Arliss on "restraint" versus "exaggeration" in screenwriting, with Arliss using Chaplin as the ideal example of screen act-ing:

- I had always believed that for the movies, acting must be exagger-ated, but I saw in this one flash that restraint was the chief thing

that the actor had to learn in transferring his art from the stage tothe screen. . . . The art of restraint and suggestion on the screenmay any time be studied by watching the acting of the inimitable

Charlie Chaplin." 2

Arnheim seems to have anticipated Eisenstein's "Montage 1938" byseveral years when he cites the fun house mirror scene in Chaplin'sThe Circus as an example of the comedian's surprising and amusingmultiplication of man without montage or lense distortion. 13 The scene

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refers to a house of mirrors chase, with Chaplin being pursued by apickpocket who has planted stolen goods on the tramp and now wantsthe goods back—and a cop who thinks Charlie did the stealing. Al-though there are several hilarious interactions, Arnheim's reference isto the relationship between Charlie and the pickpocket. When eachmakes his move, Charlie to escape and the pickpocket to reclaim thestolen goods, there are suddenly, due to the mirrors, innumerableCharlies and pickpockets in the frame.

A montage of acting, though not without interest, severelystretches the formalistic positions of both Arnheim and Eisenstein byits propensity for the long take. Indeed, when one compares Eisen-stein's collision montage with his acting montage, there is a temptationto rechristen the latter self-indulgent montage. Both Arnheim andEisenstein kept Chaplin at the center of their proofs.

The third major theorist, Bela Balázs, whom J. Dudley Andrew hasshown to be the transition figure between formalism and realism, is themost sympathetic of the theorists, with the possible exception of Bazin,towards the comedy art of Chaplin." Balâzs's writing has less of atendency to be bound by ironclad rules, other than his weakness forthe close-up. There are, however, several Chaplin justifications thatcan be fallen back on if friction occurs between his theory and the artof the comedian.

First, as with Arnheim's pre-technology statements, which Ilabeled forgiven primitivism, Balázs is not as critical in his demands ofearly slapstick, where he includes early Chaplin:

Thus a definite variety of film art [slapstick] with a distinctive styleof its own was born before the specific new method of fihn art andthe new form-language of the film was developed. 15

In speaking of the primitive comedy chase, he approaches the win-some, though questionable, implication that said chases cannot becritically examined, due to inherent properties not unlike the universalappeal of children and animals in film.

Second, Balazs praises the unique art form that was silent cinema,paralleling the sentiments of Arnheim and Chaplin: -A glance from. . . Chaplin spoke volumes—more than the words of many a goodwriter. -16 Yet, Balâzs verged from Arnheim's strict path in that he didnot deny motion pictures' technological progress, such as sound, aslong as it was used in a formalistic manner. 17 Balâzs states:

If Chaplin's last [tramp] films were nevertheless great artisticachievements, they were so not because of their silence but in spiteof it. There was nothing in these films which would have justifiedtheir silence as an artistic necessity. 18

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But Bala.zs does not hold Chaplin to this. At length he fleshes out thereasons for this exception:

Charlie, the little man, would have had to invent some specificmanner of speech which would have been as different from thespeech of other men as his appearance was different from the ap-pearance of other men. 19

This exception, with regard to Charlie's need for silence, surfaces againin what one might expect to be another factor in Balais's praise ofChaplin, the close-up.

For Bala.zs the close-up is a guide to the human soul, to a specialhumanistic truth. And it is the equally special gift of the art of film:

The language of the face [in close-up] cannot be suppressed or con-trolled. However disciplined and practisedly hypocritical a face maybe, in the enlarging close-up we see even that it is concealing some-thing, that it is looking a lie. . . . It is much easier to lie in wordsthan with the face and the film has proved it beyond doubt. 2°

Balâzs, who refers most movingly to the human close-up as a -silentsoliloquy," has even come to be called - the poet of the close-up." 21

However, even here Bala.zs is willing to make exceptions in the nameof Chaplin. Balâzs forgives the technical limitations and general lack ofclose-ups in Modern Times because he felt Chaplin needed to avoidany apparent mechanical problems that the absence of sound wouldhave implied in dramatic close-ups. 22

Balâzs's final and yet most consistent line of support between histheory and his inclination to praise Chaplin focuses on the comedian asone of the first true personalities of the screen, someone who playedhimself. The art of film, for Balais, is closely tied to viewer identifica-tion with the performer:

If Charlie Chaplin came to be the best-loved darling of half thehuman race, then millions of men and women must have seen in hispersonality something . . . that lived in all of them as a secret feel-ing, urge or desire, some unconscious thought, something that fartranscends the limits of personal charm or artistic performance. 23

Siegfried Kracauer, the fourth major theorist to consider, is a re-alist, as the title of his work so elegantly phrases it: Theory of Film:The Redemption of Physical Reality (1960). That is, formalistic theoryhad largely dominated film study until that time, with the result thatfilm realism was often neglected and/or discredited. Since the comedyart of Chaplin more generally falls in the realist camp, due to suchtechniques as long take and long shot, one would expect many predict-

32

able points of agreement to be expostulated on by Kracauer. Yet whatcomes forth from the theorist, though in praise of Chaplin, is oftenhardly predictable.

This ability to surprise the reader is best exemplified whenKracauer deals with fantasy and Chaplin ; e.g., the theorist is especiallytaken with the tramp's dream of heaven in The Kid, which he describesin a quote from Theodore Huff's Charlie Chaplin:

". . . the grimy slum court is transformed into a place of celestialbliss, with its inhabitants posing as white-clad angels

; even the littledog grows wings, and the bully plays a harp as he flies about withthe others between the flower-decorated facades. -24

Because this dream is a parody of heaven and Chaplin underlines itsstaginess, Kracauer sees fit to praise this in realistic terms: "Their verystaginess denotes that they spring from a primary concern for physicalreality. "25

Kracauer, who has little time for editing and is rather enamored ofthe long shot (Chaplin realistic specialities he does not deal with), trulyseems to seek the controversial. Thus, in addition to "realistic" fantasy,Kracauer is also capable of interpreting Arnheim's formalistic cameraplacement as realistic debunking, right down to using the same Chap-lin example. That is, Kracauer also uses, as Arnheim did, the scenefrom The Immigrant in which Charlie appears to be seasick but is actu-ally fishing. But whereas Arnheim focuses formalistically on the initialability of the camera placement to fool the viewer, Kracauer keys onthe eventual truth (reality) the camera placement shows. For Kracauerit is a realistic task to "make you see." 26

Kracauer is also a realist hesitant about the use of sound; he praisesthe opening of Chaplin's City Lights, in a section entitled "Speech un-dermined from within," where the comedian substitutes distortedsound for the speech of a pompous city official. 27 Kracauer is afraid of a"theatrical" situation, where dialogue would displace the visual. Soundfor Kracauer should reinforce the visual, which is just what the Chaplinexample does. Yet, Kracauer is quite capable of a flip-flop to includeanother favorite comedian, the highly verbal Grouch° Marx, in his filmtheory. He justifies Groucho's dialogue along the same sound distor-tion lines as in the opening of City Lights. Kracauer's theory also ringsvery close to the formalists already examined; thus, "Kracauer's realismwas as cautious and conservative as Balâzs' formalism was." 28 Indeed,Kracauer is also quick, despite this cautious realism, to support Chap-lin's decision to keep Charlie silent. "Realist" Kracauer seems mostadept at praising the nonrealistic aspects of the comedian.

33

The fifth and final theorist, Andre Bazin, is much more a realist inthe conventional sense of the word. His praise of Chaplin's comedy isalso the most consistent of all the theorists, with relationship to thetheoretical models each man established. The close of Bazin's essay,"The Virtues and Limitations of Montage," is also the seminal state-ment on Chaplin's comedy production techniques:

If slapstick comedy [early Chaplin] succeeded before the days ofGriffith and montage, it is because most of its gags derived from acomedy of space, from the relation of man to things and to the sur-rounding world. In The Circus Chaplin is truly in the lion's cageand both are enclosed within the framework of the screen. 29

Only with Bazin has Chaplin's comedy of space, his use of long shotand long take, become legitimate in film theory. Chaplin's film worldwould not exist with traditional editing; it distracts both from theunique ability of his mime and the equally unique setting, such asBazin's example from The Circus, where Chaplin and the lion occupythe same film frame. In either case, the comedy is heightened becausewe know Chaplin is performing the routine or actually taking the risk,as in entering the lion's cage. Editing would have made us questionthis. Chaplin's decision to film in long shot and long take was wisetechnically and represents Chaplin's production awareness of the mosteffective form of presentation for his comedy art. Bazin thus reverses atrend that seems to have started with Arnheim: applaud Chaplin de-spite what was seen as his technical limitations and/or applaud him forhis relatively rare formalistic techniques, such as the "seasick" scenefrom The Immigrant.

Bazin's "reality" is clothed in ambiguity (life is open-ended). Am-biguity serves as a key term for both the theorist and Chaplin. Ac-cording to the theorist, everything about Chaplin's tramp speaks thelanguage of ambiguity; even his classic kick is open-ended: "It is sig-nificant that Charlie never kicks straight ahead." 3° Moreover, Bazinfinds any and all objects in Charlie's world ambiguously vulnerable inmany ways. Ambiguity in this case is most significant in terms of what-Arnheim called "unexpected associations," Chaplin's ability to trans-form any object into something else. But instead of using questionableparallels with montage in order to include unexpected associationswithin an Arnheim-like formalistic theory, Bazin merges them quitelogically with his ambiguity of realism: Chaplin puts things "to mul-tifarious uses according to his need at the moment":

The street lamp in Easy Street serves the function of an anaes-thetist's mask to asphyxiate the terror of the neighborhood. . . . In

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The Adventurer a blind transforms him into a lampstand, invisibleto the police. 31

Bazin closes his examination of the ambiguous nature of Chaplin ob-jects with the "dance of the rolls" from The Gold Rush, one of Am-helm's examples for his formalistic explanation of the comedian's abilityto "metamorphose" an object.

A large emphasis of Bazin's theory, however, with relationship toChaplin, focuses on what could be called the "myth of Charlie":

Charlie is a mythical figure. . . . For hundreds of millions of peopleon this planet he is a hero like Ulysses or Roland in other civiliza-tions. . . . 32

Bazin's interest along these lines is such that he even entitles one of hisessays "The Myth of Monsieur Verdoux." 33 Monsieur Verdoux was oneof Chaplin's later films and generally considered outside the Charlie/tramp milieu.

Bazin's concept of the "Chaplin myth" has much in common, itwould seem, with Balâzs's interest in any true personality of thescreen, someone who consistently played himself while generatinggreat viewer identification. Bazin notes:

In less than fifteen years [1914-1928], the little fellow with theridiculous cutaway coat, the little trapezoid mustache, the cane, andthe bowler hat, had become part of the conscious of mankind. Neversince the world began had a myth been so universally accepted. 34

But whereas Ba162s uses this cult of personality as an end in itself,Bazin attempts to expand this cult of myth into less-studied Chaplinterritory, what is usually considered the post-Charlie/tramp films, suchas Monsieur Verdoux and Limelight. By so doing, Bazin is able to pro-duce a greater perspective on these late Chaplin characterizations, aswell as to explain audience identification, no small accomplishmentwhen one of the characters, Verdoux, is a very active Bluebeard:

It is the character [of Charlie in Verdoux] that we love, not hisqualities or defects. The audience's sympathy for Verdoux is focusedon the myth [of Charlie], not on what he stands for morally. Sowhen Verdoux, with the spectator on his side, is condemned, he isdoubly sure of victory because the spectator condemns the condem-nation of a man -justly- condemned by society. Society no longerhas any emotional claim on the public conscience. 35

Bazin's use of myth, however, would seem to stretch the configura-tion of his realist theory. This Chaplin myth is, after all, a romantic

35

notion that necessitates prior knowledge of the phenomenon of Charliewhen screening any one of the comedian's films. If Limelight were thefirst Chaplin film a viewer had seen, that individual could not drawupon the myth, at least not fully, as could someone who had viewedmore Chaplin films. Bazin acknowledges this fact, which he seems toaddress in two manners. 36

First, Bazin notes that there is more to Limelight than the appliedmyth. He sketches a corollary more closely tied to realism: Chaplinplays his role of Calvero, an aging former music hall clown, with suchintensity that the viewer recognizes the real Chaplin story. Bazin callsthis -an example of transposed autobiography. -37

Secondly, and rather indirectly, he bolsters the reality aspect of themyth by emphasizing - the unique position of Chaplin, the universalityand vitality of his myth. -38 When the myth of Chaplin is seen as thatpervasive, everyone could be realistically touched by this comedy icon.Whether everyone is so touched remains a problematic situation.

Bazin's defense of the myth concept does point towards one lastweakness in the Chaplin segments of his theory. That weakness ispraise to the point of overkill, even beyond Balâzs's cult of personality:-Alongside Limelight, all other films, even those we most admire,seem cut and dried and conventional. -36 Bazin is even capable of jus-tifying boredom in Chaplin's Limelight: -It becomes apparent thateven the boredom one might experience enters mysteriously into theharmony of the over-all work. -4°

The five main film theorists on the comedy art of Chaplin embracedparts of the Chaplin milieu, the scholarly -Chaplinitis, - even whendoing so proved to be inconsistent with the general guidelines of theirown theories. Even Bazin, who maintained the most consistency be-tween his praise of Chaplin's comedy and his own theory, had a tend-ency to overreact.

The theorists have examined some viable comedy reasons behindthe film production and aesthetics of Chaplin's work, even though apremise for most of these reasons rarely appeared in a Chaplin film.The one major overview to surface is in the main thrust of Bazin'stheory. In Bazin, with his celebration of realist cinema, Chaplin's com-edy of space—so dependent on long shot and long take—finally had alegitimate champion in the realm of film production and aesthetics.Only then could Chaplin's technical awareness of the most effectiveform of presentation for his comedy art be adequately explained in asingle film theory.

The varying positions of the five theorists might best be linked byBa162s's statement on the cult of personality, for each theorist seems to

36

have new Chaplin comedy examples and/or new interpretations of thesame Chaplin examples, all pointing toward Chaplin's tramp beingcinema's most popular character, regardless of genre. Any furtheragreement among the theorists would probably be limited to one line:Everyone makes room for Charlie.

Notes

1. Rudolf Arnheim, Film As Art (1933; rpt. Los Angeles: University ofCalifornia Press, 1971), pp. 36, 51.

2. Ibid., p. 127.3. Ibid., p. 151.4. Ibid., p. 148.5. Gerald Mast, The Comic Mind: Comedy and the Movies (Indi-

anapolis: The Bobbs-Merrill Company, Inc., 1973), p. 69.6. Charlie Chaplin, "A Rejection of Talkies," in Focus on Chaplin,

Donald W. McCaffrey, ed. (Englewood Cliffs, N.J.: Prentice-Hall, Inc.,1971), pp. 63-65.

7. J. Dudley Andrew, The Major Film Theories (New York: Oxford Uni-versity Press, 1976), p. 33.

8. Arnheim, p. 106.9. Sergei Eisenstein, The Film Sense, trans. and ed. Jay Leyda (1942;

rpt. New York: Harcourt, Brace & World, Inc., 1947), pp. 3-69.10. Andrew, p. 48.11. Andrew Tudor, Theories of Film (New York: Viking Press, 1974), p.

38.12. Eisenstein, p. 23.13. Arnheim, pp. 123-24.14. I studied film theory under Andrew. An early version of this chapter

was first done for an Andrew class (1974).15. Bela Baldzs, Theory of the Film, trans. Edith Bone (1952; rpt. New

York: Dover Publications, Inc., 1970), p. 26.16. Ibid., p. 225.17. Andrew, p. 89.18. Balázs, p. 237.19. Ibid.20. Ibid., p. 63.21. Andrew, p. 99.22. Baldzs, p. 237.23. Ibid., p. 285.24. Siegfried Kracauer, Theory of Film: The Redemption of Physical Re-

ality (New York: Oxford University Press, 1960), p. 86.25. Ibid.26. Ibid., p. 307.

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The Vagabond (1916)Chaplin's tramp figure,an accomplishedstreet musician,is now solicitingfor his performance.

(Still courtesy of Blackhawk Films, Davenport, Iowa)

27. Ibid., pp. 107-8.28. Andrew, p. 119.29. Andre Bazin, -The Virtues and Limitations of Montage, - in What Is

Cinema?, vol. 1, selected and trans. Hugh Gray (1958; rpt. Los Angeles:University of California Press, 1967), p. 52.

30. Andre Bazin, -Charlie Chaplin, - in What Is Cinema?, vol. 1, p. 150.31. Ibid., p. 146.32. Ibid., p. 144.33. Andre Bazin, -The Myth of Monsieur Verdoux, in What Is

Cinema?, vol. 2, selected and trans. Hugh Gray (1958; rpt. Los Angeles:University of California Press, 1971), pp. 102-3.

34. Ibid., p. 105.35. Ibid., pp. 112-13.36. Bazin, -The Grandeur of Limelight, - in What Is Cinema?, vol. 2, p.

136.37. Ibid.38. Ibid., p. 138.39. Ibid., p. 139.40. Ibid., p. 132.

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IV

Chaplin and Comedy Theory:Towards a More Meaningful Approach

In discussing Chaplin's work in terms of comedy theory, no doubtendless definitions could be referred to, beyond Chaplin's random smor-gasbord approach on those rare occasions he was moved to examinespecific elements of his humor. For example, the early tramp figure wasalmost a ruffian who was especially forceful when kicking people with hisoversized shoes or jabbing them with the ever-present cane. This toughnature is even underlined in the children's song that has Charlie stealing asausage from a child. Roughhouse comedy of this type could easily fallunder the comedy theory label of superiority. The premise of this ap-proach is that humor builds upon someone else's humiliation and/orproblems.

It would also be possible to reverse this process, focus on frustra-tion, and theorize that we enjoy the Charlie films because we feel su-perior to him, a premise on which Al Capp once attempted to elabo-rate.' But, as noted earlier, such a position is much more applicable tothe comedy world of Laurel & Hardy or Woody Allen, which bothfocus on frustration.

Other comedy theories, from Eastman's -humor as instinct" to theold and venerated comedy of surprise, can be applied on a limitedbasis to Chaplin's work. Unfortunately, most Chaplin authors avoidcomedy theory completely; those who do not, often treat it superfi-cially and/or prescribe a simple comedy formula as applicable to all thecomedian's work. The latter is especially true of the works by Tylerand Eisenstein mentioned in the Introduction. This tendency towardsan umbrella approach in any area of comedy theory, which PaulMcGhee calls -global theories," is problematic, because they -discour-age attention to important [multi-level] dimensions. . . ." in comedy. 2

Thus, the method I propose to use, that of incongruity, is not offeredas an all-emcompassing panacea for Chaplin's humor, but it seemsmore applicable than any guideline currently in use.

Patricia Keith-Spiegel, in an excellent essay comparing variouscomedy theories, defines the incongruity approach as -Humor arisingfrom disjointed, ill-suited pairings of ideas or situations . . . that aredivergent from habitual customs. . . "

Almost everything about the comedy world of Chaplin plays uponincongruity. Its most obvious deployment occurs in the settings that

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Chaplin selects, especially his propensity to place the tramp in theworld of high society, from Mutual films like The Count and The Ad-venturer, where he impersonates the wealthy, to probably the greatestof his films, City Lights, where Charlie is befriended by a rich manwho knows the tramp only when he (the millionaire) is drunk. CityLights produces what is undoubtedly Chaplin's best example of comicincongruity—the scene of the tramp diving out of an expensivelimousine, a gift from the drunken rich friend, to beat another tramp toa discarded cigarette butt, after which he returns to his limousine anddrives away.

Incongruous settings are not limited to placing the tramp among highsociety. In Easy Street he is a tramp who becomes a cop ; in The Pilgrim heis an escaped convict who finds it necessary to play at being a minister;and in The Gold Rush he is seemingly a tramp turned prospector, headingnorth to the Alaskan gold fields. Incongruous settings such as these—apolice station, a church, and the frozen north—produce much of what isinitially funny in his films. This incongruity is especially true of The GoldRush, where the tramp is first seen skidding around the side of what couldbe a glacier. But Chaplin's use of incongruity goes well beyond setting.

A key to his use of this comic device is in the tramp costume itself.Here is a small figure wearing oversized shoes and pants, an under-sized coat, a well-worn derby, and carrying a little cane. His gait re-sembles that of a duck trying to go two ways at once, while his tinymustache seems more like a chocolate milk smudge than facial hair.His appearance is not the sort to instill confidence. Obviously this is atramp, one of society's failures. But very quickly the viewer realizesthere is nothing inferior about this character, from the hero who savesEdna from the robbers at the start of The Tramp (1914) to the escapeartist who whisks the gamin away from the government .officials at theclose of Modern Times (1936).

The viewer is not surprised by these actions because there is some-thing in the original style of the costume, however bedraggled it mightlook now, from the banker's derby to the dandy's cane, that suggeststhis character has known better days. There is also an air of indepen-dence in his manner, as well as an effortless grace in his movement,the duck walk notwithstanding. It is as if to say: I have had it all once,and if I wanted it again, I could have it. Witness the leisure habits ofthe tramp in The Idle Class where he travels with a bag of golf clubs,or the ease in which he has cabin owner Hank Curtis (Henry Bergman)taking care of him in The Gold Rush. One could liken it to what WalterKerr has observed as the tendency in Chaplin's work for his characterto exist on a level outside of (superior to) the setting in which he is

40

placed, more an additional member of the audience than the actionbeing viewed. 4 For that matter, the tramp outfit itself becomes rathernatty by the final exit in Modern Times.

The narrative of some Chaplin films also accents this comic incon-gruity by being dual focus in nature. 5 In certain films, especially theshort subjects, his actions repeat and/or parallel the actions of anothercentral character, best exemplified by Eric Campbell, his comicnemesis in the Mutual films (1916-1917). At Sennett Studios this dualfocus was more apt to be on a friendly basis, as in The Rounders (1914),where Charlie was teamed with Fatty Arbuckle and they seemed to doeverything in tandem. However, he was also sometimes matched op-posite the Campbell-like Mack Swain. At Essanay (1915-1916) it was afriendly dual focus that occasionally continued to surface, with BenTurpin replacing Arbuckle.

This dual focus continues to occur in both the First National shorts(1918-1923) and the later features, from the friendly pairing of thetramp and Big Jim McKay (Mack Swain) in The Gold Rush to the comicantagonism between dictators Hynkel (Chaplin) and Napaloni (JackOakie) in The Great Dictator. This duality is probably best integratedto the story in The Circus, where Charlie the clown is paired againstRex the tightrope walker. By first seeing Rex perform, Charlie's anticson the tightrope are made all the funnier, especially since he managesto succeed. Chaplin also, on occasion, went the dual focus route byplaying two parts himself; in A Night in the Show he plays the gentle-man Mr. Pest and the tramp Mr. Rowdy; in The Idle Class, a trampand a gentleman; and in The Great Dictator, the tramp-like Jewishbarber and the dictator Hynkel.

The starting point of his dual focus approach to comic incongruity isoften that age-old premise of the comedy team, the contrast of littleman/big man. With the physically small tramp often paired with hugemen, an initially funny contrast, Charlie's attempts to replicate the ac-tions of some giant are incongruously funny. When he proves himselfthe victor in these situations, as he usually does, it is all the morecomically incongruous. In Behind the Screen Charlie and Campbell arefellow carpenters on a movie set, with director Chaplin actually billingthem as "David and Goliath" in a film title. But it is David (Charlie)who will come out ahead at the film's close.

The greatest example of dual focus incongruity in Chaplin's work isin his classic film Easy Street, generally considered the best film of theMutual period, already noted as "his most sustained creative period. "6The replication of movements is so firmly balanced that the film seemsalmost choreographed. It is a story of a skid row derelict (Charlie) who

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Easy Street (1917)In Chaplin's Mutual filmshis perennial nemesisis Eric Campbell.In these stillsfrom Easy Street,the most celebratedof their confrontations,one can seeboth the approaching- storm - as well asanother closing victoryfor Chaplin's -Charlie. -

(Stills courtesy of Blackhawk Films, Davenport, Iowa)

is reformed by a beautiful mission worker (Edna Purviance). The re-formed tramp joins the police force, rather an incongruous move initself for his screen character, and his beat assignment is the ironicallynamed Easy Street. He must contend with street bully Eric Campbell,the other half of the dual focus, who eats cops for breakfast.

Before Charlie joins the police force, director Chaplin crosscuts toshots of Eric and his gang matter-of-factly destroying half the force,with stretchers carrying the wounded into the police station as if itwere a war zone. By the film's conclusion Charlie will have subduedboth Eric and the beat in general, turning it into a model street. But inthe ongoing battle between the two, each represents the same charac-

42

ter at different times—the king of the street. To best understand thisdual focus necessitates a close examination of Easy Street as well as ofChaplin's propensity for more conventional uses of comedy throughincongruity.

After Eric and the gang finish their tall tale styled rout of the policein which they throw the cops around like so much hay there is thematter of spoils. One of the police victims had sacrified his pants in thethick of battle and in so doing produced the spoils (coins). When thecoins hit the street, everyone in the group goes for them.

Eric, however, asserts himself against his motley gang and scaresthem into the buildings on either side of the street. Eric, now pos-sessing sole control of the money and jauntily wearing a policeman'shat, another spoil of battle, walks up the center of Easy Street alone, incontrol here, too. This control factor is also maximized by the fact thathe occupies the center of the film frame. As he walks, the gang mem-bers on the right side of the street venture out of their buildings; whenhe turns in that direction, they dive back inside. Then the people onthe left venture out and the comic process is repeated.

At this point patrolman Charlie innocently walks into this war zoneknown as Easy Street. Eric, initially surprised at the nerve and/or stu-pidity of this cop, follows Charlie about in order to size him up. Char-lie realizes quickly that he is in a spot, especially after he examines thepile of policemen's clothing still in the street. Although frightened, hemanages to remain fairly nonchalant.

Before Eric does anything drastic to this modest-looking cop, hegives him a chance at a heart attack by demonstrating his strength,which entails bending over a gas street lamp. However, Eric, who hasalready allowed Charlie a few free but ineffective billy club swipes athis head, then makes a mistake. He is so involved in this show ofstrength that he does not keep an eye on the -victim. - Charlie jumpson the bully's back, pulls the gas lamp over Eric's head, and the giantis soon anesthetized.

After calling the police station fir a detachment to come and re-trieve the bully, the tramp-turned-cop surveys the terrain of hisvictory. He begins a stroll down the center of the street, as well as thecenter of the film frame, that is a repeat of Eric's earlier victory march;now, however, it is Charlie who is in complete control. Once again,some people venture out from the buildings on the right-hand side ofthe street and Charlie's turn, only improving on Eric's movement bymaking it into a single pirouette, drives them back inside. And againthe process is repeated on the left side of the street. When the flightydetachment of police finally arrive to retrieve Eric's body, director

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Chaplin even allows himself a topping of these dance-like movements.A child passing by happens to stop in the center of the street and,pointing his finger as a gun, shoots at the police force. The detachmentimmediately drops back in terror.

Each of these street scenes is funny because of the various levels ofincongruity present. Before examining more typical types of incon-gruity, through understatement and overstatement not dependent ondual focus narrative, it should be noted that the whole sequence beginsand ends with what Edgar E. Willis would define as incongruitystretched to absurdity. 7 That is, the first view of the Easy Street gangshowcases them massacring the police force tall tale style. The ex-tremeness of this is emphasized by the fact that police 'dummies wereintroduced at several points in order to make it easier for Eric to ap-pear to be throwing policemen around. A similar scene will be re-peated later at the police station after he has been momentarily caught.The result is a fight sequence that looks as if it were written for PaulBunyan ; Eric sails the policemen about so easily he might just as wellbe playing volleyball.

In contrast, the incongruously absurd close of the sequence, wherethe small child frightens the whole police force, is based on the factthat this child is the most diminutive of catalysts. There is just no waythat any urchin, regardless of the police force's cowardice, could haveproduced such fear. In both cases (police massacred by gang, policescared to death by child) the laughter is a result of comic incongruitygone to extremes.

The next movement within the sequence, where Eric asserts hisauthority over the gang in terms of the money and they fall back fromhim, is the result of comic incongruity based in overstatement. Thoughthe bully's power has been established on such Herculean levels thatthere can be no doubt that his gang would be frightened of him, theextreme manner in which they cower before him, from one side of thestreet to the other, must be labeled an overstatement—comic exagger-ation.

The third movement of the sequence, where the gang cowers fromside to side before Charlie after he has vanquished the bully, also dealsin overstatement. Though the victory over Eric is credible due to themind-over-matter ingenuity of gassing him, it still seems like the mira-cle of a David over a Goliath because of the earlier seeming in-vincibility of the bully. To see the gang shrink from such a modest-sized cop is again comedy of exaggerated incongruity.

It should be added that Charlie's initial encounter with the bullyalso produces several comic moments of understated incongruity. For

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example, the bully, who we know is capable of tying Charlie intoknots, seems totally incapacitated at the audacity of this little cop in-vading his territory. Instead of his earlier exaggerated violence, thereis almost catatonic puzzlement at just what to do with this Easy Streetintruder.

Charlie's reaction to this giant is also one of understated incon-gruity, so much so that the viewer keeps hoping he will run for safety.But his actions, though tinged with fear, are to stay and deal with themenace. The understated comedy that follows also parallels the thrillcomedy of Harold Lloyd, because Eric Campbell appears to be everybit as lethal as a fall from a Lloyd skyscraper, and maybe more so.Charlie must be careful at every step.

Charlie first tries to call the station but has difficulty getting at thephone in his police box without arousing the suspicions of the bully,who is standing over him. At first he disguises the identity of the oldstyle bell-shaped telephone receiver by using it as a brush, a horn, anda telescope—excellent examples of Chaplin's ability to work ametamorphosis on any subject.

Eric buys these transitions, to the point of trying to look throughthe - telescope --receiver. It is here, however, that Charlie momentar-ily loses his cool by using his billy club on Campbell's head, while thebully is distracted by the receiver. Provoked but unscathed, the giantgoes into his show of strength by bending the gas street lamp over,giving Charlie the opportunity to gas him.

In another superior Chaplin example of understatement, Charliethe cop takes on the demeanor of a bored suburban doctor. The -doc-tor- removes the -patient's - gas mask (street lamp) and checks hispulse rate. Finding it still a bit too active, he again returns the "mask"toEric's head and administers more gas. Needless to say, the bully iseventually reduced to a very harmless state.

Though the threat has been, for the moment, eliminated, this scenecontinues a short while longer in order to project more comedythrough understatement. Now that Charlie is free to call the policestation, it has become an almost impossible task; his police phone is onthe gas lamp street pole that Eric leveled. Yet, in the most nonchalantmanner, Charlie crawls under the pole to make his call flat on his back.

When the task force from the police station arrives—and eachmember is scared to death to be in the Easy Street neighborhood—their first sight is that of one small cop and his giant prisoner, laid outon the sidewalk. It is as if a boy fisherman had landed a whale. Theunderstated comic incongruity in the image is increased all the more inthat Charlie is made to seem much smaller because he is sitting on the

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curb playing with his billy club. When he first sees them, he does noteven get up but rather motions to them with a "come on down" air asrelaxed as theirs is tense.

Incongruity, often in terms of dual focus, continues throughout thefilm. Both characters demonstrate overpowering strength; there isnothing unusual about a man of Eric's size having these capabilities,but Charlie's superman transition seems comically incongruous. As isto be expected, Charlie receives overpowering strength completely bychance; he happens to sit on a dope needle and is quite literallyhopped up. This incident also anticipates the "high" Charlie accidentlyreceives from the cocaine-filled salt shaker in Modern Times. Thus, theEasy Street needle, which a member of the neighborhood had origi-nally planned for Edna, transforms Charlie into a junior Tarzan.

In the rescue of Edna that follows, Chaplin has the tramp cop takeon the street gang and vanquish them just as easily as Eric did thepolice, to the point of actually throwing people around. Consequently,there is a satisfyingly symmetrical nature to the appearance of theseepic displays of fighting strength. Eric's battle royal with the policeforce comes at the film's beginning, while Charlie's conquest of theneighborhood gang closes it.

Comedy through incongruity in Chaplin's work, whether the abun-dant conventional examples of understatement and overstatement orthe rare examples of dual focus narrative, is actually tied to one of thefundamentals of comedy theory. That is, much of the humor derivedfrom incongruity, and all of it in the case of dual focus, can be definedwith the term repetition. And repetition, as Henri Bergson describes itin Laughter, his landmark work on comedy, is "one of the usual pro-cesses of classical comedy." 8

Comedy repetition can be a literal repetition, dual focus style,where Charlie follows the pattern of someone quite unlike his trampcharacter, within each film, such as the examples with Eric Campbell.Another example is Charlie as the tightrope walker in The Circus.There can also be comedy through repetition, where the model Charlieis playing off exists outside the world of the film ; e.g., when Charliebecomes a cop in Easy Street, part of the reason he is funny is becausehe is replicating the popular conception of what a tough cop is, anotherpattern quite unlike his tramp character. And finally, there can becomedy repetition where the dominant model is Charlie himself, fromthe films where he plays a dual role to those where he has a juniorsatellite, be it heroine or child, imitating him. This type of repetition isnicely showcased in The Kid, where Jackie Coogan's title performance"is clearly another presentation of Charlie, so that we have in this filma dual personality, the adult and the child Charlie. . .

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Stated more succinctly, one has only to repeat another axiom ofBergson's: - Every comic character is a type. Inversely, every re-semblance to a type has something comic in it. -1° Thus, before hisEasy Street encounter with Eric, director Chaplin has performerCharlie play off the image of the tough cop type. After he defeats Eric,his actions replicate those of another type, the bully (Eric). And thechild that later scares the police force with his -finger pistol- is merelydoing a pint-sized imitation of Charlie the cop.

The real thrust of Bergson's Laughter is a variation on incongruity,i.e., people are comic in terms of their -mechanical inelasticity"—when they behave in a rigid and automatic manner incongruous withthe concept of being human. 11 In applying this aspect to Chaplin, stillone more element of incongruity is revealed.

In film comedy history, this -mechanical inelasticity- has seeminglybeen applied only to the Keystone Kops, and in the most direct man-ner: their tendency to become almost robot-like in their antics, frombouncing out of their Model-T squad cars to plowing into very realtrees. 12

A definite strain of this type of comic incongruity can be isolated inChaplin's work again and again, though on a more sophisticated level,from such quintessential tramp habits as tossing an object to one sideand kicking out with the opposite leg, to such isolated moments as thenervous breakdown scene on the conveyor belt in Modern Times,where he literally becomes a mechanical nut tightener, just like themachines around him.

Probably the best example of this type of incongruity occurs in EasyStreet, in the scene where Campbell is chasing Charlie around thetable in the ghetto flat. Eric starts to weave back and forth on his sideof the table, seeing if he can commit Charlie into going one directionor another. But Charlie finds that by repeating this back and forthmotion on his side he can keep the bully confused—at first. EventuallyEric decides to come around one end of the table. Charlie, however,continues to maintain his back and forth motion, as if this weaving initself is the secret to keeping Eric at bay, and the bully almost catchesthe undersized cop.

One final element of comic incongruity in Chaplin's tramp evenoccurs in those rare moments when he does not seem equal to a task.In the beginning of Pay Day he is a construction worker having troubledigging a hole. Each -shovel full- of soil he removes would not fill ateacup. And when he finally manages to improve on this, he has apropensity to hit his foreman with flying dirt. But whereas anyone elsewould be fired for such incompetencies, Charlie is given what amountsto a promotion; he becomes a bricklayer, with two assistants. The pro-

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motion nature of this switch is even accented metaphorically by thefact that he goes from deep in a hole to a bricklaying scaffold severalstories up. The wisdom of this switch is then underlined by the magicmanner in which he stacks bricks.

The nature of this example of comic incongruity is based in what isoften called the wise fool, a character whose every "miscue - eventuallyproves beneficial, as in Charlie's "accidental - Pay Day promotion. Atother times these "miscues- can innocently establish a point that wouldnot otherwise be appropriate for the character to make. In a scene inEasy Street Charlie visits a ghetto family with about a dozen childrenin one small room. Instead of expressing his shock at the situation, he"innocently- proceeds to broadcast cornflakes on the floor aroundthem, as if they were so many chickens down on the farm. By doingthe most foolish of actions—throwing food on the floor—he has madethe most pointed of comments: this setting is not fit for human habita-tion.

My reasons for defining much of Chaplin's work in terms of comedythrough incongruity have not been presented as an all-encompassingcomedy theory umbrella for the works of Chaplin. This approach is avery workable model in an area—Chaplin and comedy theory—thatsuffers from a scarcity of such studies and from a tendency by manytheorists, to define Chaplin's work in a narrow and/or self-servingmanner.

A fascinating sidelight to Chaplin and comedy through incongruityis suggested by Chaplin's favorite author, Arthur Schopenhauer.' 3 Thisphilosopher, writing early in the nineteenth century, was one of thebetter known early theorists on comedy through incongruity.

The cause of laughter in every case is simply the sudden perceptionof the incongruity between a concept and the real objects whichhave been through it in some relation, and laughter itself is just theexpression of this incongruity."

Comedy for Schopenhauer was a way of meeting the inconsistenciesof life, or more precisely, its incongruities. And though Chaplin neverarticulates his views as such, there is a suggestion of the philosopher'sview in one of Chaplin's rare references to comedy theory in his auto-biography: "we see in what seems rational, the irrational; in whatseems important, the unimportant. . . : 1-5

To make this link between Schopenhauer's incongruity theory andChaplin is mere speculation. I offer it at this point as one more linkbetween Chaplin's work and the theory of comic incongruity. How-ever, I would hope, in having built a case for studying Chaplin's com-edy through various levels of incongruity, that I have chosen a theory

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that he would also have felt somewhat attuned to, if only on a sublimi-nal level. And I feel that the incongruity approach more than meetsthat requirement.

Notes

1. Al Capp, -The Comedy of Charlie Chaplin," The Atlantic (February1950), pp. 25-29.

2. Paul E. McGhee, "On the Cognitive Origins of Incongruity Humor:Fantasy Assimilation versus Reality Assimilation," in The Psychology ofHumor: Theoretical Perspectives and Empirical Issues, eds. Jeffrey H.Goldstein and Paul E. McGhee (New York: Academic Press, 1972), p. 62.

3. Patricia Keith-Spiegel, "Early Conceptions of Humor: Varieties andIssues," in The Psychology of Humor: Theoretical Perspectives and Empiri-cal Issues, p. 7.

4. Walter Kerr, The Silent Clowns (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1975),p. 77.

5. I owe a debt to my friend and teacher Rick Altman of the Universityof Iowa (French Department and Comparative Literature) for his work indual focus narrative.

6. Theodore Huff, Charlie Chaplin (1951; rpt. New York: Henry Schu-man, 1972), p. 65.

7. Edgar E. Willis, Writing Television and Radio Programs (Chicago:Holt, Rinehart and Winston, Inc., 1967), p. 288.

8. Henri Bergson, Laughter, in Comedy, ed. Wylie Sypher (GardenCity, New York: Doubleday & Company, Inc., 1956), p. 107.

9. Peter Cotes and Thelma Niklaus, The Little Fellow: The Life andWorks of Charles Spencer Chaplin (1951; rpt. New York: Citadel Press,1965), p. 109.

10. Bergson, p. 156.11. Ibid., pp. 66-67.12. Gerald Mast, The Comic Mind: Comedy and the Movies (Indi-

anapolis: The Bobbs-Merrill Company, Inc., 1973), p. 50.13. Cotes and Niklaus, p. 46.14. Arthur Schopenhauer, from The World as Will and Idea (1836-54), in

Theories of Comedy, ed. Paul Lauter (Garden City, New York: Doubleday tkCompany, Inc., 1964), p. 355.

15. Charles Chaplin, My Autobiography (1964; rpt. New York: PocketBooks, Inc., 1966), p. 226.

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V

Conclusions

Late in his career Chaplin closed theaforementioned Life interview with this com-ment about his intensity of involvement in hisfilm comedy: "And so this thing that I've got,whatever it is, whether it's creativeness orwhatever it is, I care. I really care."

In 1914 a tramp figure first appeared on the screen. Within a year"Chaplinitis- had enveloped the world. Enthralling intellectuals andthe masses alike, he brought new interest to what was still a fairly newart form, struggling for recognition. At the same time, his comedycharacter was building a popularity so great and so widespread thateven today Charlie Chaplin is the standard by which all film comediansare measured.

This unique critical and commercial popularity was firmly rooted inwhat was still the dominant tradition in American humor—that of thecapable hero. The viewer usually sensed that if and when Charlie re-ally wanted something, the magic of his skills and the almost requiredbenevolence of the gods of comedy would give him access to it.

Obviously, in a world of comedy as complex as that of Chaplin's,numerous comedy theories can be applied, at least to alimited numberof tramp examples. But the one theory that seems most suitable to thetramp milieu is that of incongruity, from the contrast he uses betweenhis disheveled clothes and his commanding capabilities, or between his

-lowly economic station (literally, a tramp) and the frequency in whichhe appears in the upper levels of society, to the use of dual focus in hisnarrative. Incongruity does not embrace all the comedy elements inChaplin's work but does seem to be more comprehensive than anytheory currently in use.

It is hoped that this monograph may be a starting point for furtherstudy of the intent behind Chaplin's film comedy, as well as representone more blow for comedy's equality with the "more serious" arts. Inthe chaotic modern world, mankind relates much more closely to theironies of comedy than to the flaws of tragedy. Chaplin himself inad-vertently stumbled onto this when he noted:

I am not a bit funny, really. I am just a little nickel comedian tryingto make people laugh. They act as though I were the king of

England.

For most people, he represented much more.

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Selected Filmography

Chaplin's Keystone Shorts

Chaplin did thirty-five films for Mack Sennett, starting with Making aLiving (all films being done in 1914). The figure of the tramp first ap-pears in the second film—Kid Auto Races at Venice. There is also onefeature Punctured Romance (which is often consideredthe first comedy feature). After the Sennett period Chaplin would al-ways be in charge of story and direction.

Chaplin's Essanay Shorts

1915 His New JobA Night OutThe ChampionIn the ParkThe Jitney ElopementThe TeampBy the SeaWorkA WomanThe BankShanghaiedA Night in the Show

1916 Charlie Chaplin's Burlesque on CarmenPolice

1918 Triple Trouble (Essanay constructed this, without Chaplin'spermission, from already existing material he had done forthem—Police, Work, and the unfinished Life.)

Chaplin's Mutual Shorts

1916 The FloorwalkerThe FiremanThe VagabondOne A.M.The CountThe PawnshopBehind the ScreenThe Rink

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1917 Easy StreetThe CureThe ImmigrantThe Adventurer

Chaplin's First National Shorts

These films tended to be slightly longer than his earlier short subjects,as well as including the feature The Kid.

1918 A Dog's LifeThe Bond (brief film for war effort—WW I)Shoulder Arms

1919 SunnysideA Day's Pleasure

1921 The KidThe Idle Class

1922 Pay Day1923 The Pilgrim

Chaplin's Feature Length Films

The majority of these films were done for United Artists, which Chaplinhelped found, with Mary Pickford, Douglas Fairbanks, and D. W. Grif-fith, in 1919. The non-United Artists films were A King in New York(Attica-Archway) and A Countess from Hong Kong (Universal); TheChaplin Revue was a Roy-United Artists release. Also, he appeared onlybriefly in A Woman of Paris and A Countess from Hong Kong, limitinghimself to behind the camera activities.

1923 A Woman of Paris1925 The Gold Rush1928 The Circus1931 City Lights1936 Modern Times1940 The Great Dictator1942 The Gold Rush, reissue with soundtrack, Chaplin narration re-

places titles.1947 Monsieur Verdoux1953 Limelight1957 A King in New York1959 The Chaplin Revue, compiled from A Dog's Life, Shoulder

Arms, and The Pilgrim, with soundtrack. The opening is footageof early Hollywood and Chaplin at work, with Chaplin narrat-ing.

1966 A Countess from Hong Kong

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Selected Bibliography

Books

Agee, James, A Death in the Family. 1956; rpt. New York: BantamBooks, 1972.

Andrew, J. Dudley, The Major Film Theories, New York: Oxford Uni-versity Press, 1976.

Arnheim, Rudolf, Film As Art. 1933; rpt. Los Angeles: UniversityPress, 1971.

Asplund, Uno, Chaplin's Films, trans. Paul Britten Austin. 1971; rpt.New York: A. S. Barnes and Company, 1973.

Ba16.zs, Bela, Theory of the Film, trans. Edith Bone. 1952; rpt. NewYork: Dover Publications, Inc., 1970.

Bazin, Andre, What Is Cinema?, vol. 1, selected and translated byHugh Gray. 1958; rpt. Los Angeles: University of CaliforniaPress, 1967.

Bazin, Andre, What Is Cinema?, vol. 2, selected and translated byHugh Gray. 1958; rpt. Los Angeles: University of CaliforniaPress, 1971.

Blair, Walter, Native American Humor. 1937; rpt. San Francisco:Chandler Publishing Company, Inc., 1960.

Byron, Stuart, and Elisabeth Weis (eds.), The National Society of Film• Critics on Movie Comedy. New York: Penguin Books, 1977.

Chaplin, Charlie, Charlie Chaplin's Own Story. Indianapolis: TheBobbs-Merrill Company, 1916.

Chaplin, Charlie, My Trip Abroad. New York: Harper & Brothers,1922.

Chaplin, Charlie, A Comedian Sees the World. New York: Crowell,1933.

Chaplin, Charles, My Autobiography. 1964; rpt. New York: PocketBooks, Inc., 1966.

Chaplin, Charles, My Life in Pictures. 1974; rpt. New York: Grossettand Dunlap, 1975.

Chaplin, Charlie, Jr., My Father, Charlie Chaplin. New York: RandomHouse, 1960.

Chaplin, Lita Grey (with Morton Cooper), My Life with Chaplin. NewYork: Bernard Geis Co., Inc., 1966.

Chaplin, Michael, I Couldn't Smoke the Grass on My Father's Lawn.New York: G.P. Putnam's Sons, 1966.

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Cotes, Peter, and Thelma Niklaus, The Little Fellow: The Life andWorks of Charles Spencer Chaplin. 1951; rpt. New York:Citadel Press, 1965.

Dickens, Charles, Oliver Twist. 1841; rpt. New York: Time Mirror,1961.

Durgnat, Raymond, The Crazy Mirror: Hollywood Comedy and theAmerican Image. 1969; rpt. New York: Dell Publishing Co.,1972.

Eastman, Max, The Sense of Humor. New York: Charles Scribner'sSons, 1921.

Eastman, Max, Great Companions: Critical Memoirs of Some FamousFriends. New York: Farrar, Straus and Cudahy, 1959.

Eisenstein, Sergei M., The Film Sense, trans. and ed. by Jay Leyda,1942; rpt. New York: Harcourt, Brace & World Inc., 1947.

Feibleman, James K., In Praise of Comedy: A Study in Its Theory andPractice. New York: Horizon Press, 1970.

Frye, Northrop, Anatomy of Criticism. 1957; rpt. Princeton, New Jer-sey: Princeton University Press, 1973.

Gehring, Wes D., Leo McCarey and the Comic Anti -Hero in AmericanFilm. New York: Arno Press, 1980.

Gifford, Denis, Chaplin. Garden City, New York: Doubleday & Co.,Inc., 1974.

Goldstein, Jeffrey A., and Paul E. McGhee (eds.), The Psychology ofHumor: Theoretical Perspectives and Empirical Issues. NewYork: Academic Press, 1972.

Huff, Theodore, Charlie Chaplin. 1951; rpt. New York: Henry Schu-man, 1972.

Jacobs, Lewis, The Rise of the American Film. 1939; rpt. New York:

Teachers College Press, 1971.Kaplan, Justin, Mr. Clemens and Mark Twain. 1966; rpt. New York:

Simon and Schuster, 1970.Keaton, Buster (with Charles Samuels). My Wonderful World of

Slapstick. Garden City, New York: Doubleday & Company,Inc., 1960.

Kerr, Walter, The Silent Clowns. New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1975.

Kerr, Walter, Tragedy and Comedy. New York: Simon and Schuster,1967.

Kracauer, Siegfried, Theory of Film: The Redemption of Physical Re-ality. New York: Oxford University Press, 1960.

Lahue, Kalton C., World of Laughter: the Motion Picture ComedyShort, 1910 - 1930. 1966; rpt. Norman: University of OklahomaPress, 1972.

54

Lauter, Paul (ed.), Theories of Comedy. Garden City, New York:Doubleday & Company, Inc., 1964.

Leyda, Jay (ed.), Film Essays and a Lecture by Sergei Eisenstein. NewYork: Praeger Publishers, 1970.

Lyons, Timothy J., Charles Chaplin: A Guide to References and Re-sources. Boston: G. K. Hall & Co., 1979.

Madden, David, Harlequin's Stick —Charlie's Cane. Bowling Green:Bowling Green University Press, 1975.

Manvell, Roger, Chaplin. Boston: Little, Brown and Company, 1974.Mast, Gerald, A Short History of the Movies (Second Edition). 1976;

rpt. Indianapolis: The Bobbs-Merrill Company, Inc., 1977.Mast, Gerald, The Comic Mind: Comedy and the Movies. Indianapolis:

The Bobbs-Merrill Company, Inc., 1973.McCabe, John, Charlie Chaplin. Garden City, New York: Doubleday

& Company, Inc., 1978.McCaffrey, Donald W., 4 Great Comedians: Chaplin, Lloyd, Keaton,

Langdon. New York: A. S. Barnes & Co., 1968.McCaffrey, Donald W. (ed.), Focus on Chaplin. Englewood Cliffs,

New Jersey: Prentice-Hall, Inc., 1971.McDonald, Gerald D., Michael Conway, and Mark Ricci (eds.), The

Films of Charlie Chaplin. New York: Bonanza Books, 1965.Menjou, Adolphe, and M.M. Musselman, It Took Nine Tailors. New

York: McGraw-Hill Book Company, Inc., 1948.Moss, Robert F., Charlie Chaplin. 1975; rpt. New York: Harcourt

Brace Jovanovich, 1977.Payne, Robert, The Great God Pan: A Biography of the Tramp Played

by Charles Chaplin. New York: Hermitage House, 1952.Preminger, Alex, O.B. Hardison, Jr., and Kevin Kerrane (eds.) Classi-

cal and Literary Criticism. New York: Frederick Ungar Pub-lishing Co., 1974.

Quigly, Isabel, Charlie Chaplin: Early Comedies. London: StudioVista Limited, 1968.

Rourke, Constance, American Humor: A Study of the National Char-acter. 1931; rpt. New York: Harcourt Brace Jovanovich, Inc.,1959.

Sarris, Andrew, The American Cinema: Directors and Direction 1929-1968. New York: E.P. Dutton & Co., Inc., 1968.

Seldes, Gilbert, The 7 Lively Arts. 1924; rpt. New York: SagamorePress, Inc., 1957.

Sennett, Mack (with Cameron Shipp), King of Comedy. 1954; rpt. NewYork: Pinnacle Books, Inc., 1975.

55

Scagnetti, Jack, The Laurel & Hardy Scrapbook, Middle Village, NewYork: Jonathan David Publishers, 1976.

Sklar, Robert, Movie-Made America. New York: Vintage Books, 1976.Sypher, Wylie (ed.), Comedy. Garden City, New York: Random

House, 1975.Tandy, Jennette, Crackerbarrel Philosophers in American Humor and

Satire. New York: Columbia University Press, 1925.Thomas, Bob, Bud & Lou. Philadelphia: J.B. Lippincott Company,

1977.Tudor, Andrew, Theories of Film. New York: Viking Press, 1974.Tyler, Parker, Chaplin: Last of the Clowns. 1947; rpt. New York:

Horizon Press, 1972.Willis, Edgar E., Writing Television and Radio Programs. Chicago:

Holt, Rinehart and Winston, Inc., 1967.Woollcott, Alexander, While Rome Burns. New York: .Viking Press,

1934.Yates, Norris W., The American Humorist: Conscience of the Twenti-

eth Century. 1964; rpt. Ames, Iowa: Iowa State UniversityPress, 1967.

Articles and Periodicals

Agee, James, "Comedy's Greatest Era," Life, September 5, 1949, pp.48-59.

Agate, James, "Hey But He's Doleful!" The Saturday Review, October1, 1921, pp. 400-402.

Capp, Al, "The Comedy of Charlie Chaplin," The Atlantic, February1950, pp. 25-29.

Chaplin, Charlie, "What People Laugh At," American Magazine, No-vember 1918, pp. 34+.

Chaplin, Charlie, "Does the Public Know What It Wants?" The Adel-phi, January 1924, pp. 702-710.

Chaplin, Charlie, "Wisdom from a Wise Man," Theatre GuildMagazine, March 1931, p. 7. Also appeared as "Pantomime andComedy," New York Times, January 25, 1931.

"Chaplin: Machine-Age Don Quixote," The Literary Digest, Novem-ber 2, 1935, pp. 26-27.

"Charlie Chaplin Says Laughs Are Produced By Rules," The LiteraryDigest, May 3, 1919, pp. 80+.

"'Charlie' Chaplin Is Too Tragic to Play Hamlet," Current Opinion,February 1921, pp. 187-188.

"Charlie Chaplin, As a Comedian, Contemplates Suicide," CurrentOpinion, February 1922, pp. 209-210.

56

"Farewell to the Tramp," Newsweek, January 9, 1978, pp. 40-42.Frye, Northrop, "The Great Charlie," Canadian Forum, August 21,

1941, pp. 148-150.Gehring, Wes, "Review of John McCabe's Charlie Chaplin," Journal

of the University Film Association, Winter 1979, pp. 51-52.Gittelson, Natalie, "My Father Charlie Chaplin . . . Geraldine Chaplin

. . .," McCall's, March 1978, pp. 80+.Grace, Harry A., "Charlie Chaplin's Films and American Culture Pat-

terns," Journal of Aesthetics & Art Criticism, June 1952, pp.353-363.

Huff, Theodore, "Chaplin As Composer," Films in Review, September1950, pp. 1-5.

Johnson, Julian, "Charles, Not Charlie," Photoplay, September 1918,pp. 81+.

Lyons, Timothy J., -An Introduction to the Literature on Chaplin,"Journal of the University Film Association, Winter 1979, pp.3-10.

McGuirk, Charles J., "Chaplinitis," Motion Picture Magazine, twoparts, in July and August 1915, pp. 121-123, 85-89.

Meryman, Richard (interviewer), "Chaplin: Ageless Master's Anatomyof Comedy," Life, March 10, 1967, pp. 82+.

Micha, Rene, "Chaplin As Don Juan," Sight and Sound, January-March 1954, pp. 132-137.

Rosen, Philip G., "The Chaplin World View," Cinema Journal, Fall1969, pp. 2-12.

Sarris, Andrew, [ -Charlie Chaplin'T Village Voice, May 14, 1964, p.14.

Sennett, Mack, "The Psychology of Film Comedy," Motion PictureClassic, November 1918, pp. 70+.

Schickel, Richard, "Hail Chaplin—The Early Chaplin," The New YorkTimes Magazine, April 2, 1972, pp. 6+.

Schickel, Richard, "Belated Gift: 'A Woman of Paris'," Time Magazine,June 5, 1978, pp. 86+. Review.

Wolf, William, "Charlie Chaplin Today—Elder Statesman of the Arts,"Show, June 1972, pp. 33-36.

Conference Papers

Gehring, Wes D., "Charlie Chaplin's Tramp: More Than a DefeatedFigure." Presented at the Midwest Popular Culture AssociationConference (at Michigan State University), November 2-4,1978.

57

Gehring, Wes D., -Chaplin and the Progressive Era: The NeglectedPolitics of a Clown. - Presented at the Second InternationalConference on Humor (Los Angeles), August 24-26, 1979.

Other Sources

Andrew, J. Dudley, Theory of Film class, University of Iowa, IowaCity, Fall 1974.

Gerber, John, American Humor and Satire class, University of Iowa,Iowa City, Spring 1975.

Mitry, Jean, Chaplin Project for American Silent Film class, Universityof Iowa, Iowa City, Fall 1973.

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1979-80 Faculty Publications Committee

Dr. Donald L. Barnes, Professor of Elementary Education,

ChairpersonPeter W. Hart, Associate Professor of Library ServiceGertrude Kane, Director of University PublicationsMarilyn A. Kimble, Assistant Professor of JournalismJudith G. Koor, Assistant Professor of Library ServiceLisa Stark, Graduate StudentDr. Gerald L. Steele, Professor of Industrial Education

and TechnologyDr. Virginia L. White, Associate Professor of English

Designed and prepared by University Publications, Ball State University