Director: Charlie Chaplin
Cast: Charlie Chaplin, Virginia Cherrill, Harry Myers, Florence Lee
Have I Seen it Before: Yes, although it’s not in the pantheon of my most beloved Chaplin films, many was the airings on TCM that I couldn’t resist. I had purchased the Criterion Blu Ray of the film over five years ago, telling myself that I would get around to opening it when things quieted down a bit.
Now we know that’s probably never going to happen, so why not just start watching some of these movies.
Did I Like It: It doesn’t have the conceptual brilliance of a The Great Dictator (1940) or better yet, Modern Times (1936). It comes later in his career, when the energy and confidence on display in The Kid (1921) or The Gold Rush (1925). Chaplin alleged prized it as his favorite of his own films, and it may be that position within the Venn diagram of his output that accounts for it.
Ultimately, this film is weighed down a bit by the same phenomenon as most of Chaplin’s feature work. It always feels like Chaplin was more suited to working in shorts, but all through his career was forced into boxes by technology or economics he wouldn’t have gone along with of his own volition. This was the last pure-silent film Chaplin made*, while everyone else had moved on to staging every stiff chamber play as something resembling a movie**. Also, when the market for shorts dried up, Chaplin’s features have always had an episodic quality to them, as if they were actually a sequence of four to six shorts loosely woven together. Even after this period—when Chaplin too surrendered to the forces of progress and started speaking—he was more interested in producing a series of set pieces than letting a story unfold of its own volition.
And yet, none of those nitpicks mean anything when you see Chaplin’s slapstick unfurling. Some may prefer Buster Keaton or—God forbid—the Three Stooges, but for my money there’s no single comedian who can make one marvel, feel, and laugh with as much equal measure. There’s no such thing as a bad Chaplin movie.
*Modern Times is largely silent, but has some synced dialogue, more as a matter of commentary than anything else.
**By way of confession: I may be the last person on the face of the Earth who is not completely convinced adding synchronized dialogue to motion pictures was actually a good idea.