The Chaplin Revue/The Circus/City Lights Review

• 10th Nov 2010

Today, Charlie Chaplin is not revered as once he might have been. However, still remains one of the iconic symbols of cinema alongside Marilyn Monroe, James Dean and E.T. The collection here should help to re-establish that impression (even though Modern Times, 1936 is omitted here). Why he may not be regarding as highly (except by the critics and the French, which I shall return too later) may be for obvious reasons such as the fact that the films are silent or may be to do with their heavy emphasis on sentimentality which permeate most of his films. In Black Adder Goes Fourth Chaplin becomes the butt of Rowan Atkinson’s character when Black Adder is asked to put on a musical revue which has only added to Chaplin’s dismissal. Maybe it’s as simple as watching it with an audience on a screen as part of a mass watching of his comedies. Anybody experiencing a Chaplin experience like this has always said that the audience still laugh out loud.

The three films collected here are all introduced by Chaplin biographer, David Robinson, who gives his own both personal and intellectual introductions to each film, as well as the excellent 2003 Chaplin Today documentaries made by French companies MK2/France 5, each giving excellent background context to the making of, reception and analysis of the films in focus, as well as outtakes not included in the final films that help to give an insight into Chaplin’s meticulous filmmaking process. They also include interviews with Chaplin as he talks about his filmmaking process. The French intelligentsia have always revered Chaplin, as they have other comic icons, such as Woody Allen and made them more popular in France than in their native countries and in this way are the torch carriers of Chaplin; Chaplin Today perfectly highlights this notion.

The Chaplin Revue was made in 1959 and consists of three of Chaplin’s short films dating from between 1917-1923: A Dog’s Life, Shoulder Arms and The Pilgrim, all of which were re-edited and narrated by Chaplin himself. In the 50s there was a growing nostalgia for Hollywood’s silent past. The studios had begun destroying old films and as a result some wanted to revive the more enduring silent comedies from the likes of Harold Lloyd, Buster Keaton, the Keystone Cops and began adding a sound narration to these films. Shoulder Arms is perhaps historically the most interesting in that it was made in 1918 and is a comedy dealing with the First World War. Taken in the context of the time it was made, this must have been a cause of much nervousness for Chaplin given the millions killed and the global trauma the Great War created. As ever, Chaplin pulled it off. In it he plays a doughboy who defeats the German army and captures them single handedly and capturing some officers, only to wake up and discover that it was just a dream. Released just two weeks before the war ended it is never the less a brave attempt to make light of the horrors of the First World War. The film that precedes Shoulder Arms is A Dog’s Life and has the tramp co-starring with a dog, who in some scenes steals the show. In this short Chaplin abandons his cane, one can only guess in order that he can carry the dog (and stuff him down his trousers). This film, as with most of Chaplin’s shorts is about the struggles of survival in the city as he brings his childhood poverty to the fore (he was born near the Elephant and Castle in London, just opposite the Walworth Market), his theatrical music hall career with the Fred Karno Company, meshed here as a tragi-comedy about life. He also draws on the comparison with the dog’s existence without that of ‘the little fellow’ as both the dog and the tramp pilfer for food in order to survive on the streets. There is also a grim realism about the struggle of the poor and the dirt of the streets that was unparalled in cinema for many years. Linking A Dog’s Life with Shoulder Arms, Chaplin speeds up his narration so as not to interrupt the link with too much dialogue. Once again this narration merely serves as an irritant. The final film has the tramp as a convict who has escaped from prison, disguised himself as a religious minister and made his way down to Devil’s Gulch, a small town in Texas. All three include a later score written by Chaplin himself and even a song written and performed by Matt Monro, none the less, for The Pilgrim, ‘Bound for Texas’ (there was another song sung by Chaplin during the open titles of The Circus while heroine Merna Kennedy swings on the high hoops). Co-starring in all three shorts are Chaplin’s regular co-star Edna Purviance and his elder half-brother, Sydney Chaplin, himself a veteran from the Fred Karno Company like his brother. Introducing and concluding each film Chaplin provides a narration, energetically voicing over the films in which he sounds more like a fast talking executive than a great comic film star (of course he was both). As such he can only lead the viewer to be thankful that he never turned to sound for many of his films until The Great Dictator in 1940. Indeed even in that classic propaganda comedy, Chaplin’s never seemed to fit except in the Hitler-like speech. Narrating the tramp as “the little fellow” becomes annoying after a while, but thankfully he never talks over the films themselves and the three shorts stand out as gems on their own.

On another disc is The Circus (1928), perhaps one of Chaplin’s most underrated and magical films that has a poetic romantic appeal permeating it throughout with its circus folk and such the like. The story revolves around Chaplin being falsely accused of pick pocketing and is chased by a policeman who follows him into a circus. His chase antics go down a storm with the audience and he is hired as an unintentional clown. The plot and background of the film allows for an ideal platform for Chaplin’s physical comedy (could there have been any other kind in the silent age). One of the reasons for its dismissal as a masterpiece may have been down to Chaplin’s own dismissal of the film due to its troubled production. Not that Chaplin himself thought that the film was bad, merely that the production was so fraught with troubles that he would rather just have forgotten about the whole experience. During the films long production he faced a very public and scandalous divorce from his wife, Lita Grey who tried to get all of Chaplin’s assets seized, leading him to hide the film stock that had been shot thus far. On top of that a gale destroyed some of the sets and props and a later fire destroyed more sets. In addition, many of the exteriors had to be re-shot when it was found that a fast growing Hollywood had developed around him. Cinema too, was changing as the talk of the town was the shooting of the first talking picture, The Jazz Singer. This was the age of modernity, mass entertainment and an age when music hall pantomime and circuses were becoming old fashioned. This in itself would not have such a direct impact on The Circus as it would on the other film in this collection, City Lights. Setting the film in a circus shows off Chaplin’s pantomime skills in a kind of comedia delle arte manner, highlighting, as the Chaplin Today documentary states that Chaplin saw himself as a pierrot type of clown. Perhaps this film was Chaplin’s wish fulfillment come true.

The other film in the set is City Lights, an uncompromisingly sentimental classic in Chaplin’s oeuvre about a tramp who falls in love with a blind flower seller and tries to get the money together to cure her blindness. Many have considered this to be Chaplin’s masterpiece. From the start of the film he had the idea that the film would be about blindness. This is emotionally highlighted in the films conclusion in which the blind girl is cured and sees her benefactor for the first time, only to be disappointed that he is not the millionaire she thought he was, but a clownish little tramp. This is probably one of the most moving and sentimental scenes in cinema history made great by both Chaplin’s direction and expression, as well as the expression of disappointment written on heroine Virginia Cherrill’s face. This scene could be picked as one of a handful of key moments in his career. 20-year-old Cherrill, unlike his other leading ladies, such as Edna Purviance and Georgia Hale Chaplin, did not have a close bond with him. She was an inexperienced actress, something Chaplin did not have a problem with, as well as a socialite and divorcee, but he had a difficult on-set relationship with her. She did not take the shooting seriously and often would leave the set early. Chaplin tried to sack her and replace her with Hale, his previous leading lady from The Gold Rush (1924), but shooting was too far down the line. However, her performance is wonderfully understated and acts as the blind girl perfectly.

City Lights was made in 1931, more than three years after the introduction of sound. The film is not, in the strictest sense of the word a totally silent film as it included a synchronized music score written by Chaplin and sound effects. You cannot help but feel that he was actually mocking the craze for talkies right from the opening scene. It opens with the city mayor and various dignitaries giving speeches, but their voices are just a comical noise, not too dissimilar to the voice of the teacher in the Charlie Brown cartoons. Elsewhere, sound effects are used as comic tools such as the bell ringing in the famous boxing scene and another using a whistle. Even the opening title card reads ‘A Comedy Pantomime Written, Directed and Produced by Charles Chaplin’. These examples show how Chaplin saw sound as both a threat and a challenge, or a tool that he could use to comic effect. With sound, the gauntlet had been thrown down and Chaplin remained defiant and held out against sound with his next film, Modern Times in 1936 and it wasn’t until The Great Dictator in 1940 that he used sound properly as Hollywood intended.

Robinson’s introduction and the accompanying Chaplin Today documentaries explain how lengthy and difficult the production of the films were and puts Chaplin into a social and historical context. To add to the mix, Chaplin was a perfectionist who would sometimes use 300 takes to shoot a scene. With the Chaplin Today twenty minute or so documentaries I found myself rediscovering Chaplin again after years of considering his films over sentimental and think it is time to look once again at his career and it may well be the accompanying extras that help me to re-evaluate.

The extras on all the discs could, quite frankly not have been better and the transfers are outstanding, including footage of Winston Churchill visiting the set of City Lights. Park Circus have an outstanding set of classics in their catalogue, although the cover sleeves do make the discs merely look like budget DVDs. These are excellent additions to Park Circus’s already outstanding collection of Chaplin films and early next year they plan to release a later Chaplin tragic drama, Limelight (1952), a very different film indeed.

Chris Hick