3 chaplin mutuals
by
Douglas Messerli
Charles
Chaplin, Vincent Bryan, and Maverick Terrell (scenario), Charles Chaplin
(director)
Easy Street / 1917
Easy Street / 1917
Charles
Chaplin, Vincent Bryan, and Maverick Terrell (scenario), Charles Chaplin
(director) The Cure / 1917
Charles
Chaplin, Vincent Bryan, and Maverick Terrell (scenario), Charles Chaplin
(director) The Immigrant / 1917
Between
1916 and 1917, Charles Chaplin directed 12 films for the Mutual Film
Corporation, including some of his very best shorts. As film historian Daniel
Eagan notes:
At Mutual, Chaplin had
unprecedented creative
freedom. He could film
whatever subject he wanted,
tell whatever story he
wanted, with whatever
characters he chose to
invent. He worked with a
hand-picked cast and
crew, and with no oversight.
There was no one to prevent him from
reshooting a
a scene, or to keep
shooting one until he felt he got
it right, or to
completely alter a finished scene or
remove characters and
situations, or decide not to
release a completed film
at all.
Is
it any wonder that Chaplin was later to comment that this was the happiest time
of his life.
The other day, I joyfully reexamined
three of these wonderful Mutual films: Easy
Street, The Cure, and The Immigrant,
the latter on The National Film Registry.
Easy
Street puts the little Tramp in a very strange position, one that he would be
cast in only one other film: the role of a cop. As a lay-about hobo, Chaplin is
first seen outside a mission center, and when he determines to find warmth
within, is quickly greeted by the parishioners, who thrust a songbook before
his face and enforce him into their ritual sittings and risings. With the
encouragement of the beautiful head missionary (Edna Purviance), the tramp stays
on after the service and is somewhat “spiritually awakened” by his encounter
with her; who wouldn’t be?
If nothing else the religious encounter
encourages him to seek a job. Since a local policeman has just been attacked by
the lawless crowds of the slum in which the mission exists,
there is a new
position open at the local police station. When, unbelievably, the tramp
determines to enter the station, he is embraced with the same friendliness
given him by the churchgoers, is quickly given a uniform and club and sent off
to Easy Street, his new beat.
What the innocent new rube doesn’t know,
the director quickly shows us, as the masses pour from their slum apartments,
all of them threatening any sign of authority and similarly attacking one
another, particularly the “bully” of the group (Eric Campbell), who hates
nearly everyone, including his nearly starving wife (Charlotte Mineau)—who is
caught by the new policeman stealing a ham from a local sleeping foodseller.
But when he perceives her poverty-stricken condition, even the policeman helps
her by stealing yet further foodstuffs from the endlessly snoring purveyor.
The bully, however, is also a variation
of the “man of steel,” and, recovering, quickly breaks free of his handcuffs, returning
for revenge. After a small chase, the rookie policeman runs into a nearby
apartment to toss a stove out the window onto the villain’s head, knocking him
out.
Now the other local hoodlums swarm out of
their hovels to further threaten the law-and-order representative. In the
attack, Chaplin dives into the basement where the bully’s wife has been
trapped, accidentally sitting on a needle of a local heroin addict and,
invigorated by the drug’s effects, turns on the crowd, one by one knocking them
into submission and saving the day, a prelude of the events in Modern Times where the imprisoned tramp
accidentally saves the authorities from a planned prison break.
If it’s strange to think of wife-beating
and drug addiction as the subjects of a 1917 film, let alone a Chaplin comedy,
his next film, The Cure, dealt with
drugs even more openly, in this case the drug being alcohol. This time a
clearly alcoholic tramp visits a health spa, where the visitors have gathered
to drink the miracle waters which are said to cure them from the desire for
liquor.
The Chaplin figure has not only arrived
with a large suitcase filled with spirits but is
already drunk.
And much of the humor of this film concerns those pure waters which The
Inebriate skirts with the intensity of the later W. C. Fields. Time and again
the others demand that he drink the waters, while he causally steps in and out
of the sacred well from which their restorative medicine emanates.
Once again, the Chaplin regulars, Eric
Campbell and Edna Purviance, play major roles. This time round Campbell plays a
Man with Gout, upon whose painful toe, The Inebriate steps time and again, and
Purviance, The Girl, yet another beauty who helps the Chaplin figure to
convert.
Among the many other figures, moreover,
is a hotel porter, who, upon discovering The Inebriate’s cash of liquor,
joyfully imbibes, and a hotel masseur that appears to be interested in torture
than bodily relief.
The major event in this ironic film
occurs when the spa head discovers The Inebriate’s stash and orders its
destruction. The half-drunk porter tosses the bottles from Chaplin’s window
directly into the holy waters below, and…inevitably and deliciously, we soon
begin to see the immediate effects, first upon the smug trio of women who have
been proffering the water’s healing effects, and then upon the rest of the spa
guests, who go into a kind of mad somewhat orgiastic series of dances, almost
like something out of a later Fitzgerald novel.
Demanding, yet again, that The Inebriate
take up the cup, these revelers finally convince him to grin and bear it. Of
course, the results are totally expected, and his utter drunkenness severs any
relationship he might have imagined with The Girl.
The next day, however, when she discovers
what has happened, she forgives him and the reformed Tramp and she walk off
hand in hand.
Most of the “fun,” if you can describe
it as that, of the first part of this bi-parte story, is about the simple
swaying motion of the boat. People, living in abject conditions, are comically
swung across the decks, bowls of gruel spin across the communal eating tables,
and everything and everyone appears in eternal motion, like the passengers
themselves, neither here nor there. Chaplin captures the very personal emotions
of the travelers through his swinging camera and rotating objects: there is
quite literally no stability anymore in their lives.
When they finally see the great symbol of
their acceptance, The Statue of Liberty, they are suddenly cordoned off by a
rope, as if a wall has suddenly suspended them of their hopes. Today no one can
see this moment without thinking of Trump’s bans and plans for immigrant
control. When we realize that later, this scene alone, was brought up as
evidence that Chaplin was anti-American, we can only wonder today what that
might say of our President
The second “act” of this “comedy” occurs
in a cheap Lower East Side restaurant where the tramp figure accidently
reencounters his would-be lover, Purviance. He has just found a coin, and is
out to enjoy a sumptuous meal of beans, and is delighted to be able to treat
her to the same. However, we have just observed that the coin has fallen
through his the holes in his pocket, and, like the happy young diners of Hello, Dolly!, he is about to be met
with hostility and embarrassment when it comes time to pay the bill.
We watch, in anticipation, as others are
humiliated and even beaten (again by the bully figure of Campbell) for their
inability to pay, as he gradually discovers the coin is missing. When he
finally finds that coin, that has also fallen from other’s pocket, the whole tension
of the film shifts to the heavy shoes of the waiter and the tramp, as they step
over and try to reel in the piece of silver which might oust or save the two
diners from any position in the society into which they have now entered. It is
truly a matter of inside/outside; might they, at least, enjoy a simple dinner
or will they be tossed into the wilds of the street?
Chaplin, always the believer of the
ideal, ends the film on the positive, literally picking up his would-be fiancée
and taking her into a small marriage bureau to tie the knot. This immigrant
dream ends most happily, even if we cannot even imagine how the two might
survive in their new world.
Los Angeles,
March 13, 2017
No comments:
Post a Comment