Charles Chaplin and his character Charlot
Film Art
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Charles Chaplin and His Character Charlot
Charles Chaplin created Charlot at the beginning of 1914 for a film called Mabel’s Strange Predicament (this one was released after the next one he made, called Kids Auto Races).
Chaplin told how the character was born: “I had no idea what makeup to put on. I did not like my getup as the press reporter. However, on the way to the wardrobe, I thought I would dress in baggy pants, big shoes, a cane, and a derby hat. I wanted everything a contradiction: the pants baggy, the coat tight; the hat small, and the shoes large. I was undecided whether to look old or young, but remembering Sennett had expected me to be a much older man, I added a small mustache, which, I reasoned, would add age without hiding my expression. I had no idea of the character. But the moment I was dressed, the clothes and the makeup made me feel the person he was. I began to know him, and by the time I walked on to the stage he was fully born.”
In this description, Chaplin uses a key word: “contradictory.”
His humor is based on contradictions, contrasts, and counterpoints: a tramp with the clothes, manners, and dignity of a gentleman; someone as clumsy as he is naïve, but at the same time quite clever at figuring out how to survive, to escape from authority, and to play tricks on the powerful and rich; poor to the point of having to eat his shoe, but with a heart of gold and an unequaled generosity. And above all: the stories of this vagabond are an encounter between tragedy and comedy, between cruelty and laughter. As a result, they are as amusing as they are endearing and loving.
This is how Chaplin sees life: “Life is a tragedy when seen in close up, but a comedy in long shot.”
Charlot is a tramp that makes the audience laugh out loud and moves it at the same time. There is also a key point in his stories that is usually common in physical comedy or slapstick (the physical, gestural humor that silent films imposed), which is social criticism: both the powerful, embodied in rich people who despise their surroundings, and the agents of order who unjustly persecute the humble, are always ridiculed and beaten. And working-class audiences loved that. Chaplin says: “An old man slips on a banana and falls slowly and stumbles and we don’t laugh. But if it is done with a pompous, well-to-do gentleman who has exaggerated pride, then we laugh.”
There is also vindication in laughter.
People loved Charlot, and so he starred in one film after another and in countless short films until Modern Times (1936), twenty-two years after his first appearance.
Image: Charlot in The Kid (Charles Chaplin, 1921)
Recommended links:
Georges Méliès and the Magic of the Cinema.
The Three Beginnings of Cinema.
The First Comedy Film of the History of Cinema.
The Golden Age of Hollywood (Classic Hollywood Cinema).
The Best American Movies in History according to the American Film Institute.
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