Wednesday, January 09, 2008

Please forgive my absence I have spent the last few days in the agony of Salmonella poisoning from bad Salmon in a bad cream sauce.  Now, as much as possible, back to work.  Did spend my time finishing the Chaplin interviews book, though.  Absolutely disgusting and disgraceful what that rotten son-of-a-bitch Attorney General did to our Charlie!  Communist my ass!  Charlie is a humanist, if any kind of ism could apply to him at all!  Yet another smear on the honor of the nation.  Unapologized for no doubt!

A Jitney Elopement (1915) Edna Purviance, who first appeared with Chaplin in A Night Out is once again the center of the piece.  Papa wants her to marry one man, she wants to marry Charlie, who she has had a secret romance with.  “You will Marry the Count!” and we are off and running!  Edna Purviance is a real key to Charlie’s world, they had a long relationship both on and off the screen, and a passionate one by all accounts.  She is the almost omnipresent Chaplin female lead.  She worked with him almost to the end, appearing in both Limelight (1952) and Monsieur Verdoux (1947).  The best of their work will come in 1916 at Mutual when Chaplin goes nuclear in his brilliance. But at this point, Chaplin is growing in leaps and bounds. His cinematic experimentation is starting to yield really interesting fruit.

Because his scenarios are so similar, he is able to try just about every angle there is for, say, an ice cream stand, or a car chase or a foot chase.  A Jitney Elopement is really an extended experiment in car chase comedy (a Jitney is slang for a car (at the time), later slang for an informal cab-still available in New York City and Pittsburgh PA).  Slow chase, fast chase, chase in circles, people fall into car, hit by car, etc.  The ending is a real treat, as Chaplin goes to kiss the girl and is prevented by a cut to “The End”!  Very sly, very coy, prior to this, he has hidden their kisses with a mug or other object, each time acknowledged by Chaplin TO THE CAMERA, breaking the fourth wall, something that will become increasingly common in films to come.  But only a glance.  Never prolonged, just a touch in with the audience, a little, “I’m with you on this one” or “I know, I know what you ask of me”. Brilliantly restrained and measured, as always with perfect timing.

The Tramp (1915) The title piece for his character is truly a fun film. Country house with Dad and Daughter, as usual.  Tramp coming down the road is almost run over 2x by cars, and breaks fourth wall with a “you know it’s like this too!” glance.  Stops to eat and has his bread swapped out for a brick by another hobo thief.  Thief then stalks Edna, a chase, and Charlie defends her, beating the thief with the brick in a handkerchief.  “He wanted my money.”  Well, Chaplin does too!  And he takes it!  But he gives it back, and they bond.  Thief now gets 2 friends to attack as well, and Brick to head! Charlie then hits himself with the brick!  Thief 3 (hugest yet!) attacks groggy Charlie, but Charlie whales him so bad he leaps into a river.  Charlie then chases the other 2 thieves into the river, but falls in their campfire and lights his pants on fire!  He rushes to a pipe to put them out in the drainage, and gives a huge smile.  Home to papa and “As a reward you can work.”  So Charlie joins the fieldhands.  Chaos of course ensues, and an extended gag with first the pitchfork (variation of board gags), and then the hayloft, grain sacks, and ladder.  Water the orchard, Milk the cow, flirt with the daughter. Thieves plot, and as Charlie brings eggs back, they corner him.  He agrees to help them for a split of the swag they are to burgle the house that night.  Dad sees the ladder Charlie leaves for them, goes up it, and POW! Charlie (thinking him a thief) blasts him with a hammer.  He straightens him out, and dad fetches a gun.  The first thief comes up the ladder, and POW!  Followed by Dad blasting the shotgun at them.  They run over the fence, and Charlie, in hot pursuit is shot in the leg by Dad.  Nursed back to health, in love with Edna, but then Edna’s fiancé appears, and Charlie is heartbroken.  He writes a farewell note explaining that he confused their care for love, but now that he sees him “he knows it aint love”.  Charlie cries, with his back to the camera DEVASTATINGLY effective.  Then shuffles off into the sunset, back still to the audience.  This is the debut of this classic ending.  Fantastic film.

By The Sea (1915) Begins simply enough “Wifes away.”  Charlie enters down the boardwalk and slips on his own banana peel, perhaps the first banana peel ever.  It is windy at the beach and Charlie soon gets in a windy hat fight with a strawhat wearing man.  Girl comes by – flirt – Charlie now using the unconscious Strawhat as furniture!  But this woman is being awaited by a BIG man.  Strawhat and Charlie fight until they are friends and Strawhat wants to buy Charlie some ice cream.  “Have something on me” but neither actually have any money so the fight begins again, this time with the ice cream clerk as well!  The BIG guy gets ice cream in the face and joins in, throttling Strawhat.  A cop gets involved and Charlie flees to flirt with the wife.  Cop takes away Strawhat, and Big guy joins Charlie, Wife, other woman and other man on bench.  He punches Charlie and the whole bench goes over. END.

Really, this is the first Chaplin that just does not work at all.  It is just not good.  Sorry, but there it is.  It’s just weak all the way through.  The gags are stale, and the fight is not good, the Strawhat battle goes on too long, and is implausibly divided.  Too bad, but you can’t win them all. TERRIBLE ENDING!!

Work (1915) “The Ford family lived in a two passenger form fitting home at the corner of Easy Street and Hardluck Avenue.”  And we begin with Mom, Dad, and the Maid (Purviance).  Charlie is pulling a rickshaw cart with a man on it, piled HIGH with ladders, boards, and tools.  The Boss whips Charlie on. Great gag with Charlie pulling it up a “hill” created by tilting the camera and shooting a flat ground, very clever.  He battles up and then falls back down the hill (because of a banana peel at the top!) 3 times and falls down a manhole before arriving at the Ford home.  Mom is suspicious of these “commoners” and hides her silver and such in a large safe in front of them, so they make a big show of hiding their watches from HER in Charlie’s buttonable pants pocket!

Work begins, ostensibly to re-wallpaper a room.  But there is also an explosive stove that needs mending, as every time it is lit, within a minute it lets fly a huge blowout!  Heads in buckets of wallpaper paste, and Charlie dueling all with a wallpaper paste brush are the order of the day.  Suddenly, a “Secret Lover” of Mom’s shows up, and Dad is NOT AMUSED.  An attempt to pass him off as one of the workers is defeated by Charlie and Dad takes off after him with a pistol!  As he chases him into the kitchen, he shoots the stove and the whole house blows up.  Cute ending with Charlie emerging from beneath the rubble that now traps everyone and gets hit on the head with a falling brick.

This is not too bad as a story, a new variation on the same line, but the cinematic devices are interesting, especially the tilt-camera gag.

A Woman (1915) is stunning for a variety of reasons. This one is a trip.  “A happy Family” Sour Dad-Sleeping Mom-Bored and trapped daughter (Purviance) sitting on a bench in the park.  A girl goes by, and Dad ditches the sleeping women to pursue and flirt.  Chaplin enters by walking blindly through a sprinkler, and flirting with the girl (dad has gone to get her a soda).  When Dad comes back he knocks Charlie cold, and leaves with the girl, who wants to play hide and seek with him by blindfolding Dad.

Meanwhile, 2 other guys have sat down next to the recovering Charlie, and Chaplin steals a sip out of one of their sodas!  A fight ensues where Chaplin knocks Guy2 out with his own soda bottle!  He then discovers Dad, blindfolded and alone, and can not believe his luck.  He takes Dad’s bottle, and…pulls him to a carefully selected spot by the pond.  Dad feels his mustache and pulls off the blindfold just in time to get hit in the face with the bottle and kicked into the pond!  A cop appears and is also thrown into the pond by Charlie!  Charlie flees to where Mom and Daughter are asleep and begins flirting with them both.

Now, Dad finds Guy2 and they become friends.  They go for ice cream (and here Chaplin for the first time puts the camera behind the clerk, cutting his 2 characters with the counter, a thoroughly “modern” shot), but neither has any more money so they go home.  Mom and Edna have brought Chappers home and are having a fine time eating doughnuts.  Then something truly extraordinary happens, Edna and Charlie quickly, but OPENLY KISS! TWICE!!  When Dad comes home, Edna introduces Charlie and, recognition! Charlie gets his ass kicked and throttled mightily by Dad, his pants are ripped off and he escapes outside to cause a panic (he is wearing full longjohns of course and the bottom of a bathing suit to boot, which may be a droll satire on ideas of decency. Not an inch of skin showing anywhere other than face and hands.), so he flees upstairs to the girls room, which has a dressing mannequin with a dress on it inside. What to do?  Put it on, and go drag!!  This is very slyly done, with an ENORMOUS amount of visual innuendo and sexy treatment given to the disrobing of the mannequin and subsequent dressing of Chaplin.

Guy2, Dad, and Mom now fight downstairs, and Edna, fleeing upstairs, finds Charlie parading about in the hall and fairly falls down laughing.  “Lose that mustache and get some of my shoes and you’ll be perfect.”  Chaplin shaves, adds the shoes and makeup, and completes the illusion.  Now we have a huge CU of Charlie flirting with the camera! He is a passable woman!  “Now to fool Papa.”  Charlie is introduced to papa as her friend from College, and now both Dad and Guy2 begin competing for Charlie’s affections!  Several more close-ups of Chaplin in full drag flirting with the camera!  Dad throws out Guy2, Charlie’s skirt falls down, revealing the lie, but before Dad can whale him, Mom (who has been watching the whole thing with Edna!) intercepts him with a rolling pin (perhaps the first time the Rolling Pin gag is played). However, Chaplin stops Mom, and the violence with a plea for his love of Edna, and says “Come on – Shake, and your wife will never know what I know.”  Grudgingly, Dad shakes.  Then, as they laugh together, Dad throws Chaplin out the house onto the sidewalk with Guy2, who he knocks out again.  END.

This one is far out.  Gender bending, lechery, OPEN KISSING!, all manner of “naughtiness”.  It is a real departure, both in terms of the extremely liberal and ranging manner of sexual content handling, AND the variations on Camera placements and angles, use of Close Ups, and a fine ending.  The editing has jumpcuts in evidence, though these are probably just flaws in the film, as they don’t appear to be motivated or theory driven.

Well, that catches me up a little bit. Lots of Essanays still to come!

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