Director: Charles Chaplin
The transition that happens from The Great Dictator to Monsieur Verdoux doesn’t only reflect on the state of the man who had now found himself a public enemy, but a bleakness inherent to a culture in recovery from war. In the previous film’s final moments, Charlie Chaplin delivers one of the great humanist speeches, decrying a world that is in danger of being succumbed by hate. Similarly, Monsieur Verdoux involves a handful of speeches wherein Chaplin espouses his philosophy, but in this case it is the reflection of years of absolute moral confusion:“Numbers sanctify, my good fellow!” It is among the most damning criticisms of culture committed to the screen—if The Great Dictator‘s plea was urgent but also hopeful, in Monsieur Verdoux the battle has been lost. But what is so interesting about Monsieur Verdoux is not just how confrontational it is, but how much of a piece it is with Chaplin’s career. As with the little tramp, Verdoux is a man characterized as incredibly adaptable—this is the story of a man doing what it takes to survive, only whereas the tramp might find an innocent way of coming across a meal, Verdoux’s perversion of what it means to make a living is a direct reflection of the human savagery that is paramount to his cultural context.
Director: Charles Chaplin
Though it is one of his most broadly comedic features, the ending of Charlie Chaplin’s The Circus is perhaps the most tragic of all of his silent comedies. It is the antithesis of the final shot of Modern Times – having failed at winning the girl, his figure in the desolate landscape is a sight that communicates longing, even if the pop in his step has not left him. Though Chaplin would release two more silent features in the thirties, the image is an appropriate, bittersweet send-off for the tramp in the final full year of sound, walking alone into the distance as his place within the world literally gets up and goes. The making of The Circus was famously riddled with disasters and, during production, Chaplin was in the middle of a bad divorce. In Roger Ebert’s review of the picture, he lists, “his funds were in disarray, the talkies were coming and yet his Little Tramp carried off unperturbed”, which discredits the, if not cynicism, restlessness within Chaplin. As a romancer, this is the tramp at his most bitter and, after being left behind, he has no choice but to keep on moving. Chaplin’s personal traumas no doubt crept into this conclusion – akin to Ethan Edwards of The Searchers, he is destined to be a wanderer, cursed to be alone.
Director: Charles Chaplin
Note: The star rating is for the 1942 version.
In 1942, Charles Chaplin re-released his 1925 feature, The Gold Rush, with added narration, a new score, and a few cuts. The resulting picture is not nearly as good as the original. Chaplin’s added narration adds little and often works to the film’s detriment. Much of the humor of silent gags is in what is unspoken – by hearing just what a frustrated character is saying when dealing with the tramp, many of the biggest laughs are eliminated. Additionally, in cutting the kiss from the end of the picture (in 1925, Georgia Hale and Chaplin were a couple, and, by the time of the re-release, they had split and the kiss was cut significantly), it takes away from the tramp’s ultimate redemption, ridding the picture of a fully satisfying conclusion to what is otherwise one of his greatest romances. Nonetheless, The Gold Rush is among Chaplin’s most likable pictures, and perhaps only City Lights has moments as heartbreaking as the tramp feeling as though he’s been abandoned on New Years Eve. Additionally, the sense of scale is much more significant than in many of his pictures – the relatively exotic locale and the use of miniatures distances the feature aesthetically from the rest of his oeuvre.
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