Professor David Peimer
Chaplin, Part 1: Global Icon, Comic Genius, Outsider
Professor David Peimer - Chaplin, Part 1: Global Icon, Comic Genius, Outsider
- So, hi everybody, and hope everybody is well everywhere. And so today, because we are obviously in the early part of the 20th century in America, going to dive into, for me, one of the great, great comic geniuses, and I’ll use that word very advisedly, and obviously icons, well, obviously of the 20th century, but of all time. And I think that’s all too often dismissed, you know, in certain ways but I think this guy is absolutely brilliant. What I want to do today is look at a couple of, obviously there’s so much work, so many films, it is just so many things that he did, but look at a couple of key scenes, which I think demonstrate just his real brilliance as a creator, a writer, a performer, composer, everything. And director, I mean, did he did it all. And a little bit about his life, not too much, ‘cause I’m sure many people know the story or a fair amount of the story of his life. So I’m just going to touch on a few aspects of that. And I’m going to focus more on two films today. One clip from from City Lights, which is absolutely iconic. And then just a few from The Gold Rush and obviously The Great Dictator. And it’s quite extraordinary watching The Great Dictator again. I watched it again to prepare for today, and just how contemporary so many of the ideas, so many of the things are. And obviously it’s a satire on the Nazis and Hitler, but the understanding of dictatorship, the understanding of authoritarianism is so brilliant, the understanding of satire is remarkable. And it’s coming up for a hundred years later, broader than obviously just the Nazis that he’s satirising. So going to have a look at some of those things today, and how the comedy really, really works.
Just to start about Mr. Chaplin, if we can go on to the next slide, please. So this is one of the great pictures of, to me, two of the great remarkable individuals of the last century and centuries, obviously Einstein and Chaplin. And whether it’s anecdotal or not, we don’t know, but they really admired each other, respect for each other, and there was such a humanity one senses when you look at where they met, how they met, what they apparently said to each other, things like that. Whether this is an anecdote or not, it doesn’t matter. It makes for great, great thought. Apparently Einstein said to him, “Well, you don’t say a word Mr. Chaplin, "and yet the world understands you.” And Chaplin replied, “Well, the world admires you, "even though they don’t understand a word of what you say.” So it’s this very clever, witty repertoire between them. Having said that, these are two outsiders, and I think, what I want to really focus on today is how Chaplin, for me, Einstein represents the psychologically secure outsider. He’s not the insecure, neurotic, anxious, outsider Jewish person, obviously, Einstein. And Chaplin is the outsider who’s also not as neurotic, as sometimes may be portrayed. He’s always up to standing up to authority, as he said, trying to give it a kick in the pants, always trying to show the human side of what’s going on. And I’m talking about in his art, I’m not talking about in the life. 'Cause that’s a whole different discussion, and rumours and truth, et cetera, just in the work itself and the impact on audiences, and how he could be so global and not local, which is an incredible achievement given his background and where he comes from, everything.
And to do it so young and so quickly. So Chaplin, for me, together with Einstein, it’s not only because these two are obviously brilliant individuals, but they’re outsiders. The one is a secure, a psychologically secure outsider, Einstein, the other is, to a certain degree, also secure in his creativity, in his art. He might have been far more insecure in his life, that’s a whole different story, with his marriages, children, many other things. But he’s so secure in what he knows, what he wants, and how to make it happen in film. And what we see with The Tramp is, ironically, a secure outsider. We don’t see a neurotic. Whenever he’s kicked down, he gets up and fights back, and he does it with dignity. And there lies part of the brilliance. He doesn’t do it with a sense of loss or pain or anger or fury or rage, 'cause he’s at the bottom of the ladder, of the social economic class, but every time, whether he’s kicked down by whoever, whenever, gets up, fights back, not only with a smile, but with dignity. He’s always going to pick up his cane, he’s always going to put on his hat. He’s always going to just ruffle, you know, just get his his suit jacket back in shape. He’s a tramp, but he’s got dignity for himself and therefore dignity for others. And for me, that is part of the genius of Chaplin’s understanding of how to make comedy. I’m going to show not only that, but other ideas as we go along. When the Nazis came to power, interestingly, Chaplin and all his films were banned by the Nazis.
They believed for quite a while, they believed that he was Jewish, or whether it was that or just they sent out the propaganda and of course, they banned The Gold Rush. Can you believe it? Which has nothing to do with being Jewish. And obviously, they banned The Great Dictator and most of his other works as well. So they are threatened by, the satirist is always the first to be banned or killed or decimated in any dictatorship. It’s always the satirist. Well, and then, of course, writers come straight after. When he made The Great Dictator, he said, “I did this film for the Jews of the world,” completely aware, he may not have been aware of what obviously what was going on because he did it in the early '40s, but he understood the spirit of the times and what was going on and the absolute obvious, the hate and the annihilation, extermination of Jewish people. He understood what was happening in this case, an pretty obviously extreme dictatorship. So I mentioned this because I want to draw together the sense of the outsider, 'cause I think that is part of his vision and part of what makes him so iconic. His career spans 75 years. It begins in childhood in the Victorian era, and goes all the way through the 20th century. Childhood in London, it’s a poverty and hardship. Father, absent. Mother struggling financially, he was sent to a workhouse. We can imagine a Dickens-type, you know, Artful Dodger, Oliver Twist-type workhouse. I mean, horrific conditions, sent to a workhouse as a kid before he was nine years old. Can you imagine today, our own children going to a workhouse before they’re nine years old in the Dickensian, late Victorian times? when he was 14, his mother was committed to a mental asylum.
Now, both his parents apparently, said his mother, were Vaudeville musical entertainers. And he said he learned a lot from his mother at a very, very young age. So he loses his father very young, his mother’s committed when he is 14 to mental asylum, and he’s living in a work house in utter poverty. The chances of somebody like this actually emerging, just getting out and making enough money to put bread on the table, to have a family, is extraordinary. But then, to go all the way into Hollywood and then to go global, I mean, for me, it’s a phenomenal achievement of sheer tenacity and determination and creative intelligence. So by 1918, he’s pretty young, he’s one of the world’s most famous persona, or figures. 1919, he co-founds the distribution company, United Artists, we all know. First feature film was The Kid, 1921, and then The Gold Rush in 1925. City Lights was 1931, Modern Times, '36. And the first sound film that he made, of course, we all know The Great Dictator in 1940, the satire on Hitler and the Nazis, which I’m going to show you some clips of all of them. The FBI had a file on him for many, many years. Completely insane. You know, is he Communist? Is he this, is he that, is he a threat? I mean, completely ridiculous. I’m not going to go into all of that because that would take us into a whole different discussion.
But anyway, he finally felt he had to leave the US and go to settle in Switzerland. Chaplin wrote, directed, produced, acted, starred in, composed, edited all or most of his films. That’s an incredible achievement for any filmmaker on the planet of any time. He was a complete crazy, or obsessed, if you like, perfectionist. And of course there’s slapstick, but there’s also pathos, there’s physical comedy. There’s the sense of combining comedy with tragedy. And he’s so aware, if you read his autobiography, it’s brilliant. And how he’s understood how comedy and tragedy are so close to each other. He just gives one very simple example. So simple. If you take the old gag, you know, of a, let’s say a young guy, walking with a friend down the pavement, and the friend slips on a banana peel, everybody laughs. Young guy walks down the same pavement with his grandmother who’s elderly and a bit frail and needs a stick. She slips and falls on the banana peel, tragedy. So he plays with ordinary banal gags and situations, he understands, he writes about this in his autobiography. He understands all situations and that very fine line between comedy and tragedy and which is which, and how do you find the comedy in facing horrific adversity. The Tramp, of course, struggles against adversity. There are social themes, there are political themes. It’s partly autobiographical. All of these things obviously all come into Chaplin’s creation of one of the most iconic characters and the most remarkable characters, I think, ever created, The Tramp.
And it’s fascinating always that it’s the tramp, the little guy at the bottom, you couldn’t get closer to the bottom of the rung, you know. But he was an outsider and a survivor and a fighter, and he will win no matter what. And he’s got dignity, and he can put a smile on his face, even though he’s right at the bottom. And I think all these qualities that Chaplin understood so young, to put into The Tramp, make this character global, that anybody in almost any culture can understand. Whether it’s the more optimism of American comedy and the quick, you know, the one-liner, the gag, and the character, the comic characters, often the protagonist, who will find ways to outwit, or whether it’s more the English approach to comedy, where it’s more the pessimist and what things are done to the character, like Baldrick, or Black Adder, or even John Cleese in Fawlty Towers. Things are done to the character and the characteristic pick and fight back, in the comedy. In American comedy, perhaps it’s a bit more the other way around, where the character is going to outwit and overcome and is the main one, is not necessarily the bottom of the rung. Huge generalisations, but I think there is something in this. He’s able to pull two very different cultures of humour together and to be global without saying a word, as Einstein keeps reminding him. Okay, at the age of 14, he took his mother to the infirmary where she was committed to the mental asylum.
He lived alone for quite a long time afterwards, at the age of 14, in London, of these times, we can imagine very early 20th century searching for food, sleeping rough, the streets, getting a bit of a night here or there, whatever. How the hell do you go from that to becoming so huge? Artistically is such an achievement in itself. Okay, can we go on to the next slide, please? There’s a picture of him when he is seven years old. If you look in the middle, you’ll see the picture of this guy with his head slightly forward and the angle right in the middle of a picture. That’s Charlie Chaplin, seven years old in the workhouse with fellow orphans, workhouse boys, basically, barely any education, very minimal. Okay, if we can go to the next slide, please. And these are some iconic pictures, of course. There, one of his very early films, A Dog’s Life. In the middle, he’s young and he’s able to get to a school. He’s probably in his early teens, We’re not quite sure, playing Sherlock Holmes in a little play, in a very little play, as part of the little school that he went to for a little bit. And then of course, the one on the right, you know, the picture that we all know so well from The Kid. Very different images, but it shows to me something of the little boy and where he is going to get to, and the outsider and who the outsider identifies with. He is of the same level of a dog, give a dog a bone. In a social class, social ladder, that’s where the character is at. The character is treated like a little street urchin or street orphan here in The Kid. The Tramp identifies with all of those, we can see so clearly.
He wrote, “I wanted everything of The Tramp "to be a contradiction. "The baggy pants, the tight coat, "all these things are contradictions. "The baggy pants, tight coat, the hat too small, "the shoes too big. "I added a small moustache to age myself more. "The moment I was dressed, the clothes, the makeup, "made me feel who the tramp was. "And by the time I walked on stage "or to be filmed, the character was born.” So some actors love working through costume makeup first, and they can start to feel the character in that way. We call it, in theatre language, working from the outside in, or from the physical and from the outside, the costume, the clothing, et cetera, outside in. Not only the inside out, which is more the emotional world. So by 1915, he’s a cultural phenomenon. He was attacked by the British media during the first World War for not going and fighting in the trenches. He defended himself, very young age. Dog’s Life is made in 1918, and The Tramp is more conceived as a sad clown. That’s interesting. He’s more of a sad clown, but by the time he’s moving into the next and the next films, he’s more, the tramp who will kick back, fight back, survive no matter what, wits and full of dignity. Yes, he may be treated as a dog or ignored completely, but got all these other qualities, as well. By 1917, he was signed to complete eight movies for a million dollars. Incredible achievement from where he came from and where he’s is gone to with virtually no education or so little, no connections, no network, nothing. He joins Douglas Fairbanks, Mary Pickford, and the great film director, DW Griffith, to form United Artists 1919. And it was revolutionary at the time in the film industry because it enabled four creative artists to fund their pictures themselves and therefore have complete artistic control over the script, the acting, the directing, the editing, everything. Completely rare. And then The Kid on the right hand side, 1921.
And that’s one of the first for me, which combine comedy and let’s call it tragedy or serious drama in a way. The Gold Rush is where he, the tramp, is a lonely prospector, and he’s fighting adversity, as the tramp always does, and looking for love. Cost almost a million dollars, which is incredible at the time, and he took 15 months of making. He’s an absolute perfectionist, Charlie Chaplin, and will do a take a scene again and again and again, you know, hundreds of times until he feels he got it right. Total perfectionist on every single thing. And I think that’s part of his insecurity, but also it’s part of what makes it so brilliant. By 1925, he’s the first movie star ever to appear on the cover of Time Magazine. So okay, can we go on to the next slide, please? There’s a picture of Oona O'Neil, who was his fourth wife, and she’s 18 when she marries him, and he, of course, is in his early 50s, and she’s the daughter, of course, of one of my favourite playwrights of all time, Eugene O'Neill, we all know, Long Day’s Journey Into Night and others, Moon for the Misbegotten, other plays. Brilliant writer. He was furious because of the age difference, and he basically disowned his daughter. But the marriage works, they stuck together for many, many years afterwards. And there seems to have been real mature understanding between the two of them from what we can gather, and that there was finally some sense of calm, peaceful, or let’s call it love. On the left hand side, were the first Chaplin Studios in America. Okay, I want to show the first clip, which is from City Lights.
This is one of the great classic clips of all time, which really illustrates Chaplin’s sheer comic brilliance and understanding of the art of film and how to create a sketch. 'Cause I mean, a lot of his stories are, they’re like a collection of sketches which are brilliantly coordinated and put together to make the whole. But he is very aware, I think it comes from his musical and Vaudeville early days in London and early Days in America, going for sketches, not necessarily a full long piece. So he spent a lot of time on this one and in City Lights. This scene that I’m going to show you, he took over 400 takes of the scene. I mean, it is insane. I don’t think anybody would be allowed to today 'cause you go so far over budget and you know, it could take 250, 300 days do so many takes on one scene. But he knew it was missing something and he had to get it right, and he realised that it was missing. You’ll see when the wealthy guy comes past and ignores the blind girls and gets into the car and slams the car door shut, the only sound is the sound of the car door slamming shut. And that’s how the tramp and the audience know that she’s blind. Because he faced the problem, how do we know? Without being too obvious about it, how does the tramp know or not or discover that the character’s blind without making it so obvious or needing to say something. Oh, are you blind, or are you’re not, trying to show it in a filmic way, artistically. And that is what took him so many takes, literally a couple of hundred days, redoing it again and again, firing the actress, bringing in another actress, bringing the old actress back in, all of that stuff just to get it right.
And that was the moment he realised, finally, and it’s one of the most iconically brilliant scenes, I think, if we watch it carefully, just watch how each piece is choreographed in it. Okay, if we can show it, please. If we can hold it there, please, you can just freeze it. Thanks, Jess. Can you imagine this scene? I mean, he drove the actors absolutely crazy. This, he, you know, shooting this scene again for over 250 days, going way over budget to get that image of, to finally realise what it’s lacking is how the audience going to definitely know that she’s blind without being boring, didactic about it. It needs the wealthy character, get in, slam the door shut of the fancy car. But it needs her to think, she hears that, she hears the car door closing, and then offers him change. And that’s when it fully dawns on the tramp and us, 'cause we think that she’s blind, but it fully dawns on him and us that she really is a flower seller trying to make a few pennies, and she’s blind. And the whole scene turns on that moment of the car door and the tramp and us realising, and the pathos, maybe it’s sentimental, but the pathos and the tragedy suddenly hit us in the guts. That’s, to me, Chaplin’s brilliance. This scene has been, it’s studied and it’s taught endlessly everywhere, the story of it that I’ve told you, everything. But he would not stop until he’d found the solution. And it was as simple as a car door closing. Okay, I just want to hold it there for a moment, just on this here.
Chaplin also spent two years developing the script for The Great Dictator. He was so disturbed by the surge of militaristic dictatorship and nationalism in the '30s, two years on the script. Interesting that he began filming six days after Britain declares war in Germany in September, 1939. Churchill, FDR see it, they really, really rave about it, and so are many others. Interesting. In 2003, the British archives of the of the British Foreign Office declassified some documents which revealed that George Orwell had secretly accused Charlie Chaplin of being a secret closet communist. And the British Secret Service had kept a file on Chaplin for many years. I mean, quite incredible. I suppose if we understand the level of paranoia, we can understand, but it’s about communism. And during the war years, it’s not about is he a Nazi or isn’t he, or whatever. But you can understand the zeitgeist of paranoia and anxiety that obviously exists in those times to think, well this one a communist, is this one a Nazi? Is this one a, you know, et cetera. You know, as we feel in our own times, people accusing left, right and centre. This one is far left, this one far right, this one, it’s, it goes round and round in times when the fault lines crack open a society and mass anxiety, almost hysteria starts to take over paranoia and many other things kick in. When he went to Switzerland in 1953 to when he moved to live there, he wrote up being the object of lies by powerful reactionary groups with the aid of the Yellow Press of America, and the world created an atmosphere in which liberal open-minded individuals can be singled out and persecuted. You know, and he’s a very wealthy guy.
There’s nothing, obviously he’s not communist, and I think it’s this mixture of pathos, slapstick tragedy, serious sentimentality, understanding of how physical comedy works when you show it scene for scene, and when you show it in a simple relationship between, in this case, a tramp, a passerby, and a flower girl, and that she’s blind. But how do we get the maximum empathy from the audience for the blind flower girl? That’s what he’s finding out. And how do we get the maximum empathy for the tramp character? Notice every time, again, putting his jacket together, putting his hat on. It’s all about grooming himself, still has dignity no matter what. He will not be destroyed by the system. So given the times that he was living, he took almost more time than anybody else to complete the movies in The Kid. He averaged over 50 takes for each scene in the movie. I mean, it’s quite insane and extraordinary. He writes in his autobiography, “for sheer perseverance "to the point of my own madness.” A relentless perfectionism. But he also writes how he tried to move away from conventional slapstick by exhausting each scene of its comic potential. And it’s a greater focus on developing characters, and this is radical at the time because it’s so early on in the 20th century. Filmmaking itself is so early, it’s such early days. And he wants to develop character in silent film. They’re not just stock character or they’re not just simple banal stereotypes or just silly.
He’s trying to find all these emotional qualities of comedy, tragedy, you know, all these different things, plus show social commentary, if you like. The tramp’s attitude to things that happened to him. The humour doesn’t come from the tramp bumping into a tree, but from lifting his hat to the tree in apology. He talks about this in his autobiography. So not just he walks and he bumps into a tree or falls over, but it’s that afterwards, he’ll pick up his hat and his cane and put his hat on, get himself together. He’s so intelligently aware. That’s where the humour really lies, he’ll push it a little bit further. There’s a serious demeanour in the midst of slapstick. And that’s a whole different way of looking at comedy, as well. This is really what he’s doing very powerfully. You know, the tramp can survive in a hostile world. I think obviously this is what people globally can connect with. The tramp lives in poverty. He’s treated badly, but he remains kind and upbeat. He’s defying his social position, and he strives to be seen as a gentleman. The irony upon irony creates that humour. These are the layers. Chaplin wrote, and I’m quoting, “The whole point of a little fellow, "is that no matter how down on his arse he is, "no matter how well the jackals succeed "in tearing him apart, "he is still a man of quiet and angry dignity.” That dignity. I think it’s so important in understanding the character he’s created comedy. “The tramp defies authority figures,” Chaplin’s words, “and he gives as good as he gets. "He’s an every man who’s turned into an heroic saviour. "He’s homeless, he’s lonely.” The end we see him walking off on his own, but he retains a certain, call it naive, call it sentimental, optimism, not just a pessimism as he walks off to continue his journey as he walks off into the sunset at the end of all the movies that we know that he makes.
And I don’t think it’s just a sentimental, little upbeat moment, 'cause he understands, Charlie Chaplin, only too well, given his own background in life. He also writes that it’s paradoxical that tragedy can stimulate the spirit of ridicule. And it’s such an intelligent understanding of satire that tragedy stimulates the spirit of ridicule. 'Cause it is so extreme, the tragedy and ridicule, as a way of coping with adversity, terrible adversity, is such a power. And the ridicule is an act of defiance, is an attitude of defiance. And that’s what I think part of the brilliance is. But without needing to lead the charge of the cavalry, of course. “So we laugh in the face of our own helplessness "or go insane,” as Chaplin wrote. His intellectual understanding of how humour works in the two cultures, obviously, that he knew very well in America is so remarkable, I think, and the way of putting it together. Okay, I want to show the next clip, please. And this is from, this is one of the great classics from The Great Dictator.
[Narrator] Hynkel’s Palace was the centre of a gigantic enterprise, an enterprise that would build the world’s greatest war machine. Behind this undertaking was the dynamic energy of Adenoid Hynkel, whose amazing genius ran the entire nation, whose ceaseless activity kept him busily occupied every moment of the day.
Hup!
[Announcer] Marshall heading your way, Your Excellency.
Enough.
Hail Hynkel. Your Excellency, I believe we’ve got something now. A bulletproof uniform, material as light as silk.
Where is it?
I’ve arranged for a demonstration in the anteroom. It would only take two minutes.
[Adenoid] I can spare one.
Professor Herr Kibitzen.
Hail Hynkel, Your Excellency, actions speak louder than words, a bulletproof uniform.
And 100% perfect.
Shoot.
Far from perfect.
That moment is brilliant, that little trip. My secretary, where is she?
In the outer office, Your Excellency.
Call her.
Yes, sir.
Hail Hynkel.
Take a letter.
No, no, no! Oh.
Hello?
[Herring] This is Marshall Herring. I’m in the tower room. We’ve got something marvellous.
All right, I shall be up. What is it?
A parachute, the most compact in the world. Worn like an ordinary hat. Will open in 25 feet. Demonstrate, Professor.
Hail Hynkel!
Herring, why do you waste my time like this? Send Garbitsch here.
[Announcer] Sir Garbitsch is waiting, Your Excellency.
Enough.
For me, there are so many moments in that little clip that are such brilliant ridiculing of dictatorship. We can think of so many dictators that we know today. The size of the space, the size of the table, the desk, the size of the rooms, the way of everybody else is just a mindless lackey, trying to impress, trying to show, trying to go snakes and ladders up the little ladder to get it a little bit closer to the centre of dictatorship, charisma and power. And yet the dictator is this tiny little, utterly insignificant guy. You know, it just an ordinary person, but the others put so much power into it. So it’s the lackeys and the dictator. He’s satirising, and it’s so contemporary today when you look at any dictator and how they’re surrounded by just mindless lackeys. And it’s almost like an hysteria of worship and awe and mindless obsequience, not just obedience. You know, we can see his understanding of what we might call fascism, I suppose, today, or authoritarianism, just all the way through. And then popping in and having his picture done. He’s done for one second next, da da da, and all the business of the trappings of image and power and the understanding of image and power through the paintings, and through the way of showing the others, just take a gun, shoot the guy, go off. He understands it’s the image. It’s not the reality necessarily of who the person is, but it’s the projected image of such extreme power. Remarkable understanding of not just the fascist himself, but how the lackeys helped to create that dynamic and wanted, and to be so either mindless or just opportunistically obsequious. Okay, if we can go to the next clip, please.
This is from The Gold Rush, and it’s a dream sequence. So he’s a down-and-out loser, perspective for gold, and it’s freezing cold outside, it’s snowing, and he has this dream of these beautiful women coming to have a meal with him, okay? And we realise it’s a dream. What’s remarkable to me is that he’s just a down and out, a loser, you know, as I said, prospecting for gold in the middle of absolutely nowhere. It’s freezing cold, snow, and he is in a tiny little log cabin, and he has this dream. And in the dream he is dancing with two bread rolls and two forks. Not only the brilliance of the choreography of the dance of the bread rolls, but it’s a fantasy of what he’ll get when he gets all the gold, which is of course, he’ll have all the women, he’ll have all the wealth, he’ll have just everything will be literally on a plate and metaphorically on a plate for him for life. It’s so brilliantly choreographed and created, and it’s so short and yet so iconic that scene of the dancing bread rolls. What imagination does that take to just create, and it says something for me of what Chaplin often does, takes something very simple and banal, a fork and a bread roll and create a magnificent little dance sequence, which is part of a fantasy of impressing, these beautiful women, if he does get lucky and discover gold, basically. The Tramp is, and yet he’s always going to be not only dignified, but he’s always going to try and get one step ahead, and that’s also what’s shown there. It’s not just that he’s a tramp and he is got nothing, but he’ll create something out of nothing.
Bread roll and a fork. Okay, if we can show the next clip, please. And this is one of the great classic scenes in the log cabin of The Gold Rush, okay? This is the guy whose log cabin it is. And the Chaplin character’s come looking for gold. He doesn’t lose a second of trying to find something comic, as he said, he’ll exhaust the scene to find all the comic moments. So first we get that these two are in the cabin, and then we zoom out, and we see this log cabin on the snow, literally on the edge of the precipice of the cliff, and it’s going to fall over. They’re going to die or not. Dramatic tension is created, and then comes the image of the rope. You know, that is just by chance hooked onto the rock. And then even when they’re falling and slipping, the nails and trying to crawl up. It’s so detailed, and this is why he was complete obsessive perfectionist. It’s so detailed and worked out every moment for moment of the physical comedy, which is the brilliance of it as well. All these qualities together to have such a creative artist. Okay, if we can show the next slide, please. This is one of the classic scenes in the cabin of The Gold Rush. They’ve got no food, no money, no food, nothing. So one of the great iconic scenes having to eat, you know, so cook your shoe and eat it. It’s again, it’s putting together how to tell a story through just simple images. Picture for picture tells the story, glance for glance, keep it absolutely minimalist and do it through the as the great Russian filmmaker and theorist Eisenstein said, “juxtaposition of images is how you make stories in film.”
And that’s the essence of it all. But it’s so early on in filmmaking. Filmmaking itself is only a couple of years old when all of these are being done and being made so early that he understands this brand new media, which no one has ever, it’s just been invented, basically. It’s not like today, a hundred years later. It’s just been invented. No one, how are you going to do what you’re going to do? He’s taking it forward. He’s creating relationships, he’s creating characters here. He’s creating a comic scene, not necessarily a belly laugh, but witty. And you know, the tramp, I don’t think it’s just sentimental. I think it’s hard to make good situation of obvious adversity. They’ve got nothing. They haven’t got food, they haven’t got anything. They, and he’s turning it into satirical irony of well then cook a shoe. Always make a plan, always find something, a way out. And that’s part of the tramp’s brilliance, is that he’s always going to outwit or he’s going to find something to make a plan. He is the ultimate outsider as survivor, and not only survivor, but he will win in the end because he knows how to survive, and he knows what it is to be a complete outsider. You know, whether it’s the bottom of the social economic ladder or whatever. He knows how to do it through instinct or through intelligence, it doesn’t matter. And that to me is the connection, again, you know, with linking it with Einstein in a totally different way, but so obvious, with Jewishness and so many other things as well. Just that one image right at the beginning, we think, is he cooking the shoe? If we watched it for the first time, and then it dawns, then the camera just pans in on his bare foot, and the other one’s got a shoe, we get it. And we enjoy putting together the meaning in that moment. It’s such an understanding of an audience pleasure. And then we carry on with the story.
Okay, I want to show the last one, which is one of the great iconic scenes, which I’m sure everybody knows just to enjoy together. It’s such an understanding of dictatorship, not only obviously a satire on Hitler, but all the elements of the insecure, secure, paranoid, power-crazy but the understanding of what it means to have such total power and such obsequious lackeys around, and the desire for others to collude, to be the lackey, to have a little bit of influence here, a little bit of influence there. Who has the ear of Caesar? Who whispers who, where, what? You’ll see it, we’ll see in the scene. The insane fantasy satirised. The insane fantasy of dictatorship in the fantasy. We’ll see satirised. Okay, if we can show it, please?
Strange, these strike. Strange, these strike leaders, they’re all brunettes, I’d have belonged amongst them.
Brunettes are trouble-makers. They’re worse than the Jews.
Then wipe them out.
Too small, not so fast. We get rid of the Jews first, then concentrate on the brunettes.
Shall never have peace until we have a pure Aryan race. How wonderful, Tomania, a nation of blue eyed blondes.
Why not a blonde Europe, a blonde Asia, a blonde America?
A blonde world.
And a brunette dictator.
Dictator of the world.
Why not? Aut Caesar aut nullus. The world at your feet, worn out, afraid. No nation would dare to oppose you.
Dictator of the world.
It’s your destiny. We’ll kill off the Jews, wipe out the brunettes. Then will come forth our dream, a pure Aryan race.
Beautiful blonde Aryans.
They will love you, they will adore you. They will worship you as a God.
No, no, you mustn’t say it. You make me afraid of myself.
Yes, dictator of the world. We’ll start with the invasion of Osterich. After that, we won’t have to fight, we can bluff. Nation after nation will capitulate. Within two years, the world will be under your thumb.
Leave me, I want to be alone
Aut Caesar aut nullus. Emperor of the world. My dream.
Oh. So this is 1941 that he making the movie, understanding, and the whole scene set up with this insane fantasy and all to deliver the punchline with a gag at the end when the balloon bursts. And this whole insane fantasy of the power of the ego, all of it going with the dance, and of course the gag comes at the end. I think it’s not by chance one of the most iconic scenes of all filmmaking, one of the most memorable, almost a cliche today, but if we think back how long ago he made it and was anybody else even thinking like this, really understanding and how to ridicule, in his words, in Charlie Chaplin’s words, got to ridicule, even though, you know, it’s so close to tragedy. And in the ridicule is an act of defiance. It’s that final image when the balloon pops and in the attitude as the dictator, it’s ridicule, which is the essence of satire. But it’s so close to tragedy because it’s so tempting, you can just touch it of what this, of where the extremes of power are going to go.
And I think to have come up with all of this, I think he had to be such an outsider. He had to have almost come from the world that he came from and the terrible poverty and the terrible hardship of his childhood and upbringing in order to achieve this kind of work and to do so much and to have created so much and to be able to communicate in so many various cultures around the world. It’s an amazing artistic achievement for me with such a new medium. And of course the first time he’s really using sound in film as well. So I wanted to show that at the end. These are just some examples to show the range of comedy and how he’s creating it. And it’s not just the belly laughs, it’s the smiles of recognition that come often with satire. It’s very different to the more obvious big belly laugh stuff. You know, we are marvelling and we’re also smiling because it’s almost a gentle ridicule and I think often being mischaracterized as sentimental, but I don’t think he’s anything like naive like that. I think he knows exactly what he’s doing. Okay, so I’m going to hold it there and I’m going to go onto some clips from his other movies next week and some other examples of what, to me, this amazing artist achieved. Okay, and we can go on to questions. Can we just come out of this clip? Thanks, Jess. Okay.
Q&A and Comments:
Michaels, Claire Bloom, who acted in some of the films, yeah, Yeah, well it was actually Blumenthal was a distant cousin. That’s extraordinary, Michael. Distant cousin of yours, it’s incredible.
Barbara, it’s interesting. She was a distant cousin of mine, also. That’s amazing. God lockdown really is an incredible family of people connections globally, fantastic. Thanks for sharing.
Carol, Carly, my grandmother and Claire’s mother were sisters, oh God. That is also extraordinary, thanks for sharing.
Anne, I wonder if Chaplin created a story of The Kid as a way to connect his childhood. He was both the kid and the father figure. Yeah, that’s fascinating, definitely.
Q: Ronald, how did he get his first break?
A: Well, he was very popular in Vaudeville and what I suppose Vaudeville musical and went across to America, and he had some connections through Fred Karno and some others. Mack Sennett. He had a couple of connections who gave him a chance, and he proved it, and pretty early on came up with the character of the tramp or the persona. But I think it was always in his mind and forging it.
Q: Who composed the music to City Lights, Barbara?
A: As far as I know it was Chaplin. Yeah, as Monty says, it was Chaplin. He composed most of the music to all his films. Composes the music, he writes the script, he’s acting the main character, who is a tramp, and he is directing it, and he’s editing it. 'Cause he being part of the United Artists enabled, if he could fund it all, he had complete control artistically of every aspect. Music to City Lights, Arthur Johnson and Alfred Newman arranged and orchestrated, but the melodies were composed by Chaplin. Yeah, that’s great. Thanks for that.
That’s okay, Miriam, thank you. Sharon, oh, hi Miriam. David is saying hi to you, David Rappaport.
Dennis, re The Great Dictator, an interesting coincidence. Chaplin was born just four days before Hitler. I didn’t know that in April, 1889. I didn’t know. Thank you. Did you know Dennis, 7th of October was Putin’s birthday. Just share that as well. Hannah, was he a tramp in all of his films? Well, yeah, he plays the Jewish character, the Jewish barber in the great dictator. And he plays Adenoid Hynkel, obviously the Nazi leader, but pretty much the tramp in most of it. Yeah, the one final one he made about New York later with his son is a little bit different.
Jonathan, he was, apparently, yeah, we are not quite sure if his lineage was of Roma and other hereditary lines, if you like, or the lineage. But there is quite a strong sense or quite a bit of research that there was some Roma linking in his lineage.
Okay, Chaplin and Oona’s daughter, yeah. Followed the father’s acting career. Jess, was Geraldine Chaplin, absolutely. And was in Dr. Zhivago, with David Lean. Yeah, she’s a wonderful actress, Geraldine Chaplin. And obviously not The Great Dictator. Yeah, Madeleine, interestingly, Chaplin supported a Hitler moustache before Hitler came to power. Yes, and he said the moustache, he added to the persona, this is in the '20s, very, very early '20s, so he could age, 'cause he was very young, obviously, Chaplin, so he looked like a kid. But the moustache would make him look a bit older, and therefore, you know, better for the character. But it’s exactly, you know, as you’re saying, Madeline. Oh, okay.
Anna, the tune played in City Lights is called “La Violetera,” it’s a Spanish song. Oh, okay, great, thanks for that. Barbara, thank you.
Sandra, there’s a childlike innocence. Yes, I agree entirely. And that’s where he’s been accused of being sentimental. That it’s a childlike innocence, it’s naive, it’s sentimental, you know, and so on compared to some of the other comics. But when you know his life background, and when you know what he is aiming at, I don’t think it’s sentimental. There’s a reason behind it, this childlike innocence. That that is the character he’s choosing in the tramp to ridicule and satirise authority, power, fascism, to make social commentary. So many things, I think. It’s interesting that The Great Dictator has two Xs. Yeah, on his sleeve instead of the swastika, yeah. Exactly, X means wrong. Oh, thanks Glenda.
Anna, very popular song, it was composed in 1914. It’s great, thank you.
Q: Penny, did you say he was Jewish?
A: No, no. I said that the Nazis said he was Jewish, so they banned all his movies and they banned him completely, all his work. They said he was Jewish, but he wasn’t. He said, I made The Great Dictator for the Jewish people. And he completely identified with what was happening to Jewish people, obviously in the '30s, not only in the '40s, because the film was made in '41, and he spent two years on the script. So he writing the script in part of 1939, '40, into '41 a bit, just before the war.
Rose, thanks. Charlie Chaplin at his estate in Switzerland. Yeah, 10 minutes from Montreux we turned into fantastic. Oh, in interactive museum. That’s great, I didn’t know that. Thanks, Rose.
Sally, thank you. Yeah, stay safe as well, Sally, in this insane darkening and cracking world, really.
Susan, thanks. It’s Charlie Chaplin, it’s not me. You all being very kind and I appreciate, thank you very much. But it’s what Chaplin inspires in one, when one teases out, how on earth has this guy lasted so long and how on earth did he come up with all these things?
Q: Myrna, did he ever contribute to his mother’s care? He made a hell of a lot of money.
A: Well, yeah, he was in his '20s. Yeah, as far as I remember, he brought his mother over to Hollywood, yep.
Stan, The Great Dictator should be re-released. You know, Stan, when I was watching it again for today over the week, it’s extraordinary how many of the scenes we can relate to reality today. You know. The insanity of dictatorship, the insanity of, as I said, the lackeys, you know, the hysteria, the almost almost the hypnosis and the little guy who’s becoming this huge power. All of it. And the play out of power, whether it’s an Ayatollah or whether it’s a Putin or whether it’s a whoever. And obviously there are some in the west, but whoever, you know, dictators or the wannabees, how they have to perform personas, how they have to create and perform and so media aware. And what is the persona compared to the cold reality of who these little people are.
Ronald, and I think Chaplin really understood, that’s really what I want to get at. He received an honorary Oscar, yes, but not an acting Oscar. I think definitely political, no question.
Carly, my grandmother and Claire were sisters. Extraordinary, thanks for sharing.
Maria, very interesting choice of music. Complete the opposite of the image, yes. So he’s choosing, that’s what he’s constantly looking for is a contradiction. So the pants are baggy, the jacket of the tramp is too tight, the hat is a bit too small, keeps falling off. The shoes are too big. He consciously, as he writes his autobiography, he’s trying everything to be the contradiction of the obvious. So he is not dressing like a tramp would dress walking in the street. And the same here, the music is the opposite of the meaning of the scene. And that’s part of the comedy or the satire. Elaine love the double cross insignia.
Q: How many takes?
A: God, I don’t know how many it took to get this scene right, but now, you can see how it is so perfectly worked to get that timing of the letter up and there’s the tongue to lick it, you know, and then off and exactly as they’re painting when he goes to the painters and they’re doing his picture and then as the buzzer comes through the message, you know, Herr Garbitsch, which is Goebbels, of course, Herr Garbitsch, everything is so timed.
Hannah, thank you.
Very kind, Monty. I loved how he was dressed in The Gold Rush in the cabin scene, yeah. You know, the front scene. I don’t interpret the bursting of the balloon as a gag. I think it’s forecasting the future of dictatorships. Yeah, they inevitably they bust. Absolutely. I mean I agree with you on that, but I see it as both. I see it as a gag because it’s in satire and that’s the irony. That’s what’s going to happen, you know, no matter how much power of the world the person might have.
Ruth, thank you. Gloria, very kind. Carla, thank you.
Bonnie, Twitter’s name was changed to X. I kept thinking of the name X, so do I. Now when I watch it. The brilliance of The Great Dictator, yep. Thanks for a very cold Toronto. Yeah, and a pretty grey and rainy Liverpool.
Barbara, thank you, appreciate Avril. You’re all too kind, but it’s not me, again, it’s Chaplin, it’s all there. It’s development of Wagner’s music shouldn’t go unnoticed. Good point, Barbara.
Sue, thanks. Sherwin, the music played in the scene with the globe was Wagner, yeah, good point. Thanks for reminding.
Michael, Barbara and Carly asked to contact, it’s great. Wonderful.
Rhonda, thank you. Francine, thank you very much. From Montreal. Carrie, oh, you are very kind. Michael, okay.
Q: Any comments from your notes regarding the picture of Prague behind you?
A: That’s where my daughters live, and I lived and worked there for five years as well. So, and I directed in Vaclav Havel’s, I was the first English language speaker to direct theatre in Vaclav Havel’s theatre in Prague, so I worked there and lived there or five years, yep.
Bernard, so we’re for Buster Keaton. That’s the eternal, that’s the end of this discussion. You know, which one or both?
Caroline, it’s fine to talk. Thank you, George. He played Mr. Verdoux very se serious role. Yeah, oh, thank you, yes. Nina. Baryshnikov considered Chaplin a brilliant dancer. It’s extraordinary. I mean the physical ability that physical comedy is not easy, it’s so hard to do. You’ve got to be so fit, and yeah, absolutely Nina. You got to be a real dancer, choreographer, and so supremely fit. And every time you fall or you bumble or whatever, you don’t injure yourself. And this is all before you have stunt men who are, or women, who are trained in all of it to do that. You know, or will teach you so much all the time. He’s doing the whole lot, this guy. John, thanks.
Lorna. I know, it would make you laugh, I know. It’s more like smiles, I think. Different kind of comedy.
Michael, his father was Jewish, not his mother. Ah, okay. Maybe. Is that definite, Michael? That’d be fascinating to know. Be really interesting, thanks.
Robin, Charlie Chaplin would miss America when art, sex and politics collided. Okay, great bio by Scott Eyman. I didn’t know this one. It’s great, Robin, thank you.
Q: Nikki were his films shown in Germany?
A: Well, before the Nazis came to power in '33, they would’ve been allowed. Sure during Weimar, but the Nazis in '30, after '33 banned him. Nikki was The Fall and Rise of Arturo Ui based on The Great Dictator? What’s really interesting was Brecht’s play. I think Brecht was definitely influenced by Chaplin, whether it was the great dictator or other things, but he definitely, but Brecht worked in satire in theatre. He’d done a lot of satirical musicals and plays. So he understood comedy and satire very well. I don’t know directly if it was based on it or if it was just a mutual admiration or influence. It’d be very interesting to find out. I chose to do an oral final exam in the history of silent movie. So nervous, the prof was going to be a silent presentation. That would be interesting, thanks for sharing. Sharon, Chaplin’s dictator plan to kill all brunettes.
Yes, after the Jews. Interesting, as Nazis collected blonde women from Norway and Poland, yes, to breed. Exactly. You know, he understands that level of detail. Monty, he grew up amongst Jews in the east end of London. That’s a very interesting point as well, yes.
Roseanne, ah okay, thank you. Ron, hope you’re well. World War II began in '39, yes. What I said was he, it was six days after the war began. I can’t remember what it was. I need to check what it was. Something started six days after, but 1941 was when The Great Dictator came out, so it was made before.
Q: Georgine, how many children did he have?
A: A lot.
And as we’ve just been speaking. His child, Geraldine Chaplin, with Oona O'Neill, his last, his fourth wife, was a wonderful actress. Ann, whether Chaplin was Roma or Jewish or neither, those groups of people, and he victim of Nazism, yes. Okay. Leanna, thank you.
Julian, Putin must have used the scene, we saw him sitting at his desk with his minions at such a distance and admiring him. Well, you know, or Putin’s set designer, you know, probably told him and created it for him. And others. Stuart, according to the Jewish Telegraphic Agency, Einstein spent several days with Chaplin, yeah. In Hollywood, yep. And his return to Europe, the Chaplin is a half Jew. His grandfather hadn’t been Jewish. Okay. The legend that Chaplin was Jewish was widely held. Israel Zangwill, yep. Accepted him as such, French antisemitic novelists published a book. Okay, interesting. Interesting, okay.
And I need to find out more, Stuart, or if you know of more that it’d be great to know of what’s hard evidence and what is mixed evidence.
Q: Daisy, picture on the wall, is that of Edinburgh?
A: No, that’s of Prague.
Okay, and then ironic that he would kill brunettes as he was a brunette. Yeah, well that’s why Glenda, that’s why the joke is made in the movie. You know, that although it’ll be all Aryan and blonde, but they’ll have a brunette dictator, but he’ll kill all the brunettes. That’s the gag, exactly. Okay, so thank you very much everybody, and thank you Jess, and hope everybody has a really good rest of the weekend. Take care.