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A Statue for Charlie? Ivor Montagu "Charles Spencer Chaplin, born 1889 in South How represent him? Odd to memorialise stationary London, died 1978, early on Christmas Day."' a being whose graceful, balletic movements were These words on a pedestal. A charming idea. so much an essence of his early fame. As Gilbert Something to look up to, like Nelson in Trafalgar Seldes, first of the highbrows to notice him, wrote: Square, or to whizz round with the traffic, like Eros in Piccadilly, or maybe, in some quiet park "He danced on the earth, an eternal figure of glade, for lovers to tryst by, and, as in his earliest lightness and of the wisdom which knows that films, for policemen to lurk about in order to the earth was made to dance on."' disturb them. 1 G. Seldes: The Seven Lively Arts (Harper & Or is he, perhaps, too controversial a subject? Brothers). 1924. MARXISM TODAY. MARCH, 1978 93

CHARLIE CHAPLIN. By E. E. Cummings

The poet, E. E. Cummings, tried to fix this in his Then at least future generations would be early drawing (above). ensured a chance to form their own ideas of him. Film substance is no longer evanescent. The Too often a statue perpetuates only the admiration change from nitrate to acetate, research in main­ that those who ordered or paid for it wish posterity tenance by constant atmosphere and temperature, to believe was their attitude to the subject at the have left no reason why stock should be less time. enduring than stone. Perhaps a better tribute The GLC Councillor who first brought the idea would be to perfect and increase the collections of forward has no doubts about how Chaplin should his works and their availability in archives around be portrayed. As Charlie, the figure with the baggy the world.2 trousers, the oversized shoes, the bowler and the cane. But is this right? 2 There are several collections of Chaplin films. A good one at the National Film Archive, and probably one of the best carefully renovated by Chaplin him­ Creators and their Creations self. Copies of many items are now available for One of the commonest errors in popular myth­ exhibition from Contemporary Films Ltd.. 55 Greek ology about art is to confuse the creators with their Street. London W1V 6DB. creations, the authors or the actors with the 94 MARXISM TODAY, MARCH, 1978

character they portray. Of course, in either case an art—that is, a creation and a communication their own life-experience has enabled them to between artist and public. imagine them; their skill to make them live. Of He achieved this, beginning from nothing, in an course, also with Chaplin and the tramp, and with industry in which independence costs millions. In Chaplin's own brilliance as an interpreter, con­ this struggle, his comic genius was but the weapon fusion is natural, because creator and interpreter that won the battle. To attain victory he had to are the same individual. But identification would fight monsters every inch of the way. To retain it be a complete myth. They are not one and the he had to resist obloquy, condescension, obstruc­ same, any more than Shakespeare was Hamlet; or tion and persecution. else the ghost of Hamlet's father, or Old Adam in Yet he never compromised or gave up his view As You Like It, or any other of his characters that of the world and people. he is known to have played. The 'Little Man' was really a giant. Many have noticed, but overlooked the sig­ The establishment has its own ways of taming nificance of the fact, that Chaplin always spoke rebels. At first he was non-person ('too common"). and wrote of his creations in the third person, as Then VIPs buzzed round him like flies, as urgent 'The Tramp' or (later) 'The Little Fellow' (the to get into the picture as the tramp was in one of latter because often, even in early days—e.g. One Chaplin's earliest films, Kid's Auto Races. (Then A.M. or Carmen—as also in The Great Dictator they sneered at him for 'name-dropping'. Could with the barber, though he retained the make-up, they know that his main interest in them was that the character was certainly not a tramp). I did not of a zoologist studying animals in a game reserve?) appreciate the point myself until one Christmas They called him a Red and immoral (the Ameri­ Day—yes, Christmas again—when in the after­ cans never forgave his refusal to give up British glow of tennis and a good dinner, the cut of City nationality) and drove him out in the McCarthy Lights not yet being quite ready to run, C. C. set time, subjecting him to all the insults and petty us down and narrated and acted to us the whole denigration that broke Paul Robeson physically. story. As he spoke it became crystal clear that But—'if you can't beat them, honour them'. The every adventure or misadventure, every misfor­ Special Oscar and the 'Sir' (to decorate a Harold tune, every buffet of fate, undergone by the tramp Wilson list of knights) were their way of expecting was not (primarily) suffered by C. C. as Charlie, the public to forgive their own past behaviour it was inflicted by C. C. as director on Charlie as (how much the irony must have delighted Chaplin). character. A stone statue as a clown? Thai would be a When Chaplin died, The Times headlined "THE decisive tombstone. The best clown, mind you. But WORLD IN MOURNING".' Olivier was quoted definitely below the salt. Not fit to open his mouth. by the BBC as saying that Charlie was the greatest And if he does, it's all folly. comedian who ever lived. The kind of statement This is the standard way of belittling Chaplin. that is unprovable, but the mere fact that it is He was all right once. Poor chap—starting to plausible is a maximum tribute. Yet, by itself, it is preach. not the whole story. If it were, it could account only for the laughter of the millions, not for the Savage Notices sorrow, or the love. The obituaries have been thick with this thesis. but the record contradicts it. I did not believe A Man with a Vision Charlie when he once told me that he had always The truth is that Chaplin was a man who was had savage notices. An excellent book4 shows that much bigger. He was a man whose native and life- he was right. Here are samples: experience endowed him with a vision of the world so strong, a creative passion to communicate "The usual Chaplin work of late, mussy. messy it so resolute, a bond with the masses so unbreak­ and dirty . . . disgusting at many points." able, that he succeeded despite every obstacle. "Mr. Chaplin may well conclude his finish as a slapstick comedian is in sight." He took the profession into which he fell by chance and his own burgeoning skill by the scruff These in 1915-16 just as the Golden Age of Charlie of the neck and hauled it out of infancy. He came was beginning. And, of the classic achievements: to write his own stories, cast them, direct them, cut them, title them or (later) write dialogue for "The opening scene is not in high taste." (Easy them, produce them, compose music for them. At Street) a time when the possibility was still ignored or "Several disappointing shortcomings . . . denied, he demonstrated that the camera could be 4 McDonald. Conway & Ricci: The Films of 3 The Times headline. December 28. Charlie Chaplin. Citadel Press. 1965. MARXISM TODAY, MARCH, 1978 95

expressed in a confused manner . . . the final to stop people seeing it? This circumstance is for­ speech demonstrates it has put Mr. C. momen­ gotten when the film is nowadays called a failure. tarily off balance."" (The Great Dictator) Both films make one ponder both upon the "Slow, tediously slow—woeful lack of humour courage of Chaplin and upon what might have and dramatic taste ... an affront to the intel­ happened to the truth-telling Hans Andersen child ligence." (Monsieur Verdoux) if he had chanced to be a grown-up. If potential audiences can be convinced by The moral, and what The Times calls 'political' reiteration that nothing preacher Chaplin says can commitment, has always been present in Chaplin's be worth hearing, and that his speeches in the work, ever since the opus of his own creation pictures concerned make them not worth seeing, began. There has been no sharp turn (this is the they can be discouraged from going to them. denigrating fiction). To the discerning eye it has been present in all his work, even in the Charlie figure, even in the days of the two-reelers. Seldes Who was the Clown? wrote7—before ever Chaplin had become his own The two principal targets are the final speeches boss with a United Artists' picture: in The Great Dictator and Monsieur Verdoux. Both are 'childish'. Incidentally, in his article 5 "Charlie all through the middle period is at least Charlie the Kid, Eisenstein gives reasons for com­ half Tyl Eulenspiegel. . . . He has created in paring Chaplin's attitude in comedy in some in­ Chariot8 a radical with an extraordinarily logical stances to that of a child. I do not agree with these. mind." But these speeches are like those of a child—that is, the Hans Andersen child who pointed out to Chaplin the Creator the courtiers around him that the Emperor had no A table will help us to follow the progress of clothes. Chaplin began his anti-fascist picture in Chaplin the creator (see below). 1937 at the height of appeasement time. While he When Mack Sennett plucked Chaplin out of the was making it, in 1939, the United Artists offices passing Fred Karno touring company. Chaplin in both US and England informed him that the brought with him a full luggage. The South censors in America had indicated they were London boyhood, that he himself has so graphi­ unlikely to pass it and that it was probable it could cally described,9 enriched his experience with 6 not be shown in either country. But he persisted. poverty and characters. The music-hall, when he Who was the bigger clown, Chaplin or Chamber­ followed the family tradition there at the age of lain? As for Verdoux, the simple injunction of five, gave him, as show-business always does, a this is to refle:t on an ethical problem: which is glimpse of other classes upwards and downwards the worse murderer for profit, a man who kills his as well as its own colleagues and rascals. It also brides for their fortunes like Landru or 'Brides in gave him the opportunity to learn bodily move­ the Bath' Smith, or the respectable one who kills ment, expression, gesture and grimace, miming them wholesale like an arms manufacturer? This and timing with the perfectionism that he followed was made during the period 1945-7, the height of all his life. the Cold War and Glory to the Atom Bomb. It, In the Keystone hothouse he learned from too, met censor trouble. Sennett and from fellow comics: how to adapt The time it took to complete Dictator saved the these talents to the technicalities of the camera, to venture financially. But Verdoux was wrecked in the speed, kicks, falls and custard pies of slapstick. America by bans and by veterans smashing up the At first Sennett did not well know what to do with cinemas and burning the film reels. If it was really him. and early roles included a top-hatted and so dull and such nonsense, why was it so necessary frock-coated dude villain with long drooping

No. of Company Period Pictures Length Frequency

Keystone 1914 35 1-reel (most) 1 a week Essanay 1915 15 2-reel (most) 1 a month Mutual 1916 12 2-reel (all) 1 every six weeks First National 1918 9 3-6 reels about 2 a year United Artists 1923 8 7-13 reels through 30 years and two more, one 5 years later, another 10 years after that.

5 S. M. Eisenstein: Film Essays (Dobson Books). 7 1968. Seldes, op. cit. 8 6C. Chaplin: My Autobiography (Bodley Head). The French name for the "Charlie" character. 1964. (Also Penguin.) 9 Chaplin, op. cit. 96 MARXISM TODAY, MARCH, 1978

moustaches called variously Edgar England or Chaplin took hold of them and introduced the Lord Helpus. There were times when Chaplin skeletons of plots. The plots demanded back­ despaired and almost fled. Obstinacy, and the ground and incident, the supplementary roles encouragement of rivals, together with the oppor­ ceased to be masks casually encountered, and tunity in an emergency to direct his own extem­ became personages. Lo, a whole miniature world porised shorts, held him. Public response to this was created, with its own relationships and prob­ and to his tramp costume was swift. lems. Entangled in these backgrounds, the tramp would no longer suffice as hooligan, he had to Independence develop qualities—kindness as well as aggression, The public acclaim gave him the chance to get courage as well as cowardice, conscience as well as more money. Every move he made to a fresh set­ thievery, resourcefulness, loyalty, unquenchable up brought him an increased salary, more resilience. The ensembles were no longer of authority over the making of the picture and more caricatures, they became more and more human. time to make it in. Money is pleasant—certainly It is this interest in humanity that is called commit­ for one whose formative years were so hard- ment. pressed—but the essential was the growing in­ dependence it secured in the creative field. The A Mass Following film world is a simplistic world. The more money With heart, the role of Charlie began to rouse an employer pays you, the more he thinks it will such a furore in such millions as had never existed pay him to pay you heed as well. Finally, he came in the world before. The queues that elongated into a position to found (with Douglas Fairbanks, before the cardboard figures proclaiming of a Jnr., Mary Pickford and D. W. Griffith) his own movie palace that "Charlie Chaplin is here today"'. company and thenceforward be his own boss. The Charlie whom little children came to know It is perhaps significant that the very first picture before any other and whose name they added he made with this freedom did not have the tramp to their prayers." The Charlie whose personal in it at all. It was a sophisticated comedy of appearances stopped the traffic in Broadway and manners, full of morals and compassion, a touch converted all the streets of London around the of the politics of feminism too. It was certainly Ritz into one seething, impassable, delighted mob. not a failure and is held to have been a landmark And the like scenes repeated again and again, in film history and to have opened the way to whenever his pictures arrived, and wherever— I.ubitsch in this field. The Kid and Shoulder Arms, geographically or sociologically—his interest in the both films with evident moral and political im­ lot of humanity stirred him to follow. He was no plications too. Communist—for all that he had kind words to say What is more significant perhaps than the oft- to a Daily Worker seller he met in the street. He unnoticed variety of themes he has often tackled had no politics. He had no party. The wish he had and the roles that he has frequently played is the for mankind was the freedom and chance for continuity of development of the Charlie character, expression which luck and hard work and genius ever since he made its control his own. At first, had brought him for himself. How? He had no with Keystone speed, the tramp was just one other illusions. But he would not abandon principle by amidst the ruthless company of zany eccentrics, saying less than he thought. Right up till his who pestered, pursued and custard-pied till they enfeeblement he hoped to film a script he had retaliated and bounced back. written excoriating society for trying to exploit an angel that had turned up on the earth. I do not Let no one underestimate this school. Seldes l0 believe the masses ever deserted him or found his wrote : 'caring' pictures dull. It was their support (at the "It is impossible to dissociate him entirely from box office) that his acumen turned to freedom to the Keystone comedy where he began and show the world as he saw it. In the last resort it worked wonders and learned much . . . the first was their support that protected him from the and decisive phase of his popularity came when worst in the McCarthy period and armoured him he was with them, and the Keystone touch from malice in his age. Certainly, besides good remains in all his later work, often as its most motives and better pictures, there were also less precious element." good pictures. At every period, not of any special kind. For all the snootiness of the toffee-noses I Decisive, because by enabling him to better his don't believe the audiences minded. They are not professional position, it opened the opportunity stupid. Even Shakespeare did not turn out a for his creative development and advance. masterpiece every time. For as the one-reelers became two-reelers Perhaps he does not need a statue after all. 10 Seldes, op. cit. 11 Seldes, op. cit.

Published by the Communist Party, 16 King Street, London, WC2E , and printed by Farleigh Press Ltd. (T.U.), Watford, Herts—27218