 Starring: Charlie Chaplin, Edna Puivance
Director: Charlie Chaplin
Year Of Release: 1919-1922
Plot: The Chaplin Revue is a collection of seven Chaplin silent shorts from the late 1910s and early 1920s. They range from his satire on the middle classes in The Idle Class to his look at life in the First World War trenches in Shoulder Arms. The release showcases Chaplin’s maturing talent before he moved into full-length features. |
Although I don’t watch silent comedy very often, I really ought to make more of an effort. The sheer imagination on show in shorts by the likes of Charlie Chaplin, Harold Lloyd, Buster Keaton and Laurel & Hardy is incredible. They’re smart, clever, often very biting and astonishingly ingenious. It really does make you wonder why comedians nowadays rarely seem this on the ball. It’s probably because today comedy tends to be about words, and we’ve lost the immense visual creativity they needed to succeed in the silent world.
When watching series of shorts in The Chaplin Revue it’s difficult not to be impressed by how smart they are. They’re satirical, sharp, nostalgic, romantic and funny, and manage to cram it all into only 20 minutes apiece. In some respects they're almost like modern observational stand-up comedy, looking at the minutiae of everyday life and then dissecting it with humour. Some of the filmmaking is so clever (and the stunts so seemingly dangerous), you wonder how they ever managed to film it.
However Chaplin himself is kind of an odd figure. Starting off in British music halls, he initially became known for his drunk act. Then, after a vaudeville tour in America, he signed on to make a series of film shorts and quickly found success, particularly after he came up with his mischievous, romantic and slightly tragic tramp character (which was apparently first put together in a rush because the producer wanted him in comedy make-up for one of the shorts).
Chaplin’s private life was slightly unusual though. For a start he certainly didn’t come from a happy home, as his mother was in and out of mental asylums, while he barely knew his father, who was an alcoholic and died of the effects of drink when Chaplin was only 12.
As an adult, Charlie married four times, with his oldest bride being 26 on their wedding day. While that doesn’t sound too bad, Chaplin was 47 at the time. Even that age gap might be unusual but not too controversial, if it weren’t for the fact that none of his three other wives were even 18 when they wed. He married Mildred Harris when he was 29 and she was 17, then got hitched to Lita Grey when he was 35 and she was 16, while his final marriage was to 17-year-old Oona O’Neil (daughter of playwright Eugene O’Neil), when he was 54. There are even claims that his relationship with Lita Grey was the inspiration for Nabokov’s controversial Lolita, though this has never been proved. Whether that’s true or not, he certainly liked his ladies young, and romanced a string of other nymphets between marriages, which unsurprisingly caused a lot of comment in the newspapers of the time.
However, despite his obvious taste for young women, the final marriage stuck and Chaplin and Oona stayed together from 1943 until his death in 1977. Even though he was 54 when they got hitched, this didn’t put Chaplin off having children and he and Oona had eight kids, with his last child, Christopher, born when Charlie was 74 (and this was before they’d invented Viagra!).
He’s also quite well known for having left America behind in the 1950s and going into a semi-self imposed exile. While his leftist politics and disdain for fascism were lauded in the late 30s - particularly when he made Modern Times and then The Great Dictator - by the 50s there were many who labelled him a communist (to be fair, the charges he had communist sympathies weren’t completely unfounded, as during World War II he’d proposed opening a new front to help the Soviet Union and said that communism might well spread across the globe after WWII).
As a result he got swept up in the McCarthy witch-hunts, and there were constant threats he would be called before the House On UnAmerican Activities Committee. Then, after he went back to the UK for the London premiere of his 1953 movie Limelight, J. Edgar Hoover negotiated to have him refused entry back into the US. Chaplin was so angered by this that he moved to Switzerland and didn’t go back to America for another 20 years.
However it wasn’t just the communist witch-hunts that were causing him trouble as the time, as he also had huge tax issues. It also true that Chaplin’s popularity had waned following a brief but highly controversial affair with 22-year-old Joan Barry in 1942. Shortly after they started their relationship, she began harassing him and showing signs of severe mental illness (she ended her life in a mental asylum). She then had a child, which she claimed was Chaplin’s, but after blood tests proving he wasn’t the father were judged as inadmissible as evidence in court, he was ordered to support the child (the case eventually led to a change in California law, which permitted blood tests as evidence for or against paternity).
Chaplin was then charged under the Mann Act, which made it a criminal offence to transport women across state lines for immoral purposes. Although originally aimed at organised prostitution, prosecutors nevertheless went after Chaplin due to claims he’d sent Barry to New York at his expense. Because of Barry’s slightly deranged testimony, he was acquitted, but it damaged his reputation immensely. It’s perhaps not surprising that between 1952 and his return to the States in 1972, he was very angry at America, as it did seem the country was out to get him whatever way it could, largely because they didn’t like his politics.
However aside from his private life Chaplin really was a visionary. In the mid-1910s he was one of the first film stars to take full control of his artistic destiny, by directing, writing, producing and starring in his own movies. Perhaps more significantly he also owned the copyright, which allowed him to join Mary Pickford, D.W. Griffiths and Douglas Fairbanks in setting up United Artists in 1919.
This really was a revolutionary organisation. In the very early days of cinema, films were made by a hodgepodge of independent companies, but by the late teens everything was being merged into a few big studios, while the smaller guys were being shoved out. United Artists was set up not only to allow Chaplin and co. to make their own films which they had complete control over, but also to ensure there was a major distribution network set up for other people’s independently made movies. Although it often had financial difficulties, largely because the studios were always trying to muscle them out and stop exhibitors showing their movies, for several decades UA was at the vanguard of protecting independent cinema in the US.
In the 40s, with Chaplin still in the lead, United Artists helped spearhead the fight against the anti-competitive practices of the major studios, a battle it partially won when it was decided companies that made and released film, couldn’t also own the cinemas they were shown in.
Chaplin is certainly an interesting and enigmatic figure, and it’s well worth reading up on his life. He’s undoubtedly one of the most important movie stars ever and a truly great artist, but his unusual, controversial private life is just as intriguing.
TIM ISAAC
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