In 1918, Charlie Chaplin was contracted by First National, a newly amalgamated film studio banking on their monopoly of theater chains throughout the U.S. Yeah, the movie industry was this way until antitrust actions decades down the road. Chaplin’s contract was in excess of one million dollars, the first actor (along with fellow new First National star Mary Pickford) with such clout. And these are 1918 dollars here! That sort of money no longer even exists, or my conversion is slightly off. (First National was eventually engorged by Warner Brothers, for what it’s worth.)
Chaplin already enjoyed great heaping scads of freedom to create his own films as he wished – as producer, director, writer, star, composer (in the silent era, dictating what accompanists played live). Upon reaching First National, add to that release from the tyranny of a schedule. Unlike with Mutual or Essanay, Chaplin no longer had to contractually deliver a certain amount of reels per year. Rather, he could take things slowly, focus upon pure quality in a way few filmmakers have ever enjoyed. So, from a pace of a dozen two-reel comedies a year, Chaplin went to producing only two or three reels total per year. It’s worth noting that this is where his iconic Tramp character became a long-lasting cinematic legend, and not simply a passé superstar.
New among Chaplin’s freedoms was the chance to do films at whatever length he preferred – no more duration limitations, should he wish to move on. And while Chaplin had no doubt perfected the two reeler, there’s only so much it allows. Assuming the Tramp features in every film, the story must concern him homelessly ambling into a new situation, falling for a girl, possibly getting her (the elusive Chaplin happy ending)…plus all the time needed to run through whatever gags the setting suggests. So the Tramp must forever languish in a surface-level depiction of poverty, because this movie needs to make boat jokes, then this one cops jokes, this one department stores, a church, and so forth. But extend the Tramp’s time in any of those same settings, and the facts of his plight itself can be explored.
So it is that Chaplin’s first First National national release, A Dog’s Life, is not a two reeler. Neither is it feature length (in 1918 terms, six reels – one hour, give or take). Chaplin is working his way up to that point, settling in the mean time for three reels – just over half an hour. Certainly not a proper movie, but neither a short – and more common in the silent era, before distribution formats necessitated the standard bladder-dictated running time we love today. Buster Keaton’s arguable masterpiece, Sherlock Jr., is only slightly longer. Some would argue that Chaplin’s next Tramp role, The Kid, is the first in the “series” (as in “feature length Tramp movies”), but I feel A Dog’s Life deserves some recognition.
The scenario of A Dog’s Life is nothing special. In fact, it’s the Tramp template stripped to its bare essence: The Tramp living in the gutter, scrounging for food, falling for the Girl (Edna Purviance, same as usual). Most Tramp shorts, even The Tramp, elaborate upon this. There is the slightest elaboration in A Dog’s Life, as Chaplin shares protagonist duties with Scraps, “a thoroughbred mongrel,” the Little Tramp in dog form.
First off, the Tramp awakes in his familiar filth, stands in the bread line, battles old-timey shopkeeps – you know, just your average American day. Ho hum.
Then, in parallel, Scraps awakes in its scraps, and runs through a dog-centric variation on the same – basically, contending with a bunch of larger asshole dogs.
To ascribe some sort of deeper meaning to Chaplin’s work – which he no doubt intended, though it’s not worth dwelling upon self-seriousness – he portrays the bum’s existence in almost literal “dog eat dog” terms. Audiences of 1918 lapped this stuff up, as it depicts the regular immigrant experience – this is a historical predicament we’ve somewhat moved beyond.
The Tramp ends up rescuing Scraps from a dog pile, perhaps recognizing the artful parallel between them. They’re kindred spirits, at any rate. And all this before the Girl even shows up! It paints the Tramp in a different light, less selfish than before, a benefactor and not simply a scrounge. For the less high-fallutin’ comedic value of it all, Scraps is anthropomorphized up the wazoo! Editing gives him much of the Tramp’s cadence and instant emotability. It’s not unusual for silent comedians to enjoy a dog costar – Keaton had Luke, and while your reaction to Scraps might be “Ahh, I want to pet it,” your reaction to Luke would be “Holy crap, did that dog just climb up a ladder backwards?!”
Such demonstrates their comedic differences, not a necessary exploration when discussing Chaplin films alone, but it helps me define what is unique about Chaplin against other luminaries of silent comedy. It’s more tender, and the laughter isn’t as loud. This is humor, not comedy, to be precise, which uses an amusing approach to enlighten or amuse. I guffaw mightily at many of Chaplin’s contemporaries; with Chaplin, I might just grin softly. This isn’t a fault in Chaplin’s work, but an example of his uniqueness.
Not that there aren’t moments of more extreme comedy to behold. Scraps and the Tramp (!) attend the local vaudevillian music hall – a chance to explore the art form which created Chaplin. The Girl sings a melodramatic song, whose musical quality is retained by Chaplin’s score despite the silent format. It is a ridiculously sad song, at that, with the Tramp and other audience members weeping by the literal bucketfuls. (With three whole reels to play with, this joke has time to creep up on you as well.) It somewhat resembles the projectile puking scene in Stand By Me, only with tears replacing great heaping torrents of human bile. (Wagging the censors, Scraps is covered in moisture, and it’s unclear it this is the dog’s tears, others’, or some different liquid entirely.) It’s patently unrealistic, with no (evident) greater relevance to the pathos of poverty – except as maybe a parody of Chaplin himself.
Following the song, the Tramp pursues the Girl. If you wanted, you could try paralleling this to his relationship with Scraps. Or you could simply enjoy a slapstick dance sequence involving the three of them. Usually, dancing alone would be a signal for supposed “hilarity” in silent comedies – totally performer-dependent, and usually somewhat outdated. Chaplin adds in a dog on a leash. Because that’s not enough, there’s also gum on the floor, to exacerbate things further. Such a scene cannot be written, nor preplanned. It’s all on the strength of Chaplin’s pantomime.
But wait, there’s still another reel left! With the relaxed pace already affecting the tone, Chaplin uses his extra ten minutes to do something no Tramp film has really had – he creates a plot. That is, not simply a romantic predicament, but a series of connected events. It’s all in service of an eventual happy ending, in a rather Horatio Alger sort of way. A local criminal, pursued by the police, buries a wad of cash near the Tramp’s favored filth. From the setup, it’s obvious Scraps will dig it up – a little too obvious, by modern standards, perhaps. So find it Scraps does.
That the Tramp’s eventual salvation comes of coincidence and outside events is no mistake. We might prefer a more active protagonist, but this better perpetuates beliefs Chaplin’s impoverished audience might prefer. Chaplin paints the gutter as mostly inescapable, and again someone with more time and concern might care to tie this back to his political beliefs. In the years following, Chaplin’s left-leaning attitudes have become an elephant in the room, something he possessed even this early on, yet always tried to keep out of his films.
To create the impression that the Tramp has actually earned salvation, he runs through a brief conflict with money-hungry crooks. This is partly the chance for a fun isolated comic routine – the Tramp knocks out one goon, then hides behind a curtain as he animates the crook’s body to fool the rest. Then the Tramp is found out, leading to the Chase – a silent comedy standby. Normally, this would have accompanied all the other plot points in a fraction of A Dog’s Life’s running time – and then, we wouldn’t even have the dog subplot, or the extended view of the Tramp’s vagrant existence. Calmly isolating outward climactic conflict like so keeps the rest of the movie on its own enjoyable level. A good thing, because this section might be the film’s weakest.
Then our heroes achieve their bucolic happy ending, as happily wed farmers. We see this at length, to impress upon us just what happiness looks like – no material comfort, but the assurance of a home, hearth and crops. And Scraps has puppies, possibly as a stand-in for the babies most romances would conclude with. There’s a little grist for the “dog and Girl parallel” interpretation, plus a fun joke on the censors and their fear of biology. (The ending of Sherlock Jr. does something similar, but altogether cleverer.)
Interestingly, this happy ending is a guaranteed secure future for the Tramp. And yet he’ll return time and again, always reverted to his initial level of poverty. This doesn’t undermine the joy certain iterations of the Tramp find in the mean time. As a series, the Tramp’s films as discontinuous, wholly separate tales that just happen to feature the same persona. The Tramp is the same character, but with many stories he can tell. In this way he evolves into something of an icon or an archetype for audiences at the time. The Tramp will always be there, struggling against crooked authorities and the whims of fate just as his viewers are. This, paradoxically, allows fans to appreciate the Tramp’s financial windfall at the end of A Dog’s Life, without alienating the Tramp himself.
(As a postscript, 1918 also saw Chaplin create a much shorter Tramp film, The Bond. This is a curiosity, a one-reel effort to sell bonds for World War One, showing the war bond’s interaction with day-to-day life, and oh so many other outdated period details. So much for Chaplin’s films being apolitical, eh?)
No comments:
Post a Comment