All Hail Tomainia

Film: The Great Dictator
Format: DVD from NetFlix on rockin’ flatscreen.

Everyone has gaps in his or her viewing. In fact, one of the main reasons I created this site seven(!) years ago is because there were so many gaps in my viewing history. Try as I might, I’m never going to fill them all. There are just too many movies and too many good movies to see to have seen everything. I’ve seen a shit-ton of movies in my life and a shit-ton since I started this site, but I know that there are many people who have seen far more than I have. Even if I watched two or three movies per day, I’d never catch up to everything worth watching. Still, you fill the gaps where and when you can, and for me, the biggest gap I know of has been The Great Dictator. Well, no more.

The Great Dictator is Chaplin’s first all-sound, all-talkie film, and it comes years after Modern Times, his list pseudo-silent. Part of that comes from the fact that Chaplin worked on The Great Dictator actively for nearly two years. When he first came up with the idea of doing the film, a number of people felt that he was taking on Hitler for no good reason. By the time the film was released, there was a shooting war in Europe, the Holocaust had started, and the U.S. was a year away from entering the war.

The End of Chaplin

Film: City Lights; Monsieur Verdoux
Format: Streaming video from Hulu+ on rockin’ flatscreen.

I enjoy silent comedies quite a bit. Of the great silent comedians, I enjoy Harold Lloyd, I have great respect for Chaplin, and I have a deep and abiding love for Buster Keaton. Naturally, this means I watched all of Keaton’s films pretty quickly. Chaplin I’ve been savoring a bit, at least until now. The three comedians were all quite different. Lloyd was in many ways the most American in his characters’ outlook. Keaton offered a more zen outlook on his comedy. Chaplin is all about the pathos.

City Lights doesn’t stray too far from the formula that worked for him his entire career. Like most silent comedies, the plot is very simple. The action tends to drive that simple plot forward very slowly, because the action is more about the slapstick than the actual story. In this case, the plot is pretty easily resolved, with the additional material there only for laughs.

That’s not a bad thing—these are good laughs. Chaplin plays his trademark Tramp character. Early on, he encounters a blind flower seller (Virginia Cherrill) and becomes smitten by her beauty and her tragedy. He also rescues a man (Harry Myers) about to commit suicide. These two things seem unrelated, but will merge as the film closes. It turns out that the man the Tramp rescues is a drunken millionaire. He thanks our hero by taking him out for a night on the town. The problem is that when he wakes up and sobers up, he has no memory of the previous night—not his suicide attempt, his rescue, or the evening that followed.

In the mean time, the Tramp spends time with the blind flower girl, and discovers that there is an expensive operation that can cure her blindness. He also discovers that the girl owes her landlord rent and is about to be evicted. Unable to get the millionaire to remember him, the Tramp takes (and subsequently loses) a job as a street sweeper. Eventually, his only recourse to cash for the girl is to sign up for a boxing match. He makes a deal with the other boxer to throw the fight and split the $50 purse, but is forced to fight another man instead, who won’t take the deal.

Of course, this is a comedy, which means it has to work out in the end. The ending is sweet and heartfelt, if perhaps a bit twee. But it’s cute and impossible not to smile at.

But the plot, sweet as it may be, is not the reason to pay attention here. The whole purpose of the film is to see what Chaplin does throughout. The gags are as good as we’ve come to expect from Chaplin, with the boxing match near the end a true highpoint in not just the film, but in his catalog. It’s silly stuff, the kind of thing that young children would find riotously funny today (at least the non-jaded children, and even some of them). One of Chaplin’s great talents was finding a gag and playing it as many different ways as he could—the back and forth shuffle of Chaplin, his opponent, and the referee here being a prime example.

For many people, City Lights is Chaplin at his finest. That’s a hard thing to argue against, even if my preference might be more for the opening half hour of Modern Times. There’s no doubting that while his last silent film is stronger in places, City Lights is more consistently funny and on plot all the way through.

If anything, I’d have liked this to be a little longer. Chaplin was and is a joy, and a running time of under 90 minutes feels like short change.

That shorter running time may have better served Chaplin’s Monsieur Verdoux, because at the 90 minute mark here, I was ready for the film to be over, and knew that there was still a good half hour left to go. This is the story of a Bluebeard, a man who marries women and murders them for their money and property. He tells us at the start of the film that life was fine until he lost his job in a bank when the markets crashed. Now, with a wife and child to support, he turned to a different line of work (killing widows) to make ends meet.

We see him at work several times during the course of the film, and as the film starts, we learn from the family of his latest conquest that Verdoux’s latest (and late) wife has just emptied her bank accounts of 60,000 francs. We cut to the man himself cleaning up after the deed and engaging to sell the home. The prospective buyer is another widow who he sets upon wooing, a plot that will take us to near the end of the film.

In the meantime, he is already married not only to his first wife, but to several others, and he proceeds to go on a sort of murder tour around France, bumping off women and collecting on them, spinning crazy stories about impending bank collapses to get them to draw their money out, and then doing the deed and making off with the benefits. One of these wives, Annabella Bonheur (Martha Raye) has a nasty habit of not dying, leaving him in something of a predicament.

Thanks to the Hays Code, Monsieur Verdoux is destined to be caught by the end of the film. Criminals, after all, couldn’t win under the Hays Code, and no one could be seen to truly benefit from the commission of a crime. So naturally, everything will come to a head, and does when the foghorn-voiced Annabella arrives as a guest for his latest wedding.

My problem with Monsieur Verdoux is not that it isn’t well made or that it isn’t entertaining. It’s beautifully filmed and it’s acted well, and there are even a few laughs in it here and there. My problem is that it seems so opposite the typical Chaplin comedy. While terrible things happened to the Tramp all the time, they were always caused by circumstances beyond the poor guy’s control. The Tramp was always lovable and sweet, someone whose tragedies were all the more poignant because we as the audience want him to be okay. Verdoux in this film is cruel and heartless, everything the Tramp seemed to stand against.

I don’t really mind heartlessness, but I don’t like it for its own sake, and that, more or less, is how I took Monsieur Verdoux. Chaplin aims for pitch black comedy, and while it seems impossible that he would ever miss completely, he misses on quite a bit of this. I’m not used to, or much in favor of a Chaplin character who isn’t worth rooting for, and Verdoux is simply not. This film comes off as mean spirited in a lot of ways, and that seems so wrong.

There are other, similar comedies, of course. Arsenic and Old Lace, Kind Hearts and Coronets, and even a film like The Ladykillers cover similar territory, and do it with better humor and a lot more panache. I’m disappointed here, not because this is a Chaplin talkie, but because a film like The Great Dictator was left off the List when it much more rightfully belongs here. Monsieur Verdoux covers territory better mapped by others, and Chaplin is better than playing this sort of rogue, no matter how charming he might appear.

Why to watch City Lights: It’s sweet and heartfelt.
Why not to watch: It’s over too quickly.

Why to watch Monsieur Verdoux: Of the three great silent comedians, only Chaplin made a solid transition to talkies.
Why not to watch: He made better talkies.

For Love and Money

Film: The Gold Rush
Format: Streaming video from NetFlix on rockin’ flatscreen.

The common thought of a silent comedy is that it plays like slapstick. The reason that most people think this is that a great number of silent comedies are little more than slapstick. I don’t mean this in a denigrating way; I like slapstick, and good slapstick is always fun to watch. Chaplin’s The Gold Rush is proof that quite a bit more could be done with silent comedy, though. While there are certainly slapstick moments in this film, there are also a number of other, far more sophisticated gags and jokes.

The film features Chaplin’s famous Tramp character, this time heading up to the frozen north in the hopes of getting in on the Klondike gold rush. He doesn’t fare too well, though, and winds up trapped in a cabin with two other men. The first is named Black Larsen (Tom Murray), a wanted criminal who wants nothing to do with the Tramp and wants him out of the cabin. Then a third man shows up. This is a prospector named Big Jim McKay (Mack Swain), who has just found a motherlode of gold on a mountain and wants to file his claim. The three men reach an uneasy truce until the food runs out completely. They draw cards to see who will go for provisions, and Larsen draws the low card. Of course, since he cares nothing for the other two men, he simply runs out on them, leaving the other two to starve.

This opening sequence, which goes about 20 minutes, is the most well known from the film. This contains the sequence in which Chaplin boils his own boot for food. It’s also, as far as I know, the first instance of a starving man looking across the table at a friend and seeing the friend turn into food, a moment referenced in a couple million cartoons. Eventually, a bear wanders into their cabin, they shoot the bear, and manage to survive the rest of the storm. The two part ways, the Tramp to a prospecting town and Big Jim to stake his claim. However, once he gets there, he meets Larsen, who conks him on the head with a board. Jim wakes up without his memory, but Larsen gets his just desserts, dying in an avalanche.

Of course there’s a girl in the picture. Georgia (Georgia Hale) is a dance hall girl, who is the love of Jack (Malcolm Waite), and the object of the Tramp’s infatuation. He does what he can to stay close to her, eventually taking a job cabin sitting for prospector Hank Curtis (Henry Bergman) near the dance hall. Through a series of mix-ups, the Tramp believes Georgia loves him, and when Big Jim McKay shows up unable to remember where his claim is, the Tramp has a chance to suddenly become a wealthy man.

What’s really interesting to me here is not the huge number of truly great gags, and we’ll get to those in just a second. Instead, what’s most interesting is how much actual plot there is in this film. A lot of silent comedies are pretty straightforward in terms of what they’re trying to accomplish. Boy meets girl, boy goes to elaborate lengths to impress girl, boy gets girl. Nothing wrong with that, but The Gold Rush shoots for a lot more. It runs a very thin line between the comedy of the various situations and real tragedy. Of course, those two things tend to be very closely connected.

And now on to the gags. There are three that are rightfully famous. The first is the boot eating scene mentioned (and pictured) above. The second is the dance Chaplin does with the rolls stuck to the end of a pair of forks. Apparently, audiences reacted to this scene so overwhelmingly that in some theaters, the film was stopped, rewound, and the scene run again. The third comes at the end, when Big Jim and the Tramp return to the cabin, and a huge wind blows it to a teetering position on the edge of a cliff. Many a comedy would kill to have a single scene as good as any of these three.

And yet, there’s plenty here that seems to have been almost forgotten. Chaplin turning into a chicken is one of these. The fight between Chaplin and Jack is another. Still another is Chaplin dancing with Georgia in the dance hall, discovering that his malnutrition is causing his pants to fall, and tying them up with an end of rope only to discover the other end attached to a large dog.

There are some movies that you watch because they are good for you. Others you watch because they are fun and entertaining. Still others get watched because they are classics, and viewing them is necessary to understand where film came from and where it is still going. The Gold Rush is all three of these things and more. This is a delightful film, suitable for anyone, and able to entertain anyone. It’s not my favorite Chaplin, but it’s a damn fine one.

As a final note, The Gold Rush was re-released in 1942 with a new soundtrack, sound effects, and the title cards removed and replaced by a voiceover done by Chaplin himself. The version I watched was not this one, but the original silent. I have no idea how much those alterations change the actual viewing of this film.

Why to watch The Gold Rush: Chaplin’s earliest great film.
Why not to watch: His later great films are better.

Survival in the Modern World

Films: Modern Times, A Nous la Liberte (Freedom for Us)
Format: DVDs from Rockford Public Library projected on big screen (Modern Times) and itty bitty bedroom television (both films).


Certain films, like certain books or pieces of music, need to be seen from the perspective of their own time to truly be appreciated. Others are timeless, and can be appreciated no matter what era they are from and no matter what era they are viewed in. Such a film is Modern Times, which I’ve now watched twice in one day, the first time by myself and the second time with my seven-year-old daughter. It’s interesting to see how well a film like this translates to a kid who’s never really watched an effectively silent movie before.

Charlie Chaplin is a good place to start as an introduction to silent films in general, and silent comedies in the specific. Chaplin’s tramp character is an everyman loser, which makes him not only readily identifiable, but entirely sympathetic for adults and kids alike. Harold Lloyd is a lot wilder and for my money, Buster Keaton is a more subtle. Chaplin is broadly goofy and comic, and like any good comedian, Chaplin coats his hero with tragedy. Modern Times, the last film that features Chaplin’s Little Tramp, is loaded with not only with broad comedy but also a mountain of pathos and tragedy for the Tramp to overcome.

If you’ve seen a still from this film, it’s almost certainly from the first part of the film, with the Tramp working in the factory, tightening bolts on an endless conveyor line of machine parts, winding through the machinery, or being fed by the automatic feeder. These are all great scenes, but are only the very first part of the film. I showed my daughter the feeding machine sequence, and she laughed so hard that she wanted to watch the whole movie, which is why I watched it twice. No question that these are wonderful comedic scenes, but they are also a very small portion of the film.

The bulk of the film concerns the Tramp’s life after he is forced out of the factory due to a nervous breakdown. He is mistaken for a communist leader and thrown in jail where he inadvertently foils an escape attempt. This gives him a life of ease in jail, until he is pardoned because of his actions and thrown back on the street. All he wants now is to get back to prison. His chance comes when he sees a young woman (Paulette Goddard) steal a loaf of bread. He takes the rap for her, but is let go. Eventually, the two of them are thrown in the same paddy wagon. She makes a break for it, he falls out of the truck with her, and now the two of them are stuck together.

The rest of the film is essentially him trying to make a life for the two of them as they run from the law and he attempts a number of careers to give them a place to live. The ending is far less than might be expected for a typical comedy, and yet it is uplifting and sweet in its own way. Chaplin’s Tramp is too much of a loser to have anything really wonderful happen to him, which is nicely shown in contrasted scenes. In the first, he imagines his dream home with the young girl. Later, almost the exact scene plays out with mildly disastrous results.

There’s a reason that the Little Tramp is an enduring character in American film mythology. He’s the lovable loser that everyone roots for. Bad things happen to him because of bad luck, and good things happen because of good luck. The Tramp is never in charge of his own fate, and that’s certainly the message here. In this film, created during the height of the Great Depression, the Tramp is at the mercy of the things that happen to him. We’d like for him to have things go well, but we’re resigned to the fact that things probably won’t go well. It’s simply never in the cards for the poor guy.

Chaplin is brilliant both as a comic actor and as a director. Each scene is played both for its comedic value and its tragic reality. We as the audience laugh at the Tramp’s misfortune both because it’s funny and because it’s sad. It’s also worth noting that Paulette Goddard might well be the most beautiful woman ever filmed. She’s certainly pretty when she’s cleaned up toward the end of the film, but for my money, she’s absolutely captivating as the dirty faced waif through the first three-quarters. The first time she appears on screen here, stealing bananas from a ship to throw to kids on the dock side, she is utterly, heart-skip-a-beat beautiful.

Modern Times is the last film to use title cards instead of speech except for parodies. All of the speech in the film comes through machinery—a phonograph, a radio, and the like. While there is music and sound effects, this is film essentially as a silent movie, the last one ever made. Everything Chaplin did after this was a talkie. Even Chaplin sings in this, although what he sings is less comprehensible and more a Romance language patois of goofiness (although you can follow the plot of the song by watching his hand motions).

The last ever title card used for its original effect, essentially the last ever “speech” in the silent film era, says, “Buck up – never say die. We’ll get along!” That we will, just as we assume the Tramp and the girl will.


Of course, it’s also important to acknowledge source material. Chaplin was sued for Modern Times by the distribution company of A Nous la Liberte (Freedom for Us), a French film from 1931 that Modern Times bears a striking resemblance to. It’s worth noting that author/director Rene Claire refused to be a part of the suit, considering Chaplin’s work an homage to his own. Eventually, the suit was simply settled by Chaplin after more than a decade.

Similarities are evident right away. As the group of prisoners at the start of the film stand up to a blaring noise and march in unison, it is evident where Chaplin got his inspiration for the food line scene in his own movie. Much of the beginning concerns a prison break of two inmates, Louis (Raymond Cordy) and Emile (Henri Marchand). Emile fails to break out, but Louis gets away, and knocks down a bicycle racer, hopping on the bike to get away. We also learn quickly that Louis is pretty quick on his feet. He manages to rip off a pawn shop by pretending to be robbed himself and sending the store owner out after non-existent thieves.

Eventually, Emile escapes and finds a job for himself in a factory that makes phonographs, and discovers his old cellmate Louis is a bigwig there. At the factory, the workers are treated little better and little different from the machines. There are shades of Fritz Lang’s Metropolis here, with the dehumanizing effects of the factory work on the men, although A Nous la Liberte is played for comedy. Also, since Louis is constantly worried that someone will recognize him from his prison break, there is some presaging another social drama, I am a Fugitive from a Chain Gang here. But it’s social repression, degradation, and soul crushing work with a cheeky grin and a wink.

Created in the early era of the talkies, A Nous la Liberte does more with sound than merely revel in the fact that it exists. Most directors seemed to be so enamored of the idea that sound actually existed in films that they didn’t really know what to do with it. Rene Claire realized at this early stage that sound was not something magical, but another tool in the repertoire of a smart director. Dialogue in places turns into little poems or songs, little rhythms that further establish the clockwork, dehumanized world that Emile lives in. To keep him quiet, Louis takes him in and moves him quickly up the factory ladder—anything to avoid being caught.

Like the Little Tramp who followed him into this modern, almost clockwork-punk world, much of what we are shown are comedic set pieces that involve this new world where only the end result product has value, and people have value only in so much as they can produce things for the good of the factory. Emile is a romantic and wants something more out of life than a mind-numbing job and just enough pay to get him by. But that’s not the reality that the capitalists—like Louis, who he helped free—have created.

Louis wants him away from the plant, but Emile wants to stay. His reason, despite the terrible work and treatment is that he’s fallen in love with one of the workers, known to us only by her employee number, 45. Fortunately for Emile, the girl’s uncle works at the plant as well. Sadly, he disapproves of the match until Louis offers a dowry for the girl—anything to keep Emile happy and quiet. But of course, she loves someone else.

What makes A Nous la Liberte work is the empathy developed for Emile. He may well be a criminal, but he’s such a gentle soul that we want things to work out for him. Even if he doesn’t get everything he wants, he’s the type of character we’d like to see succeed.

Why to watch Modern Times: The end of the silent era, and it goes out with a bang.
Why not to watch: Because it really does mean the end of the silent era, and ends are always at least a little sad.

Why to watch A Nous la Liberte: References everywhere
Why not to watch: Comedy is sometimes more difficult in another language.