In the 1950´s, Chaplin was mostly forgotten or at least a mere memory of great pasts. He had put his legendary Tramp figure behind him during his last films, but they had all been mediocre to pretty bad. People did not want Charlie Chaplin, the actor, rather "The little fellow" he was so loved for. Or at least that seems to be his conclusion heading towards the sixties. But he was getting too old to act the character anymore. He was also forced out of the United States during the McCarthy years as he was a pretty outspoken "communist", at least seen with the cold war eyes of the american state.
So sitting in Switzerland, the best thing he could come up with to reinvigorate his tramp character, was to re-release some of his First National movies with added music and melody themes and introduction vocal he did himself. It was not the first time he revisited old output. In the early 40´s he re-released "The Gold Rush" with a new score, spoken words and a few minutes cut out. Personally I am not a particular fan of these kinds of "post production" re-releases as it either seldom improves the original concept and I prefer to watch it as it was originally released, despite its presumed flaws or incompleteness (are you listening George Lucas?), but on the other hand it has to some extend made his output from this particular era more accessible.
If you find this on DVD now, it is probably released with a few other of his output from that period and thus you are well suited if yo are going for a complete Chaplin, as these seems to be the hardest to find for your movie collection. The images shown here are from my own copy (off course), but they turned out a good deal more soft than the film looks on screen, and I am not sure why.
The three films are "A Dog´s Life, "Shoulder Arms" and "The pilgrim" and of they are shown in order of greatness. And also a bit added in the start called "How to make movies", and unreleased short made around the time when he made an independent studio (This was only reassembled into its originally full version much later). By far I prefer "A Dog´s Life" compared to the two others, where "The Pilgrim" is clearly the weakest of them. It was the last "short" he filmed for First National and was possibly for contractual fulfilment more than the artistic splendour.
In A Dog´s Life he is unemployed and on the outlook for a job. But down at the employment agency, he has great trouble getting up at the front of the cue. In a classic sequence he switches between cues in the hope of getting first but everytime he is overtaken by someone else, until the stalls close. A very well choreographed physical joke that would be hard to remake by any moviemaker, in an as charming and lively way as Chaplin does here.
It is well known that many of the gags as shown on film were merely small ideas, which was evolved on site while shooting. At times it shines through that the films are a conglomeration of scenes pieced together and some of them are not nearly as well executed as others. This is the name of the game in his shorts all the way back to 1914, but as he is heading into more serious filmmaking in coming years, which is on another level to these, it can be a bit of a trial to watch some parts of these short movies.
Though in another scene, where he is trying to recapture a wallet full of money from some thieves, he knocks one of them out from behind a curtain. Then he sticks his arm out through under one of the thief's armpits to communicate with the other half drunk thief, to pretty hilarious effect. One of the more well executed gags. This one is a decent short if still fairly predictable overall.
Shoulder Arm´s is about the trench warfare in the first world war, which the USA had entered in 1917. The most atrocious part of this one is Chaplin´s sentimental introduction to "This is how wars were faught in the good old days" kind of mentality. In The Dictator he rails against war and fascism, while when it is "his own troops" its like "half of them came home, half of them didn´t", which are typical double standards. These "artists" are often politically and morally confused.
It can in some ways be seen as a forerunner to The Great Dictator, as there are the mistaken identity gag and moralisation on how people should live. The most interesting bit of this short, is the tracking shots of the Tramp walking away from and then towards the camera. I am taking a huge guess here, but I feel confident in claiming that those tracking shots served as the big inspiration for Kubrick´s shots of Kirk Douglas´ officer character taking a walk in the trenches in "Paths of Glory" from 1957. I would think that Kubrick had seen the shorts before the rerelease ( a couple of years later) and have been slightly in awe of something as fancy as a tracking shot in a Chaplin short. I cannot think of any other piece of Chaplin output, where a tracking shot has been used, certainly not in his shorts, so it really stands out in so many ways and is very memorable.
The last one, The Pilgrim, is the weakest of the three. While the first two was filmed in 1918, the last was from 1923 and it is clear that the short format has become very tired. Yes he can do the walk and the gags, but it has lost most of the eager charm of the earlier stuff.
He does have his old flame, Edna Purviance, who acted opposite him in dozens of movies all the through. But the romance and interior gags are all too meatless and without the spite it has in the two earlier ones shown here. If anything, this late short shows a bit more interest in bringing in other characters, like the unruly child, that actually wears a bowler at some time.
In my childhood days I was fond of the Chaplin shorts, but as I have grown older, they just seem mostly too goofy and light hearted, and too incoherent compared to his full length features. It is pretty incredible that he managed to raise the tramp character from thes innocent shorts into heartfelt performances as seen in "The Kid" and "Gold Rush" and if I wanna watch some Chaplin nowadays, this is where I will go, NOT the shorts or the Revue.
It is a pretty useless rerelease of old stuff, even if it was pretty popular back in the day. It seems like a desperate attempt at reliving or reviving old days gone. And in my opinion Chaplin did not succeed. If you are a hardcore Chaplin fan, this is off course mandatory viewing but the average movie enthusiast, can easily live without it. In my opinion, the real Chaplin starts with "The Kid" and pretty much peaked there. AS one of the few masters of the silent era, Chaplin managed, if reluctantly, to transition into sound, with as little sound as possible :-)
4/10
