Chaplin, the Keystone years

Chaplin was a 1992 bio-pic about, well, Charie Chaplin. I watched it back in the early 90s and, although I liked the film, it did seem to reinforce the prejudice I had that he wasn't really that funny. Then a few years ago, I saw a great series of programmes on the BBC by Paul Merton on the silent comedians, and I realised how wrong I was. And how wrong this film was for not really explaining why he was as funny as he was.

The film did make some effort to explain the politicised nature of his films, but it gave the impression that this was an internal thought of Chaplins, rather than what everyone knew and commented on at the time and earned Chaplin acclaim from his peers - and, more importantly for an artist, the paying audience - which is a shame because unless you understand that his films were popular and funny because they had a political and social edge to them, then it all just becomes a mess of pratfalls and tumbling.

The film uses a fairly hackneyed approach to autobiographies, the dramatic flashbacks, as Chaplin discussed his biography with a fictional book publisher (played by Anthony Hopkins). Robert Downey Junior as Chaplin makes the film on its own very watchable, and there's an excellent supporting cast.

The movie gets stuff mostly right, it's just that it doesn't explain enough for them to be put into a context where the viewer can understand their significances. He was sent to the workhouse and seperated from his older brother, Sidney, his mother did have to be committed, he did fall in love with a 16-year old dancer, and he did go to perform in America.

Mabel Normand

Also, of course, he did get an offer to work at Sennets Keystone (of the Keystone cops) studios. He started in 1914 and leaving a year later with 34 shorts and one feature under his belt. He was directed by Mabel Normand, which he hated (he hated being directed in general and, well, this was 1914 and he almost certainly was annoyed at being directed by a woman). One thing about Mabel should be noted; in the movie she's portrayed as a spoilt brat who is Mack Sennett's mistress, and she hated Chaplin.In reality, while she was in a relationship with Mack, she was an accomplished comedy actress from a stage-performing family who probably was the one who convinced Sennett to keep Chaplin on when he initially regretted hiring him and wanted to sack him. She seems to have been an intelligent woman who died at an absurdly early age due to alcohol abuse, at 37 (she didn't seem to be able to cope with the murder of a close friend in the 1920s).

 Movies weren't anything like what we would recognise today. For one thing, actors weren't billed in the credits or adverts, so when an actor/character became popular, cinema managers couldn't ask for more stuff with the famous guy in it, because they didn't have their name. So, instead, they had to use descriptions of what they looked like (no talkies back then).

Although Keystone was an experimental playground in slapstick, that's to underestimate its relevance to Chaplin and to cinema. Another thing they got right in the film was how short and how cheap these movies were, but by getting the slapstick into the one frame it developed a trend for spectacle to be packed into the frame as much as possiblem, which is something that's been with hollywood ever since.

He invented the costume whilst casting about in wardrobe for Mabels Strange predicament (so the movie got that right), and it was the Keystone films where his career in social and political commentary began. Whilst being directed, he had bits where he got to make authority figures look foolish, where he learned how to play this contempt to a movie audience, but when he started to direct is where he bloomed. The movie got that right, too. It's a shame they couldn't have gone into more detail on this, as those movies are what got audiences amused by him into audiences that made him into a cultural icon.