Yes, Charlie Chaplin is famous. Yes his films, made in a particular time and place, have resonated throughout the world and the past century and have touched a countless number of people. One does not need to travel far to see the breadth and depth of his influence.
But why is he so famous? What was it about this man, this artist, that still captures our fascination? Was it simply that he was funny? Was it merely that he made us laugh and cry? Or was it something more?
When Charlie Chaplin began his career in movies more than a hundred years ago, he was simply a vaudeville talent. The only thing remarkable about him was that American movie producer Mack Sennett thought that Chaplin played the best comic drunk he ever saw. He appeared in a few Keystone Cops comedy shorts, a bit player like any other. But then the people started to notice him. The American working class (who were the primary movie-going audience at the time) began to go to motion pictures because they wanted to see that funny little fellow named Charlie. And, almost overnight, Chaplin became a household name.
There was something about him, something that people had never seen before. Look at his first outing as the Tramp character, a short film called “Kid Auto Races.” In it, the Little Fellow tries to steal focus from the film’s main subject, a children’s go-cart race. The camera tries to pan away from him, but the Tramp keeps sneaking into frame, eager to be on film. He is blustery, confident, and perhaps a little drunk. He puffs at a cigarette hungrily and tries to look dashing for his impromptu big screen debut. Chaplin does very little in these sequences – just some comic posturing and a few prat falls – but he immediately owns the screen. He makes you laugh just by the way he stands. And even though the Tramp is ruining every shot, you are somehow comforted by his presence. You can’t help but smile.
The character from “Kid Auto Races” was so popular that Chaplin rarely appeared again in a motion picture without that signature costume. Over the years, Chaplin developed a personality to go with the hat, cane and moustache. Sure, plenty of other talented comics, on stage and screen, had healthy careers playing tramp clowns, but Chaplin’s struck a chord with audiences. His struggle against his own poverty and the world’s rejection of him was honest. It seemed real, even in the hyperbolic world of slapstick comedy. Every joke seemed motivated, as if parts of this man existed both in our world and the ethereal world of the movies. Combined with Chaplin’s flawless comic timing, the Tramp became an instant sensation.
It is hard to imagine that Chaplin would have had as much success as a comedian if he had not invented the Tramp character. He may have had a fat career playing other roles, but the specificity of the Tramp made him indelible. He birthed a character that people could follow through countless adventures, and that, more importantly, people could identify with.
It begins, I think, with the fact that the Tramp has dignity. Other comedians were willing to sacrifice a character’s core humanity for the sake of a funny gag. Chaplin simply refused. The Tramp, he felt, had a moral center, and even if he stole, flirted with another man’s wife, or kicked a policeman in the rear, it was only because he had to, or that he was so innocent hat he didn’t know the difference. Even in a world that existed to persecute people like the Tramp, simple people trying to get by or have a little fun, he faced their scorn with a resolute sense of self, the knowledge that he was a man who deserved better. It is often said that the Tramp is a hobo with the manners of a gentleman. Chaplin’s stroke of genius was that this fact informed everything the Tramp ever did.
People responded to that dignity. They saw themselves in it, no matter what their own hardships were. More than any other comedian, Chaplin’s Tramp spoke to a vulnerability within all of us, and inspired us to both be honest with ourselves about that vulnerability and to seek to conquer it.
This is most evident in films where the Tramp falls in love. I think imediately of City Lights and the truth of the Tramp’s love for the blind flower girl. Any other comic would use that situation as an excuse to set up a few gags. Chaplin, instead, takes a step back and works hard to establish the honesty of that love, the power of the moment when you first see that pretty girl. The gags that follow are inspired by that honesty, the heartache that the blind girl makes him feel. Chaplin, like only a few great comic actors over the past century, knew that truly great comedy comes from emotional openness, the bravery to show people as they really are.
Look at that scene in City Lights when the Tramp first meets the blind girl. It is funny, yes, but only because the Little Fellow is so completely taken by this woman in so many ways – that she is beautiful, that she is innocent, and maybe that she is fragile and ignored, as he is. Chaplin plays the scene entirely from within, not mugging for the audience, but playing the truth of the moment. We root for the Tramp not because he is funny, but because he genuinely falls in love. The fleeting moments of love in his performance stay with us, even during the high-concept gags. Like any great piece of art, it is not the most well-known parts that touch us, but the little things, the spaces in between.
Falling in love, standing up to authority, searching for the right to live and create – these are things that people all over the world and throughout time have experienced and yearned for, and these are the things Chaplin explores in his work. That’s why he is so beloved, so famous. He was an exceptionally funny man that sought the truth, and he was one of the few artists who ever found it on film, time and time again. The truth in individual struggle and in human connection – that’s what Chaplin captured, and that’s what people everywhere will always search for, for as long as there are people.
Artists always seek to find human truth, in comedy, in drama, in painting, in music, in life. And every homage to Chaplin that exists today, whether it’s people trying to duplicate his walk or films that tell love stories as elemental as his, is rooted in the fact that Chaplin found that truth and shared it with us.
Ultimately, no one can know what it was about Charlie Chaplin that keeps us coming back to the Tramp and his comic adventures. That is the transient, inexplicable nature of genius. But, whatever it was, it is contained forever on film, in the simplicity of his stories, the ingenuity of his jokes, and the purity of his smile. What we do know is that the Tramp still excites us after a hundred years and will continue to do so for as long as his likeness can still flutter from his cameras and into our lives.
- Jack
