The Text Of "The Circus"
Lloyd Fonvielle
-- his last wholly satisfying masterpiece, yet at the same time
prefiguring the self-conscious artiness that marked his decline as an
true artist.
In this film we see as clearly as possible the conflict between
Chaplin as the instinctive creator and Chaplin as the celebrator of his
own myth. We see him inhabiting the Little Fellow from the inside, and
exploiting the Little Fellow from the outside as a tragic icon.
It's probably not coincidental that the film was shut down for
eight months due to Lita Grey's divorce suit -- which brought into
question Chaplin's ownership and control of his own creations. I don't
think it's unfair to speculate that the origins of Chaplin's self-pity
might lie to some degree in his outrage at the fact that a little
teenage bimbo could seriously threaten his empire.
He was an artist, after all, and she was just a kid he seduced and
unhappily got pregnant. Society forced him to do the right thing by
her, and gave her the power to cripple his vision. How cruel the world
can be!
Exploiters and abusers of women invariably see themselves as the
victims -- "That sixteen year old slut THREW herself at me!" -- and fail
to acknowledge a moral responsibility for their actions. The self-pity
that increasingly infected Chaplin's work from "The Circus" on has the
same unconvincing, self-serving tone to it.
Chaplin's great creation, the Little Fellow, always had a tragic side
-- a hard-headed realization that the world as it is could not be
expected to recognize his eccentric nobility. But in the early films he
never asks us to pity him for this, and he always holds out the
possibility that things will be different down the line.
In the tragic denouement of "The Circus", however, he seems to be
embracing and celebrating the beauty of "the world well lost", and some
kind of defiance and hope in the character of the Little Fellow is lost
with this.
His vandalization of "The Gold Rush" in 1942 reflects the
post-"The Circus" Chaplin -- a happy ending has become unthinkable,
since it undermines the Little Fellow's role as victim . . . victim of
his own goodness, victim of his own generosity.
Gag me with a spoon.
There is a kind of hatred of women implied in all this. In the
1925 version of "The Gold Rush", Georgia the dance hall girl is granted
the humanity to recognize the heroic and decent virtues of the Lone
Prospector -- virtues which we the audience are also encouraged and
expected to recognize. In the 1942 version, this grant has been
revoked. Merna the bareback rider of "The Circus" is a dimwit who
prefers the cosmetic charms of Rex the tightrope walker, a non-entity.
While some see sublime tragic inevitability in the disappointed
look on the flower girl's face at the end of "City Lights", I see in it
the bitter condemnation of a shallow woman who can't look past
appearances in evaluating the worth of a man.
This is the contradiction that Chaplin's self-pity introduced into
his later work, and that mars it. We are led to appreciate the humanity
and courage and nobility of the Little Fellow, but are not expected to
reject the characters in the film who don't. Our emotion is directed
into pity for the noble loser -- too good for this world.
The opening of "The Circus" is one of the finest plastic moments
in all of Chaplin's films -- the bareback rider busting through a paper
hoop suddenly revealing the circus ring behind it. This image is
recalled in the final moments of the film, when the Little Fellow picks
up a torn remnant of that paper hoop. It is one of the grace notes that
reconciles us to the somewhat artificial tragedy of the ending.
Likewise, the scene of the girl swinging on the rings high above the
Little Fellow, who tries to toss food up to her, prepares us for the
Little Fellow's realization that they inhabit different worlds.
Chaplin's decision in the 70's to use the footage of the rings as
a prologue, over which his charming performance of a sentimental song
plays -- a song celebrating the value of looking up even in the midst of
tragedy -- resonates perfectly with Chaplin's later cloying
sentimentality. But it is a violation of the film he originally made --
the last in which the sentimental self-pity does not quite overcome the
energy and hopeful joy of the Little Fellow.
The Image edition of "The Circus" on DVD includes the prologue
with the song only as a supplement, which is the right choice certainly,
but it does use Chaplin's score for the picture, which was not the score
for the original release. Does anyone know how else the Image version
differs from the original release? The restaurant scene, offered as a
supplement on the Image disc and on the new edition, was not part of the
original release and indeed never reached the final editing stage, and
would not have served the film well, in my opinion.
Rick Levinson
Lloyd Fonvielle
even the silent comedy of a masterpiece like "The Circus", should be
consumed casually and thoughtlessly, like breakfast cereal. Its sources
and methods and appeal are too simple and obvious to bear serious scrutiny.
If "The Circus" really were the equivalent of a box of cereal,
your satire would make a most excellent point.
I understand the desire to consume "the wonderful world of
slapstick" this way, but I obviously don't share it. Silent comedy
really is deeper than a bowl of Rice Krispies, and unlike breakfast
cereal can be appreciated and analyzed on many different levels.
Rick Levinson
> even the silent comedy of a masterpiece like "The Circus", should be
> consumed casually and thoughtlessly, like breakfast cereal. Its sources
> and methods and appeal are too simple and obvious to bear serious scrutiny.
> If "The Circus" really were the equivalent of a box of cereal,
> your satire would make a most excellent point.
> I understand the desire to consume "the wonderful world of
> slapstick" this way, but I obviously don't share it. Silent comedy
> really is deeper than a bowl of Rice Krispies, and unlike breakfast
> cereal can be appreciated and analyzed on many different levels.
>
Richard M Roberts
>
> I get it, I get it. Silent comedy, even the silent comedy of Chaplin,
> even the silent comedy of a masterpiece like "The Circus", should be
> consumed casually and thoughtlessly, like breakfast cereal. Its sources
> and methods and appeal are too simple and obvious to bear serious scrutiny.
> If "The Circus" really were the equivalent of a box of cereal,
> your satire would make a most excellent point.
> I understand the desire to consume "the wonderful world of
> slapstick" this way, but I obviously don't share it. Silent comedy
> really is deeper than a bowl of Rice Krispies, and unlike breakfast
> cereal can be appreciated and analyzed on many different levels.
Yes, but at this level it usually says more about the analyzer than what
is being analyzed, and a bowl of Rice Krispies is definitely deeper and
more interesting than that.
RICHARD M ROBERTS
Lloyd Fonvielle
> Overweening pride in one's own aesthetic faculties is one
> thing. Obtuseness in failing to get the point of others is somewhat
> counterproductive.
I got Christopher Snowden's points and disagreed with them -- I cited
sources like Richard Koszarski in support of my view. I got Connie's
points, too, and also disagreed with them -- and cited Gilbert Seldes in
support of my view. Much as I respect Snowden's and Connie's knowledge,
it doesn't follow that Koszarski and Seldes are lightweights in the
literature of silent film, and are automatically wrong when they depart
from Snowden's and Connie's view of things.
I've been watching and reading about Chaplin's films for most of
my life -- I've seen "The Circus" half a dozen times over the past
twenty years or so. I had an insight about it which made sense to me, I
wrote it down. You may disagree with the insight, or think it was
poorly expressed, but I really don't understand the hostility conveyed here.
The overly precious style of my language, or my excitement about a
particular subject or point of view, really have little to do with the
substance of what I'm saying.
I compared Sennett to Wilde in the context of a suggestion offered
by Christopher Snowden that Sennett might have been gay, and only in
that context -- gay men who directed satirical barbs at the conventions
of a society which marginalized them. I think it's a valid and
interesting parallel, or potential parallel.
If you are offended that I compared a great artist like Wilde to a
vulgar knockabout clown like Sennett, then all I can say is that I have
a higher regard for Sennett's standing as an artist than you do. It's a
difference of opinion, and differences of opinion can be illuminating,
even when expressed in the overblown language I am admittedly often
guilty of.
George Shelps
>The point concerned a peacock's pride in
>sharing with others his or her
>not-as-original-as-he-thinks apercus of
>something - Sennett's alleged creative
>urges, say, or Chaplin's THE CIRCUS -
>with a pretentiousness and self-satisfied
>windbaggery that makes readers grit
>their teeth. And of ignoring or
>misconstruing the comments of other
>posters who possess a lot more depth of
>insight and all-around contextual
>knowledge of silent film than the
>self-appointed pundit.
You're mad. Lloyd's posts put many of
you self-styled experts to shame.
There's rarely any discussion of the content and meaning in the films
many
of you profess to admire. Lloyd's been
providing that--agree with him or not.
(and he and I sharply diverge on the
Coulter versus Agee issue)
What's the point of a film discussion group if it remains on the level
of stamp-collecting?
__________________________________
"The past is never dead. It's not even past."
__William Faulkner
Lloyd Fonvielle
> What's the point of a film discussion group if it remains on the level
> of stamp-collecting?
Thanks for your kind comments. There's nothing wrong with
stamp-collecting, or with a clubhouse atmosphere where a shared
enthusiasm and commonly held opinions are celebrated. I just don't see
what's so hateful about an occasional deviation from the program.
I am personally tickled by the affectionate regard constantly
expressed here for Kay Francis and her lisp, but surely that's not the
only way to demonstrate a love for silent film. In fact, I'm not really
sure what it has to do with silent film at all.
I'm also not sure people are aware of how many people who don't
post to this group read it. I'm frequently contacted by such people,
sometimes asking for permission to print something I've written in
another context, including a professor at the University Of Wisconsin
who wanted to include my (no doubt pretentious) musings on "Silent Sex"
in a reader he was preparing for an introductory course on silent film.
(I'm sure he was hoping that the title alone would pique his student's
interest.)
This hardly constitutes an extraordinary achievement -- and it
can't be used as proof of my academic bent, since I don't even have a
college degree -- but it does indicate the usefulness of this forum for
broadening the public discourse about silent film.
It's pretty easy to filter out the posts of a contributor you
don't like, so what's the big deal here?
Robert Lipton
Lloyd Fonvielle wrote:
You don't "disprove" aesthetics by citing other wrong-headed critics.
Chaplin did not begin CITY LIGHTS by deciding how to express his
contempt for women. He worried about how to make a blind girl think the
Tramp was rich without sound. Sennett did not turn down a day's rushes
because it did not express his anger. He simply passed anything that
was not too awful.... the distributors wanted it now.
They were in the well-paying business of making people laugh. They did
so with varying success or failure in each picture. Thir motives do not
interest me. What interests me is it a good picture? I don't care
that Chaplin was English and Sennett Canadian. Does this make their
folms any funnier or less funny?
Not to me. Your attempts to apply modern critical "methods" to them
might better be applied by working up a nonsense generator like that at
http://www.elsewhere.org/cgi-bin/postmodern
and in the meantime, Mr. Levinson's posting is a funny satire that
expresses his anger. Isn't that the purpose of art? To express the
artist's anger?
Bob
Constance Kuriyama
but I had my doubts that I should be answering it. Now it's my turn to
say I don't believe anything you say--well almost nothing. And I wonder
why your speculative faculty has suddenly run amok.
Here is a summary of what I tried to post.
1. I don't consider _Circus_ one of Chaplin's masterpieces, though it has
its virtues. I don't think Chaplin knew exactly what he wanted to say
in it, and the story has obvious weaknessess. Jeff Vance has mounted
some spirited defenses of it, most recently in his forthcoming book,
but I don't think it qualifies as a great film. It goes in my "good" box.
2. Chaplin sometimes abused and used women, and was used and abused by
them. He was also a dedicated self-abuser who did plenty of damage to
himself--for example by getting involved with Lita. According to Jim
Tully, who was no uncritical admirer of Chaplin, Lita *did* throw
herself at him, but she wasn't at all unusual in that respect.
3. I am constantly amazed at the glib facility with which Chaplin's
representation of the Tramp as sympathetic is interpreted as self-pity.
I have news for people who say this: Chaplin was not the Tramp, any more
than Mark Twain was Huck Finn or Charles Dickens was Jo the chimney sweep.
The Tramp is a mythincal, symbolic character representing all of us, and
if we feel sympathy or pity for him at times, it is not Chaplin but
ourselves that we pity.
4. Let's give the blind girl a break. She's had her sight for only a short
while, and is probably still thrilled by visual beauty. But of course
her disappointment is mainly caused by the Tramp's misrepresentation of
himself. He knows that the world judges him negatively and he even
accepts that judgment, which is why he continues to deceive her, and to
enjoy the fantasy himself. He's willing to sacrifice himself for her
partly because he considers himself relatively worthless. But there's
no bitterness about the ending that I can see, just irony and truth,
which is painful in a strangely beautiful way, and that's why people cry.
5. You're making yourself ridiculous by your repeated assertion that the '42
_Gold Rush_ has a tragic ending. Both versions end with Georgia and
the Tramp reunited, and the commentary assures us that it is "a happy
ending." Are you sure you can do without that voice over? And furthermore,
'42 puts more emphasis than '25 on Georgia's discovery of the Tramp's virtue,
because it doesn't show her having second thoughts and basely trying to
sidle up to Jack.
You are being attacked because your posts are full of assertions based
on virtually nothing, and sometimes, as in the case of _Gold Rush_, on
obvious errors.
Connie K.
--
"Our century is inconceivable without its . . . inconclusive mob of isms."
greta de groat
George Shelps wrote:
Yes, i'm wondering why it's been ok for us to discuss women's films
seriously, but not ok to do the same with comedy. (Or is it just that the
comedy fans automatically deleted the women's films discussion?). I've
been enjoying reading Lloyd's thoughts even though i havent' necessarily
agreed with them. We can't be sure what the filmmaker intended. Two
people can look at the same film and see different things and who is to
say someone is wrong? I know lots of times that what a film says to me is
definitely not what the filmmaker intended! And when you see
characteristics in common from film to film, it does lead you to wonder
about the reason it--conscious or unconcious, on the part of the
filmmaker. And besides, Lloyd hasn't been talking academicese that
everyone always complains about--he hasn't mentioned the primal scene or
castration anxiety even once (can you tell i'm still slogging through
Doane). So keep on posting, some of us are enjoying exercising our
brains. And all the other folks, too, who want to present their
disagreements.
I did enjoy the rice krispies, though!
greta
(ps--who was it who was trying to watch a film a night until his VCR
broke? Are you repaired yet? I was enjoying reading your first
impressions and am waiting for more)
Lloyd Fonvielle
> We can't be sure what the filmmaker intended. Two
> people can look at the same film and see different things and who is to
> say someone is wrong?
Exactly. What I see as rage and original invention in Sennett's work,
others see as calculating commercial exploitation of existing forms. In
truth it might be a combination of the two, or neither, but the opinions
on either side can be useful. However when it's asserted that Sennett's
lax control over his films does not allow for an authorial voice to be
read in them, when the evidence shows that he exerted unusual and
virtually unprecedented control over his films, the debate can grow a
bit keener.
Lloyd Fonvielle
> I spent a while answering this post, only to have the reply lost on Google,
> but I had my doubts that I should be answering it. Now it's my turn to
> say I don't believe anything you say--well almost nothing. And I wonder
> why your speculative faculty has suddenly run amok.
>
> Here is a summary of what I tried to post.
>
> 1. I don't consider _Circus_ one of Chaplin's masterpieces, though it has
> its virtues. I don't think Chaplin knew exactly what he wanted to say
> in it, and the story has obvious weaknessess. Jeff Vance has mounted
> some spirited defenses of it, most recently in his forthcoming book,
> but I don't think it qualifies as a great film. It goes in my "good" box.
It goes in my masterpiece box. An opinion -- like yours.
> 2. Chaplin sometimes abused and used women, and was used and abused by
> them. He was also a dedicated self-abuser who did plenty of damage to
> himself--for example by getting involved with Lita. According to Jim
> Tully, who was no uncritical admirer of Chaplin, Lita *did* throw
> herself at him, but she wasn't at all unusual in that respect.
Perhaps I'm being unfair, but you seem to be implying a kind of moral
equivalency between a 16 year-old girl throwing herself at a rich,
powerful celebrity, and a rich, powerful celebrity taking advantage of
the situation. The first is understandable, the second reprehensible.
> 3. I am constantly amazed at the glib facility with which Chaplin's
> representation of the Tramp as sympathetic is interpreted as self-pity.
> I have news for people who say this: Chaplin was not the Tramp, any more
> than Mark Twain was Huck Finn or Charles Dickens was Jo the chimney sweep.
> The Tramp is a mythincal, symbolic character representing all of us, and
> if we feel sympathy or pity for him at times, it is not Chaplin but
> ourselves that we pity.
Chaplin's Tramp is not sympathetic to me when his creator presents him
as an icon of misunderstood goodness, rather than a human being.
> 4. Let's give the blind girl a break. She's had her sight for only a short
> while, and is probably still thrilled by visual beauty. But of course
> her disappointment is mainly caused by the Tramp's misrepresentation of
> himself. He knows that the world judges him negatively and he even
> accepts that judgment, which is why he continues to deceive her, and to
> enjoy the fantasy himself. He's willing to sacrifice himself for her
> partly because he considers himself relatively worthless. But there's
> no bitterness about the ending that I can see, just irony and truth,
> which is painful in a strangely beautiful way, and that's why people cry.
That may be why some people cry. Others may cry because they feel the
same self-pity I see Chaplin exhibiting here. I do not cry, though I've
wept like a baby over "The Kid", and I was moved to tears by the joyful
generosity and redemption of the ending of the 1925 "The Gold Rush".
> 5. You're making yourself ridiculous by your repeated assertion that the '42
> _Gold Rush_ has a tragic ending. Both versions end with Georgia and
> the Tramp reunited, and the commentary assures us that it is "a happy
> ending." Are you sure you can do without that voice over? And furthermore,
> '42 puts more emphasis than '25 on Georgia's discovery of the Tramp's virtue,
> because it doesn't show her having second thoughts and basely trying to
> sidle up to Jack.
Chaplin had to assert that it was a happy ending in voice-over because
he undermined the dramatized happiness by his cuts in the 1942 version.
And God knows what Chaplin meant by a "happy ending" at that point in
his career. He may have seen the ending of "The Circus" as happy,
because the Little Fellow stuck to his saintly ways in the face of a
wicked, superficial and uncomprehending universe. He carried on, in
spite of the Lita Greys of this world. Brave little man.
John Soister
Fonvielle says...
frequently outrageous) opinions, but in the inbility to defend those opinions
with anything other than misreadings of available evidence, illogic, unsupported
assumptions about the filmmaker's motivations and/or sitz-im-leben, and flights
of fancy. While everyone has a right to his/her own interpretation of a film
(or book or...) AND the right to articulate same for public consumption, the
current trend towards OVERanalyzing is becoming ludicrous. I read a piece on
the 1931 Dracula not so long ago wherein the author found meaning in the fact
that both Dracula and Renfield wore their hair in similar fashion. Sometimes
venturing off in areas that have hitherto gone undereported raises valid
questions, encourages meaningful dialogue, and promotes enjoyable discussion;
sometimes it leads only to spurious conclusions and tedious, labyrinthian
displays of tortured logic. You may find Sennett's raging against the machine
to be the raison d'etre for many of his shorts, but I have to go along with Stan
Laurel & Buster Keaton, who (more than once, I'm sure) said they (and other
classic comics) did funny things in their films simply because they were funny.
I haven't the presumption to argue with Chaplin's shade over whether his reputed
1942 happy ending is happy or not to me, as I find the whole thing pointless,
but neither did I weep at the conclusion of either release. Then again, I have
found that nothing kills laughter like an intellectual/emotional/philosphical
study by the intelligentsia. As much as I'll defend your right to find
eleventy-seven layers of hidden meaning in the Keystone Kops, I won't be reading
any more posts on the angst of long-dead clowns.
John Soister
Lloyd Fonvielle
> As much as I'll defend your right to find
> eleventy-seven layers of hidden meaning in the Keystone Kops, I won't be reading
> any more posts on the angst of long-dead clowns.
Fair enough.
Lincoln Spector
Certainly you must realize that your opinion of The Circus as "his last
wholly satisfying masterpiece" is a minority one. Most people, myself
included, see it as the minor work made between his two greatest films, The
Gold Rush and City Lights. IMHO, he followed The Circus with three much
better movies: City Lights (his greatest work in my opinion), Modern Times,
and The Great Dictator.
Although The Circus is a funny, entertaining picture that makes you care
about the characters, it simply never offers either the laughs or the
emotional release of a masterpiece. It's also inherently false. Chaplin is
dealing with his own art here--physical humor--and he's totally dishonest
about it. He knew you couldn't be reliably funny without trying (as the
tramp is here).
Nor do I see the girl's choice of the tightrope walker over the tramp to be
a sign of her shallowness. Chaplin does nothing to make you dislike the
tightrope walker. You can easily believe that they'll be happy together.
And, of course, they're closer in age.
In fact, one could argue that Chaplin was making the tramp more noble then
he was in real life. Rather than marrying the younger girl, he sets her up
with someone more appropriate.
Lincoln
Lloyd Fonvielle
> Lloyd--
>
> Certainly you must realize that your opinion of The Circus as "his last
> wholly satisfying masterpiece" is a minority one. Most people, myself
> included, see it as the minor work made between his two greatest films, The
> Gold Rush and City Lights. IMHO, he followed The Circus with three much
> better movies: City Lights (his greatest work in my opinion), Modern Times,
> and The Great Dictator.
Of course I recognize it as a minority opinion. I'm not sure what
conclusion I should draw from this, though. It's an opinion I have a
very strong conviction about.
I see "The Circus" as a hinge in Chaplin's career. The
self-conscious (and to me self-pitying) presentation of the Little
Fellow as a tragic icon begins here, but does not quite overwhelm what I
once described as "the inwardness that makes him as real as anyone we
have ever met in the flesh, and as unknowable, as uncompassable." (This
concept of the illusion of inwardness is used by Harold Bloom to evoke
the miraculous dimensionality of the great characters of Shakespeare,
but I think the Little Fellow is an equally profound creation.)
In "City Lights", for me, the balance shifts, and the iconic
self-consciousness begins to stifle the dynamic inner dimensionality of
the Tramp.
Connie is right to warn against an absolute identification of
Chaplin with his creation, but in the case of an actor who inhabits a
single character over the course of most of his professional career, it
would hardly be surprising to see the creation inflected and sometimes
distorted by personal (as opposed to purely aesthetic or dramatic)
motives, unacknowledged and most likely unconscious. The phenomenon is
not limited to actors. The same sort of self-pity began to inflect and
distort the protagonists of Hemingway's later novels, with whom he
clearly identified.
This is what I think happened to Chaplin. Chaplin began to see
his character as he saw himself -- as a noble victim. His art suffered
in the process -- lost some of its complexity and power to surprise.
"City Lights" is the work of a great genius, and certainly a
masterpiece, but it is not wholly satisfying to me for these reasons. I
could say exactly the same of "Across the River and Into the Trees".
Bill Coleman
explain why his character is not treated with any self-pity
in Modern Times, which also includes a happy ending,
at least as much as any of his films do. I happen to think it's
Chaplin's best feature, though I think that is also a minority
opinion.
Bill Coleman
==================
"Lloyd Fonvielle" <navi...@earthlink.net> wrote in message
news:BUZmb.3472$RQ1....@newsread3.news.pas.earthlink.net...
Constance Kuriyama
> Constance Kuriyama wrote:
>
>> I spent a while answering this post, only to have the reply lost on Google,
>> but I had my doubts that I should be answering it. Now it's my turn to
>> say I don't believe anything you say--well almost nothing. And I wonder
>> why your speculative faculty has suddenly run amok.
>>
>> Here is a summary of what I tried to post.
>>
>> 1. I don't consider _Circus_ one of Chaplin's masterpieces, though it has
>> its virtues. I don't think Chaplin knew exactly what he wanted to say
>> in it, and the story has obvious weaknessess. Jeff Vance has mounted
>> some spirited defenses of it, most recently in his forthcoming book,
>> but I don't think it qualifies as a great film. It goes in my "good" box.
>
> It goes in my masterpiece box. An opinion -- like yours.
I offered reasons for my opinion. I'm not sure what yours are, because you
were preoccupied with Lita Grey.
>> 2. Chaplin sometimes abused and used women, and was used and abused by
>> them. He was also a dedicated self-abuser who did plenty of damage to
>> himself--for example by getting involved with Lita. According to Jim
>> Tully, who was no uncritical admirer of Chaplin, Lita *did* throw
>> herself at him, but she wasn't at all unusual in that respect.
>
> Perhaps I'm being unfair, but you seem to be implying a kind of moral
> equivalency between a 16 year-old girl throwing herself at a rich,
> powerful celebrity, and a rich, powerful celebrity taking advantage of
> the situation. The first is understandable, the second reprehensible.
You're being unfair. I'm merely pointing out that Lita made herself
amply available, her mother let her do it, and Chaplin was foolish or
self-destructive enough to take the bait, even though he was fresh out of
a bad marriage with Mildred Harris. As in many Hollywood situations,
there was plenty of reprehensible conduct to go around.
>> 3. I am constantly amazed at the glib facility with which Chaplin's
>> representation of the Tramp as sympathetic is interpreted as self-pity.
>> I have news for people who say this: Chaplin was not the Tramp, any more
>> than Mark Twain was Huck Finn or Charles Dickens was Jo the chimney sweep.
>> The Tramp is a mythincal, symbolic character representing all of us, and
>> if we feel sympathy or pity for him at times, it is not Chaplin but
>> ourselves that we pity.
>
> Chaplin's Tramp is not sympathetic to me when his creator presents him
> as an icon of misunderstood goodness, rather than a human being.
Like other fictional characters, the Tramp is not quite a human being,
though he reminds us of human beings, but I don't think he can be reduced
to an icon of misunderstood goodness. If you have trouble sympathizing with
such a dwarfish version of the Tramp, that could be your problem.
>> 4. Let's give the blind girl a break. She's had her sight for only a short
>> while, and is probably still thrilled by visual beauty. But of course
>> her disappointment is mainly caused by the Tramp's misrepresentation of
>> himself. He knows that the world judges him negatively and he even
>> accepts that judgment, which is why he continues to deceive her, and to
>> enjoy the fantasy himself. He's willing to sacrifice himself for her
>> partly because he considers himself relatively worthless. But there's
>> no bitterness about the ending that I can see, just irony and truth,
>> which is painful in a strangely beautiful way, and that's why people cry.
>
> That may be why some people cry. Others may cry because they feel the
> same self-pity I see Chaplin exhibiting here.
No, I think they're crying for everyone, including themselves. And a little
self pity isn't a crime, if it's justified, and if it sensitizes people to
others. But since Chaplin was a rich, successful man at the time he made
the film, I'm hard pressed to see how you get self-pity out of the
representation of the Tramp at the end of _City Lights_. There's more
of Chaplin's immediate circumstances in the suicidal millionaire, and no one's
ever interpreted *that* as an instance of self-pity.
I do not cry, though I've
> wept like a baby over "The Kid", and I was moved to tears by the joyful
> generosity and redemption of the ending of the 1925 "The Gold Rush".
>
>> 5. You're making yourself ridiculous by your repeated assertion that the '42
>> _Gold Rush_ has a tragic ending. Both versions end with Georgia and
>> the Tramp reunited, and the commentary assures us that it is "a happy
>> ending." Are you sure you can do without that voice over? And furthermore,
>> '42 puts more emphasis than '25 on Georgia's discovery of the Tramp's virtue,
>> because it doesn't show her having second thoughts and basely trying to
>> sidle up to Jack.
>
> Chaplin had to assert that it was a happy ending in voice-over because
> he undermined the dramatized happiness by his cuts in the 1942 version.
> And God knows what Chaplin meant by a "happy ending" at that point in
> his career. He may have seen the ending of "The Circus" as happy,
> because the Little Fellow stuck to his saintly ways in the face of a
> wicked, superficial and uncomprehending universe. He carried on, in
> spite of the Lita Greys of this world. Brave little man.
Nice dodge, but attacking Chaplin personally doesn't answer my point. In
fact _Gold Rush_ ends with Charlie and Georgia clearly looking forward
to marrying, with or without the kiss. Either way it's a classic
romantic comedy ending. The ending of '42 is more muted and less
conventional, but it is hardly tragic.
Connie K.
Matt Barry
THE CIRCUS is the type of picture that if it had been made by Keaton
or Lloyd might be seen as one of their "lesser" efforts. I think being
that Chaplin left such a big gap in between films, each one was looked
at as more of a special event, and therefore more important. Perhaps
more is made of its theme of "unintentional" comedy than Chaplin
really intended. There are many interesting sequences though,
especially the hall of mirrors. Given the nightmare of a production
that this film had, I think it works quite well in general but its
certainly not without its flaws, especially when compared to the films
that came right before and after it.
Matt
Constance Kuriyama
>
> > Lloyd--
> >
> > Certainly you must realize that your opinion of The Circus as "his last
> > wholly satisfying masterpiece" is a minority one. Most people, myself
> > included, see it as the minor work made between his two greatest films, The
> > Gold Rush and City Lights. IMHO, he followed The Circus with three much
> > better movies: City Lights (his greatest work in my opinion), Modern Times,
> > and The Great Dictator.
>
> Of course I recognize it as a minority opinion. I'm not sure what
> conclusion I should draw from this, though. It's an opinion I have a
> very strong conviction about.
> I see "The Circus" as a hinge in Chaplin's career. The
> self-conscious (and to me self-pitying) presentation of the Little
> Fellow as a tragic icon begins here, but does not quite overwhelm what I
> once described as "the inwardness that makes him as real as anyone we
> have ever met in the flesh, and as unknowable, as uncompassable." (This
> concept of the illusion of inwardness is used by Harold Bloom to evoke
> the miraculous dimensionality of the great characters of Shakespeare,
> but I think the Little Fellow is an equally profound creation.)
> In "City Lights", for me, the balance shifts, and the iconic
> self-consciousness begins to stifle the dynamic inner dimensionality of
> the Tramp.
That reminds me of something I mentioned in the lost post--that
Chaplin started representing the Tramp as sympathetic (and indeed
rather pitiful)
at Keystone, in _The New Janitor_, and did it intermittantly at
Essanay (_The Tramp_; _The Bank_), and Mutual (_The Vagabond_), and a
number of films
before _Circus_, including _Gold Rush_. The latter made one of my male
students get teary-eyed over Charlie being stood up. So if you want to
interpret this as "self-pity" you can start a lot earlier, although
Walter
Kerr picks on the aftermath of being stood up in _Gold Rush_--Charlie
standing alone at his cabin door listening to everyone else celebrate.
To me that scene has nothing to do with self-pity, though it taps
everyone's
memories of being rejected or left out, which everyone has had at some
time, including, I'm sure, Chaplin. Part of his genius was that he
dared to acknowledge feelings which most comedy tries to laugh off,
and that's where
the character gets some of his depth.
> Connie is right to warn against an absolute identification of
> Chaplin with his creation, but in the case of an actor who inhabits a
> single character over the course of most of his professional career, it
> would hardly be surprising to see the creation inflected and sometimes
> distorted by personal (as opposed to purely aesthetic or dramatic)
> motives, unacknowledged and most likely unconscious. The phenomenon is
> not limited to actors.
No, but the fact that Chaplin *performed* his character makes him more
vulnerable to a false equation of creator with created.
The same sort of self-pity began to inflect and
> distort the protagonists of Hemingway's later novels, with whom he
> clearly identified.
> This is what I think happened to Chaplin. Chaplin began to see
> his character as he saw himself -- as a noble victim. His art suffered
> in the process -- lost some of its complexity and power to surprise.
> "City Lights" is the work of a great genius, and certainly a
> masterpiece, but it is not wholly satisfying to me for these reasons. I
> could say exactly the same of "Across the River and Into the Trees".
Well, to return to another point I raised in the lost post, a person
prone
to self-pity would surely show that in an autobiography, but there's
not
a trace of it in Chaplin's. He relates the most painful part of his
life,
his childhood, in a matter-of-fact and sometimes humorous manner. He
occasionally tries to justify himself, or avoids subjects he can't be
dispassionate about, but he never represents himself as a noble
victim, and he spends a surprising amount of time talking about other
people, some famous and some totally unknown. When they are famous
this has been invidiously interpreted as name-dropping, but I've
always taken it as a sign of his close observation of human
nature--another source of the Tramp's depth.
Connie K.
Constance Kuriyama
> Well, if this is a real trend in Chaplin, then it does not
> explain why his character is not treated with any self-pity
> in Modern Times, which also includes a happy ending,
> at least as much as any of his films do. I happen to think it's
> Chaplin's best feature, though I think that is also a minority
> opinion.
>
> Bill Coleman
You have the Vatican on your side, and maybe the Cannes Festival. ;-)
But I think of _Kid_, _Gold Rush_, _City Lights_, and _Modern Times_ as
the Big Four. They all amaze me.
Connie K.
Lloyd Fonvielle
Yes, of course, the Little Fellow always had a pathetic side -- and it
was a part of the greatness of the creation. And of course this
pathetic side was something we could all identify with. It's one of the
reasons we love the character so much. But this is different from
self-pity -- the self-pity I see creeping into Chaplin's treatment of
the character in "The Circus" . . .
. . . because the Little Fellow at his zenith was always more than
pathetic -- he was also cruel at times, heroic, cowardly, kind, amoral,
principled. He was, in short, a human being, alive, in process of
creating himself, as we all are. You couldn't pin him down -- and great
dramatists like Shakespeare and Chaplin remind us that this complexity,
this fluidity of self, is at the very heart of what it means to be
human. Hundreds of books about Hamlet will never solve his mystery, and
hundreds of books will never solve the mystery of the Little Fellow.
That's his glory, and the essence of Chaplin's genius.
But the ending of "The Circus", and the whole narrative of "City
Lights", represent to me a betrayal of the Little Fellow's truth. They
seem to me to be a self-conscious effort by their creator to "make a
point", to present the character as an icon in a philosophical, as
opposed to an artistic, a truly dramatic, statement. They seem
artificial and self-serving, in other words, in a way Shakespeare never was.
People don't have to actually be victims to think of themselves as
victims. In trying to imagine why Chaplin robbed his creation of
dynamic complexity in order to present him as an icon of betrayed
goodness, I'm irresistibly drawn to his personal history with Lita Grey.
Her divorce suit, which shut down production of "The Circus" for eight
months and which Chaplin feared might actually take the film out of his
hands, strikes me as a reasonable explanation for the self-pity I see in
the ending of that film.
My speculation is informed by what I know about men who exploit
and abuse women -- they always see themselves as the victims. Here was
this little hustler who threw herself at Chaplin. He responded, as any
"normal" man would, married her when she got pregnant, showered her with
riches, elevated her to a celebrity beyond her station -- and she
responded by trying to destroy his art!
It's all bullshit, of course. She was a 16 year-old child when
she "threw herself" at him -- he was a mature, rich and powerful man.
NOTHING can excuse his behavior towards her, in taking advantage of her
sexually, or in neglecting her later after he married her. NOTHING.
But this, of course, is not the way men who behave this way see
it. They see themselves as good men, generous men, betrayed by
ungrateful and unworthy women. They can weep real tears at the
injustice of it all -- as Chaplin wants us to weep at the endings of
"The Circus" and "City Lights".
The Little Fellow in "City Lights" gives a woman the gift of sight
-- and she uses that sight only to find fault with him. If Chaplin the
artist had shown some rage and indignation at this, I might have
accepted it. His philosophical, sacrificial acceptance of it strikes me
as phony to the core. He is asking us to pity Charles Chaplin -- not
the Little Fellow, not the sorrowful ways of this world.
It is no accident that Woody Allen, another abuser of women,
reprised the ending of "City Lights" in "Manhattan", out of much the
same self-pity. That one didn't make me cry, either.
Chaplin's self-pity metamorphosed into something else in "Modern
Times" -- his increasingly ideological identification with the oppressed
of the world, his vehement hatred of bourgeois society as a whole,
elevated his grievance to a higher and nobler plane, by some lights,
into fuzzy-headed radicalism by others.
But by then the Little Fellow was gone. I think he started his
farewell in "The Circus".
A comfortable old age, a satisfying marriage, a disengagement from
the turmoil of artistic creation, clearly dissipated Chaplin's
grievance, and revived a good portion of the generosity that was always
at the center of his best work. The autobiography was a product of that
time. "The Circus" and "City Lights" were the products of a different
time, and a different Chaplin.
George Shelps
>A comfortable old age, a satisfying
>marriage, a disengagement from the
>turmoil of artistic creation, clearly
>dissipated Chaplin's grievance, and
>revived a good portion of the generosity
>that was always at the center of his best
>work. The autobiography was a product
>of that time. "The Circus" and "City
>Lights" were the products of a different
>time, and a different Chaplin.
True, the last passage of "My Autobiography" testifies to his new-found
serenity (although he still harbored some resentment about his Victorian
era suffering, as expressed in an article
in "Ramparts:"circa 1964)
His serentiy, however, didn't result
in any new creative directions. All that
resulted was the disappointing COUNTESS FROM HONG KONG.
bpnjensen
Lloyd Fonvielle <navi...@earthlink.net> wrote in message news:<Jm6nb.3902$RQ1....@newsread3.news.pas.earthlink.net>...
<snipped>
> The Little Fellow in "City Lights" gives a woman the gift of sight
> -- and she uses that sight only to find fault with him. If Chaplin the
> artist had shown some rage and indignation at this, I might have
> accepted it. His philosophical, sacrificial acceptance of it strikes me
> as phony to the core. He is asking us to pity Charles Chaplin -- not
> the Little Fellow, not the sorrowful ways of this world.
I am a little baffled by this interpretation. The look on the
Formerly Blind Woman's face at the close of the "City Lights" has
never struck me as a look of fault-finding. It has always been the
look of a sudden crashing realization that one of your most
certainly-held notions about a person has been shown to be incorrect,
made all the more stunning by the fact that it is all about a person
who has been close and beloved. In another word, shock. There is no
fear, no hatred, no repulse in her look, and even compassion hasn't
even fully begun to creep into her gaze (although it is plainly in
ours, and has been right along). It is the look of a person suddenly
having to search for a meaning that she hadn't before even considered.
At worst, I find the ending to be ambiguous, because there are many
possible outcomes another ten minutes down the road. Not to say that
this is a bad thing at all; it is sometimes good to force people to
think about their own responses in situations of this type, and that
is what Chaplin seems to do. Given the kind and understanding nature
of the woman who has herself known past hardship, a rather happy
post-ending is no less conceivable than her totally disowning Charlie
for his mean status. Any number of other possible outcomes in between
are also imaginable.
The ending, IMHO anyway, is a metaphor for pulling away not only the
physical but also the emotional blinders away from our eyes. A cry
for pity? Perhaps too, but it seems incidental rather than
consciously intended.
Bruce Jensen
Lloyd Fonvielle
> Lloyd Fonvielle wrote:
>
>
>>A comfortable old age, a satisfying
>>marriage, a disengagement from the
>>turmoil of artistic creation, clearly
>>dissipated Chaplin's grievance, and
>>revived a good portion of the generosity
>>that was always at the center of his best
>>work. The autobiography was a product
>>of that time. "The Circus" and "City
>>Lights" were the products of a different
>>time, and a different Chaplin.
>
>
> True, the last passage of "My Autobiography" testifies to his new-found
> serenity (although he still harbored some resentment about his Victorian
> era suffering, as expressed in an article
> in "Ramparts:"circa 1964)
>
> His serentiy, however, didn't result
> in any new creative directions. All that
> resulted was the disappointing COUNTESS FROM HONG KONG.
As I suggested, his serenity may have resulted in part from his
disengagement from creative endeavors. He could look back with pride on
a stunning body of work, and begin to enjoy the fact that it was widely
appreciated and would endure as a permanent legacy in world culture.
Lloyd Fonvielle
That's never been my reading of the last shots -- as ambiguous but
possibly hopeful -- but I know at least one other person who reads them
that way, and it's certainly one possible interpretation. I may be
wrong, but I think most people see Chaplin's last look as an acceptance
of rejection, of the impossibility of his hopes. By ending the whole
drama with the girl's look of shock, and a reverse on the Tramp's
reaction, which has more than a little dismay in it, I think Chaplin is
at the very least edging the meaning in a particular direction.
I think the ending would be unsatisfying dramatically even if it
were meant to be ambiguous -- the resolution of the relationship is what
drives the emotional suspense of the whole narrative, and I for one want
to know what it is. Depriving the girl of a moment in which she
expresses her love for the Little Fellow, as he is, even if it's not
romantic love, in which she shows the compassion that we the audience
are expected to feel for him, strikes me as odd, to put it mildly.
Even in "The Circus", there's the scene where Merna joins the
Tramp at his campfire and begs to be allowed to go with him, which shows
that she appreciates the guy, even if she doesn't care for him
romantically. There is no such moment in "City Lights", and Chaplin's
cuts in the ending of the 1942 "The Gold Rush", which have the effect of
muting the exhilaration of the romantic denouement, suggest a trend to me.
Lincoln Spector
> -- and she uses that sight only to find fault with him. If Chaplin the
> artist had shown some rage and indignation at this, I might have
> accepted it. His philosophical, sacrificial acceptance of it strikes me
> as phony to the core. He is asking us to pity Charles Chaplin -- not
> the Little Fellow, not the sorrowful ways of this world.
she seems disappointed. After all, he told her he was a millionaire--in many
ways he's the guilty party. But her expression is filled with love, and his
with hope. The ending doesn't spell out happily-ever-after, but there's a
hope for it.
Lincoln
Constance Kuriyama
> In reply to Connie's post:
>
> Yes, of course, the Little Fellow always had a pathetic side -- and it
> was a part of the greatness of the creation. And of course this
> pathetic side was something we could all identify with. It's one of the
> reasons we love the character so much. But this is different from
> self-pity -- the self-pity I see creeping into Chaplin's treatment of
> the character in "The Circus" . . .
Now I'm confused. Whose self-pity are we talking about--the
characters' or
Chaplin's? And how do we distinguish between pathos without self pity
and
pathos with it?
> . . . because the Little Fellow at his zenith was always more than
> pathetic -- he was also cruel at times, heroic, cowardly, kind, amoral,
> principled. He was, in short, a human being, alive, in process of
> creating himself, as we all are. You couldn't pin him down -- and great
> dramatists like Shakespeare and Chaplin remind us that this complexity,
> this fluidity of self, is at the very heart of what it means to be
> human. Hundreds of books about Hamlet will never solve his mystery, and
> hundreds of books will never solve the mystery of the Little Fellow.
> That's his glory, and the essence of Chaplin's genius.
> But the ending of "The Circus", and the whole narrative of "City
> Lights", represent to me a betrayal of the Little Fellow's truth. They
> seem to me to be a self-conscious effort by their creator to "make a
> point", to present the character as an icon in a philosophical, as
> opposed to an artistic, a truly dramatic, statement. They seem
> artificial and self-serving, in other words, in a way Shakespeare never was.
This is precisely the weekness of your argument. Things "seem to" you,
but
you never offer any concrete basis for your subjective response.
You're
certainly entitled to entertain any fantasies you wish, but you're
not likely to make many converts.
People don't have to actually be victims to think of themselves as
> victims. In trying to imagine why Chaplin robbed his creation of
> dynamic complexity in order to present him as an icon of betrayed
> goodness, I'm irresistibly drawn to his personal history with Lita Grey.
Yes, and this is another problem. First of all, you haven't provided
any
basis *in the film* for your contention that the Tramp has become an
icon of
betrayed goodness, so it looks suspiciously as if your pique over Lita
is dictating your response to the work. I'm more sympathetic to
biographical
criticism than many of the posters here, but it invariably distorts
art to
begin with facts (or allegations or just plain lies) about an artist's
life, and then start looking for traces of them in the work--i.e.
Picasso was an abuser of women; therefore his bloated female figures
are expressions of misogyny. Or Buster Keaton was abused by his
father; therefore he adopted the "stone face" to deny his pain. Etc.
Theories like this are cheaper by the dozen.
> Her divorce suit, which shut down production of "The Circus" for eight
> months and which Chaplin feared might actually take the film out of his
> hands, strikes me as a reasonable explanation for the self-pity I see in
> the ending of that film.
I wonder if you know even half of what went on during that nasty
divorce
suit, but none of this proves that the film expresses self-pity.
> My speculation is informed by what I know about men who exploit
> and abuse women -- they always see themselves as the victims.
You haven't shown that Chaplin saw himself as a victim.
Here was
> this little hustler who threw herself at Chaplin. He responded, as any
> "normal" man would, married her when she got pregnant, showered her with
> riches, elevated her to a celebrity beyond her station -- and she
> responded by trying to destroy his art!
> It's all bullshit, of course.
It certainly is. As far as I know Chaplin never viewed his submissison
to the forced marriage as a generous gesture on his part, or
considered the marriage a normal state of matrimony.
> She was a 16 year-old child when
> she "threw herself" at him -- he was a mature, rich and powerful man.
> NOTHING can excuse his behavior towards her, in taking advantage of her
> sexually, or in neglecting her later after he married her. NOTHING.
> But this, of course, is not the way men who behave this way see
> it. They see themselves as good men, generous men, betrayed by
> ungrateful and unworthy women. They can weep real tears at the
> injustice of it all -- as Chaplin wants us to weep at the endings of
> "The Circus" and "City Lights".
There's no compelling connection here, just some strenuous
leapfrogging.
> The Little Fellow in "City Lights" gives a woman the gift of sight
> -- and she uses that sight only to find fault with him. If Chaplin the
> artist had shown some rage and indignation at this, I might have
> accepted it. His philosophical, sacrificial acceptance of it strikes me
> as phony to the core. He is asking us to pity Charles Chaplin -- not
> the Little Fellow, not the sorrowful ways of this world.
Chaplin is simply realistic about human nature. It's a waste of energy
to get indignant about the casual cruelties people commit. The girl's
ridicule of the Tramp before she recognizes him is a normal response
to being gaped at by a ragged oaf, and the Tramp knows it, which is
why he tries to escape unrecognized. She tries to atone for her
insensitivity by offering him money and a flower, but he actually
doesn't want her pity; he'd rather be ridiculed and leave the illusion
she has of him intact.
And of course Chaplin partly undermines the audience's sympathy by
having the Tramp wipe his nose with a torn strip of his shorts.
Saintly icons don't do
things like that. The old Charlie is far from dead in _City Lights_.
> It is no accident that Woody Allen, another abuser of women,
> reprised the ending of "City Lights" in "Manhattan", out of much the
> same self-pity. That one didn't make me cry, either.
More leapfrogging. Allen is a very different personality, and
Chaplin's involvement with Lita didn't smack, however remotely, of
incest.
> Chaplin's self-pity metamorphosed into something else in "Modern
> Times" -- his increasingly ideological identification with the oppressed
> of the world, his vehement hatred of bourgeois society as a whole,
> elevated his grievance to a higher and nobler plane, by some lights,
> into fuzzy-headed radicalism by others.
> But by then the Little Fellow was gone. I think he started his
> farewell in "The Circus".
> A comfortable old age, a satisfying marriage, a disengagement from
> the turmoil of artistic creation, clearly dissipated Chaplin's
> grievance, and revived a good portion of the generosity that was always
> at the center of his best work. The autobiography was a product of that
> time. "The Circus" and "City Lights" were the products of a different
> time, and a different Chaplin.
He also published autobiographical writings in the early twenties and
early thirties, and there's no self-pity in them either
Connie K.
Constance Kuriyama
Of course the ending of _City Lights_ is ambiguous and was intended to
be
ambiguous, just as the closing dialogue, "You can see now?" "Yes, I
can see."
is a deliberate play on physical sight and insight or understanding.
The
expressions on the girl's and the Tramp's faces reflect not one
emotion but
a spectrum of emotions, which is part of the film's greatness. He's
happy, but apprehensive; she's shocked and disappointed, but as the
truth begins to sink in there's gratitude and warmth as well as
sympathy in her face. She may or may not be able to love the Tramp,
but she won't mock him again.
If I recall correctly, you liked _The Kid_, which also has an
ambiguous ending, as do most of the Chaplins that end with Charlie
walking down the road. We have no more idea than he does what he'll
find around the bend,
and once again, that's life.
Connie K.
Lloyd Fonvielle
At the end of "The Circus" the Little Fellow not only sacrificially
rejects the girl's offer of companionship, he personally arranges her
marriage to his rival, a cosmetic non-entity in the story.
Then he not only rejects the couple's offer of companionship, he
rejects the circus itself, where he is a star.
He sits on a box as the circus wagons move on -- the life! the
laughter! the love! -- fingering a piece of the paper hoop through which
the girl originally revealed herself and the big top in the opening shot
of the film (in the original version.) He is finally left alone,
looking bereft, in an empty field, and shuffles off dispiritedly.
Perhaps this ending doesn't strike you as intended to be
emblematic, metaphorical, iconic, but it sure strikes me that way. It
is a "statement", not a dramatic denouement, self-consciously arty,
though beautifully shot. In no other downbeat ending to one of the
Tramp's adventures are we invited to dwell quite so pointedly and
symbolically on his tragic fate. He doesn't even kick up his heels as
he saunters off this time, indicating his usual optimism about the
future. He has become the holy victim of a cruel world, patiently
suffering his agony.
His pathetic side is here transformed into "meaning" -- a
statement about the loneliness of a little misfit saint, who brings
laughter and happiness to others, but finds none for himself. Chaplin
was too great an artist to have concocted such an ending on aesthetic
grounds alone, which is why I see it as representing the unconscious
projection of a personal grievance and self-pity into his work -- a
grievance and self-pity common to men who abuse women.
Maybe I'm wrong. Maybe Chaplin lost his bearings as an artist for
some other reason. But I think my explanation makes sense, at any rate.
I have always had this feeling about the ending of "The Circus",
from the first time I saw it twenty years ago. I never associated its
artificial quality with Lita Grey until I read the production notes on
the film included in the Image DVD release, which duly record the
disruption of the shooting by Lita Grey's divorce suit, and perhaps more
poignantly, the non-disruption of the shooting by the birth of her and
Chaplin's second child.
bpnjensen
Indeed, Chaplin's films do end with ambiguity most of time, even as
early as the Essanay/Mutual era. Even when they are undeniably happy
and giggly, such as in The Rink, he is still rattling off toward an
unknown future, having made a number of enemies in the last few
minutes and having made a safe return trip to that venue impossible.
Taken by itself, City Lights allows hope for a positive, if not
totally romantically realized, outcome. This is true in all of his
films, I think - at his core, Charlie is a tough little guy, able to
effectively balance the weight of his emotion with the hope for a new
day. The last scene of Modern Times illustrates this attitude
beautifully, but even The Circus has it as Charlie back-kicks the
crinkled-up paper star and waddles along his way. City Lights uses a
somewhat different tool to impart this idea, with an external
character giving back some of the hope that Charlie usually finds
himself, but it's still there.
However, we can give Mr. Fonvielle this important chunk of the
argument - when Chaplin's films are viewed as a whole and one
continues the thread from, say, The Circus to City Lights - it is easy
to predict that Charlie the Tramp's next day will continue to find him
on the road, alone and lonely again, still seeing hope wax and wane
like the tides even as society scorns him.
Bruce Jensen
Lloyd Fonvielle
> . . . when Chaplin's films are viewed as a whole and one
> continues the thread from, say, The Circus to City Lights - it is easy
> to predict that Charlie the Tramp's next day will continue to find him
> on the road, alone and lonely again, still seeing hope wax and wane
> like the tides even as society scorns him.
I'm talking about a blip here, as far as the Little Fellow is concerned.
The ending of "The Circus" and the narrative of "City Lights"
represent a very small percentage of Chaplin's work, a very small
stretch of the Little Fellow's journey. "Modern Times" is a departure
into something else for Chaplin -- as with "The Great Dictator" he is
using his character, or a variant of it, in the service of a more
pointed kind of social or political satire, and the character vanishes
from the screen entirely after that.
The personal self-pity has a resurgence in "Limelight", the
satire, now grown truly savage, resurfaces in "Monsieur Verdoux", but
the Little Fellow by then has been happily left to the ages.
The ambiguity at the heart of the Little Fellow is, as I said
before, one of his glories. It's the ambiguity of a character who is
truly alive, truly human, and thus unencompassable. In the ending of
"The Circus", and "City Lights" in my reading of it, this ambiguity is
compromised by the presentation of the Little Fellow as an icon of
misunderstood, unappreciated goodness -- this is what he is, Chaplin
seems to be saying, this is "what it all means".
It would be like Shakespeare saying at the end of "Hamlet", this
is what happens when you can't make up your mind. But the tragedy of
Hamlet, and the character of Hamlet, are obviously much more complicated
than that.
Constance Kuriyama
> In reply to Connie again:
>
> At the end of "The Circus" the Little Fellow not only sacrificially
> rejects the girl's offer of companionship, he personally arranges her
> marriage to his rival, a cosmetic non-entity in the story.
I don't see that as a sacrifice, though I believe I'm supposed to.
It's one of the weaknesses in the story I referred to earlier.
> Then he not only rejects the couple's offer of companionship, he
> rejects the circus itself, where he is a star.
He's been fired, and he probably doesn't want to be reminded that he
didn't get the girl every day. That makes sense.
> He sits on a box as the circus wagons move on -- the life! the
> laughter! the love! -- fingering a piece of the paper hoop through which
> the girl originally revealed herself and the big top in the opening shot
> of the film (in the original version.) He is finally left alone,
> looking bereft, in an empty field, and shuffles off dispiritedly.
> Perhaps this ending doesn't strike you as intended to be
> emblematic, metaphorical, iconic, but it sure strikes me that way. It
> is a "statement", not a dramatic denouement, self-consciously arty,
> though beautifully shot. In no other downbeat ending to one of the
> Tramp's adventures are we invited to dwell quite so pointedly and
> symbolically on his tragic fate. He doesn't even kick up his heels as
> he saunters off this time, indicating his usual optimism about the
> future. He has become the holy victim of a cruel world, patiently
> suffering his agony.
Actually he does pick up his pace at the end. Check it out. It's the
_Tramp_ ending reprised, with much higher production values. And of
course in _Tramp_ he also loses the girl, and not only looks
dispirited,
but weeps. The ending of _Circus_ is certainly symbolic, but that
doesn't mean
we have to read the Tramp as Chaplin. I just read it as meaning
"Life's a bitch, but we have to move on." I'm sure Chaplin was aware
that his gaunt
appearance when he returned to production enhanced the appeal to
sympathy,
and it does--he looks almost transparent. But there's defiance there
too,
and a final resurgence of vital energy, so I don't find the ending
nearly
as downbeat as you do.
> His pathetic side is here transformed into "meaning" -- a
> statement about the loneliness of a little misfit saint, who brings
> laughter and happiness to others, but finds none for himself. Chaplin
> was too great an artist to have concocted such an ending on aesthetic
> grounds alone, which is why I see it as representing the unconscious
> projection of a personal grievance and self-pity into his work -- a
> grievance and self-pity common to men who abuse women.
Chaplin's treatment of women was an integral part of a decidedly
eccentric personality which could be exasperating for both men and
women to deal with. I don't think he was a garden variety abusive
male.
> Maybe I'm wrong. Maybe Chaplin lost his bearings as an artist for
> some other reason.
I'd date Chaplin's decline quite a bit later. His stuff holds my
interest through _Limelight_, and even beyond that as far as the music
and autobiography are concerned.
> But I think my explanation makes sense, at any rate.
> I have always had this feeling about the ending of "The Circus",
> from the first time I saw it twenty years ago. I never associated its
> artificial quality with Lita Grey until I read the production notes on
> the film included in the Image DVD release, which duly record the
> disruption of the shooting by Lita Grey's divorce suit, and perhaps more
> poignantly, the non-disruption of the shooting by the birth of her and
> Chaplin's second child.
Whatever artificial quality is there plagues the entire film, and
is manifested in story problems, lack of a sustained theme, etc.
Chaplin did start making the film quickly as a means of escape, and it
has some of the
same weaknesses as _Sunnyside_, which was made during his first
disastrous
marriage.
Connie K.
Lloyd Fonvielle
> Lloyd Fonvielle <navi...@earthlink.net> wrote in message news:<Sijnb.4289$Px2....@newsread4.news.pas.earthlink.net>...
>> Then he not only rejects the couple's offer of companionship, he
>>rejects the circus itself, where he is a star.
>
> He's been fired, and he probably doesn't want to be reminded that he
> didn't get the girl every day. That makes sense.
Actually, he's been rehired, because Merna says she won't stay unless he
stays. He undoubtedly gives up his stardom in the circus for the reason
you suggest -- a broken heart. We're getting really close to martyrdom
here, and in my opinion to bathos.
> Actually he does pick up his pace at the end. Check it out.
I see him shake the dust of the place off his feet and shamble off
dispiritedly -- but there's no point arguing over impressions like that.
We just see the thing differently.
In general, to me, all the problems with the story result from
artificial attempts to present the Little Fellow as a victim -- the
funny man who's exploited, the true love who's betrayed. All the early
scenes between Merna and the Tramp present an expectation of romance --
a much keener expectation than the early scenes with Georgia in "The
Gold Rush" present. They're some of the sweetest, most delightful and
moving scenes in all of Chaplin's work. Merna's sudden infatuation with
Rex is one of those romantic comedy complications that make us squirm,
as it made my 6 year-old niece squirm -- oh, no, she's going to pick the
wrong guy! This usually gets set right in the final reel -- but not
here. She sticks with the wrong guy and the right guy helps her do it.
It feels forced to me -- a synthetic set-up for the bathos of the
closing images. Rex may be a fine fellow, but we're given no real
evidence of it in the story -- even Chaplin's inadvertent heroics on the
high wire put Rex's daring to shame. And where the hell WAS Rex anyway,
the night Charlie had to take his place?
RFCSAC627N
>Constance Kuriyama wrote:
>> Actually he does pick up his pace at the end. Check it out.
>
>I see him shake the dust of the place off his feet and shamble off
>dispiritedly -- but there's no point arguing over impressions like that.
Watch the scene again. It seems pretty obvious that he picks up his pace at
the end. Chaplin certainly >scored< it that way for the 1970s reissue. And
when I saw the film again last year with a packed house at the Samuel Goldwyn
Theater, the audience clearly reacted to that last action, too.
Richard Carnahan
Robert Lipton
RFCSAC627N wrote:
That's my take. He looks at the circus taking off, a flurry of activity,
life, people going about their business and he feels alienated. He
looks at the star. More alienation. Then he shrugs and goes along with
his life. Some sadness, some regret, but mostly acceptance. Some
people are leaves in the wind.
Bob
Constance Kuriyama
> Constance Kuriyama wrote:
>
> > Lloyd Fonvielle <navi...@earthlink.net> wrote in message news:<Sijnb.4289$Px2....@newsread4.news.pas.earthlink.net>...
>
> >> Then he not only rejects the couple's offer of companionship, he
> >>rejects the circus itself, where he is a star.
> >
> > He's been fired, and he probably doesn't want to be reminded that he
> > didn't get the girl every day. That makes sense.
>
> Actually, he's been rehired, because Merna says she won't stay unless he
> stays. He undoubtedly gives up his stardom in the circus for the reason
> you suggest -- a broken heart. We're getting really close to martyrdom
> here, and in my opinion to bathos.
I don't think I'd accept a rehire from a man I've just given two black
eyes, who also carries a whip and hates my guts. And there's that
three's a crowd pantomine. Time to move on. It's just logical. And a
little guy who's
inflicted two black eyes on a man twice his size isn't *entirely* a
victim.
> > Actually he does pick up his pace at the end. Check it out.
>
> I see him shake the dust of the place off his feet and shamble off
> dispiritedly -- but there's no point arguing over impressions like that.
> We just see the thing differently.
No, we don't. You're not seeing what's there, because it doesn't fit
your theory.
> In general, to me, all the problems with the story result from
> artificial attempts to present the Little Fellow as a victim -- the
> funny man who's exploited, the true love who's betrayed. All the early
> scenes between Merna and the Tramp present an expectation of romance --
> a much keener expectation than the early scenes with Georgia in "The
> Gold Rush" present. They're some of the sweetest, most delightful and
> moving scenes in all of Chaplin's work. Merna's sudden infatuation with
> Rex is one of those romantic comedy complications that make us squirm,
> as it made my 6 year-old niece squirm -- oh, no, she's going to pick the
> wrong guy! This usually gets set right in the final reel -- but not
> here. She sticks with the wrong guy and the right guy helps her do it.
> It feels forced to me -- a synthetic set-up for the bathos of the
> closing images. Rex may be a fine fellow, but we're given no real
> evidence of it in the story -- even Chaplin's inadvertent heroics on the
> high wire put Rex's daring to shame. And where the hell WAS Rex anyway,
> the night Charlie had to take his place?
My theory is that he spent the night at a cathouse, and overslept. ;-)
We pretty much agree about Rex, though I've always thought that the
Tramp had no basis for jumping to the conclusion that the girl felt
more than friendship for him, and that makes the "sacrifice" hollow.
She treats him like a buddy or big brother, not a lover.
Connie K.
Constance Kuriyama
Lovely, Bob. You're a poet. :-)
And thanks for reminding me of the score, Richard. I hope Lloyd won't
dismiss that as more "butchery," since it matches the image.
I think Lloyd asked about the original score. It was a compilation
score, and has been performed by Gillian Anderson, who thinks both
scores are good in
somewhat different ways. Since she's a superb musician, I accept her
judgment. I haven't heard the original.
Connie K.
Lloyd Fonvielle
> Lloyd Fonvielle <navi...@earthlink.net> wrote in message news:<8_Cnb.6408$RQ1....@newsread3.news.pas.earthlink.net>...
>
>>And where the hell WAS Rex anyway,
>>the night Charlie had to take his place?
>
> My theory is that he spent the night at a cathouse, and overslept. ;-)
I've heard rumors of a drinking problem.
Lloyd Fonvielle
> Lloyd Fonvielle <navi...@earthlink.net> wrote in message news:<8_Cnb.6408$RQ1....@newsread3.news.pas.earthlink.net>...
>>I see him shake the dust of the place off his feet and shamble off
>>dispiritedly -- but there's no point arguing over impressions like that.
>> We just see the thing differently.
>
> No, we don't. You're not seeing what's there, because it doesn't fit
> your theory.
We're talking about an interpretation of body language here, about which
reasonable people can differ. It's not quite the same as misstating
plain facts to support a theory.
David Totheroh
I don't know if your copy of the film is truncated or not, but it sure
sounds like it. The Image DVD (and every copy I've ever seen) shows
the Tramp picking up the star, standing up and back-kicking it and
beginning his exit. There's a typical (rheumatic?) hitch in his step
(what you saw as "him shake the dust of the place off his feet"?),
then five or so slow steps (you said, "and shamble off dispiritedly."
I'd agree.). But then comes a very obvious change. Although not
anywhere nearly as caricatured or exaggerated as in the end of The
Tramp, there is a distinct change in the character's physical
attitude. He kicks up his right foot very high, spins his cane in two
full circles, and for the last six strides out of the ring and all the
rest through the iris out, his gait is significantly faster. He spins
the cane a couple more times and his elbows lift with each stride (I'd
say almost jauntily, but that's just me) as the music swells. Those
are objective, physical realities (except for the "jauntily" part) of
the film performance.
It seems to me that ANY valid interpretation of the end of the film
would have to account for that obvious physical change, or be seen as
ignoring a (relatively) significant reality for the sake of a theory.
Why would the character hop as he does, why spin his cane, and why
would his gait change so obviously, if not that he was shaking off a
lot more than just dust as he moved on?
I'm willing to entertain almost any interpretation, but I'm NOT
willing to ignore what I see as "plain facts" of the performance.
Constance Kuriyama
Reasonable people can disagree about ambiguous body language. Different
people will definitely read the ending of _City Lights_ differently.
The shift in gait in _Circus_ is a fact, but I suppose someone could always
interpret it as forced and unconvincing--the broken-hearted little guy
putting on a brave front.
Connie K.
Lloyd Fonvielle
> The shift in gait in _Circus_ is a fact, but I suppose someone could always
> interpret it as forced and unconvincing--the broken-hearted little guy
> putting on a brave front.
This is getting really nutty. I never said a word about a shift in gait
-- either to confirm or deny it. There is a shift in gait. I still
read the whole passage as suggesting resignation -- not a bright
stepping forward into the future, which is how I read the ending of "The
Tramp", of which this is a variant. He kicks the paper star aside, he
shakes the dust of the circus ring off his feet -- he moves on. He
doesn't commit suicide -- but neither does he look very hopeful to me.
He looks resigned to his tragic fate and ready to face it all over again
in "City Lights".
So sue me.
Mr. Moose
<navi...@earthlink.net> wrote:
>"The Circus" is in some ways the most revealing of all Chaplin's films
>-- his last wholly satisfying masterpiece, yet at the same time
>prefiguring the self-conscious artiness that marked his decline as an
>true artist.
Wholly satisfying is an opinion, but I have to agree - I like the film
a lot, and personally enjoy it more than The Gold Rush. Possibly more
than City Lights as well. I think it's because, for me, the film it
not as wildly episodic. City Lights always bugs me because it seems to
be a bit strung together, the locations and people just don't
interact. With The Circus, the entire cast is nuclear, and all
interact within the same space - there are no happy coincidences
between characters who never meet. (Did that make sense?)
> Chaplin's great creation, the Little Fellow, always had a tragic side
>-- a hard-headed realization that the world as it is could not be
>expected to recognize his eccentric nobility. But in the early films he
>never asks us to pity him for this, and he always holds out the
>possibility that things will be different down the line.
> In the tragic denouement of "The Circus", however, he seems to be
>embracing and celebrating the beauty of "the world well lost", and some
>kind of defiance and hope in the character of the Little Fellow is lost
>with this.
Hmm - I always figured this to be more "Oh man, there's no way I can
stay around, I'm just going to be miserable, so I'm going to stand
here while the carts pull away." I never saw it as sacrifice, but as a
rational decision to avoid conflict and misery. When the tramp balls
of the paper and kicks it away, he is wisely kicking away the romantic
future that he knows does not exist, and the rotten future that would
have existed had he stayed with the circus.
> There is a kind of hatred of women implied in all this. In the
>1925 version of "The Gold Rush", Georgia the dance hall girl is granted
>the humanity to recognize the heroic and decent virtues of the Lone
>Prospector -- virtues which we the audience are also encouraged and
>expected to recognize. In the 1942 version, this grant has been
>revoked. Merna the bareback rider of "The Circus" is a dimwit who
>prefers the cosmetic charms of Rex the tightrope walker, a non-entity.
She's a victim of circumstance more than a dimwit. How much education
could she have gotten from a circus father who regularly beats her and
denies her dinner? How much education could she have gotten while
staying on the road in a insulated community of performers?
The issue here is that she lives in that insulated community,
and the tramp knows that he can never be a part of that community - he
will always be an outsider. She is stuck inside the community, with
all the blessings and curses that come with it.
I suppose this might be a reflection of the class concious
society he came from - one's class determined whom one could be
friends with. You might move out of your class, but you are certain to
be drawn back. I'm wonder if Chaplin ever thought he might end up a
pauper again.
> While some see sublime tragic inevitability in the disappointed
>look on the flower girl's face at the end of "City Lights", I see in it
>the bitter condemnation of a shallow woman who can't look past
>appearances in evaluating the worth of a man.
You see what you want to see, right? I don't even see disappointment,
merely the clash between one's assumptions and the truth.
> The opening of "The Circus" is one of the finest plastic moments
>in all of Chaplin's films -- the bareback rider busting through a paper
>hoop suddenly revealing the circus ring behind it. This image is
>recalled in the final moments of the film, when the Little Fellow picks
>up a torn remnant of that paper hoop. It is one of the grace notes that
>reconciles us to the somewhat artificial tragedy of the ending.
>Likewise, the scene of the girl swinging on the rings high above the
>Little Fellow, who tries to toss food up to her, prepares us for the
>Little Fellow's realization that they inhabit different worlds.
Which was what I just replied, I guess.
I think you put too much negative energy into this. Chaplin was not a
paragon of virtue, he had some odd politics, some vast moral lapses,,
and some terrible relationships with women. I can't see how he could
have avoided any of these problems either - we all make our own
reality, our own framework for how we function in this life, and his
had to be just incredibly wierd. Born in poverty, mother went insane,
father died a drunkard, raised himself up to be the biggest superstar
of his (and perhaps any) time, and couldn't form a decent long-term
relationship until he reached middle age. I can't even imagine where
to begin trying to get into the head of someone like that. And I
wouldn't bother. What's the point?
Mark
Lloyd Fonvielle
> I think you put too much negative energy into this. Chaplin was not a
> paragon of virtue, he had some odd politics, some vast moral lapses,,
> and some terrible relationships with women. I can't see how he could
> have avoided any of these problems either - we all make our own
> reality, our own framework for how we function in this life, and his
> had to be just incredibly wierd. Born in poverty, mother went insane,
> father died a drunkard, raised himself up to be the biggest superstar
> of his (and perhaps any) time, and couldn't form a decent long-term
> relationship until he reached middle age. I can't even imagine where
> to begin trying to get into the head of someone like that. And I
> wouldn't bother. What's the point?
None, if you don't find the speculation interesting. Tolstoy wasn't the
most virtuous guy in the world, but he wrote two sublimely generous and
humane novels -- and in most of Chaplin's work he managed to rise above
his personal problems to make sublime and humane works of art. That
makes the lapses intriguing and I just find myself naturally speculating
about their causes. They don't lesson my reverence for his genius, or
my admiration for his heroism in rising above a bad lot in life, or my
genuine love of him for his unwillingness to forget where he came from.
The lapses of great artists are sometimes far more interesting and
illuminating than the greatest achievements of lesser ones.
George Shelps
>None, if you don't find the speculation
>interesting. Tolstoy wasn't the most
>virtuous guy in the world, but he wrote
>two sublimely generous and humane
>novels -- and in most of Chaplin's work
>he managed to rise above his personal
>problems to make sublime and humane
>works of art. That makes the lapses
>intriguing and I just find myself naturally
>speculating about their causes. They
>don't lesson my reverence for his genius,
>or my admiration for his heroism in rising
>above a bad lot in life, or my genuine
>love of him for his unwillingness to forget
>where he came from.
> The lapses of great artists are
>sometimes far more interesting and
>illuminating than the greatest
>achievements of lesser ones.
Bravo, Lloyd, for your contribution to
an increased understanding and appreciation of both Chaplin
and Mack Sennett.
I am totally convinced by your take on
Sennett. For myself, I had always
revered him as a pioneer and a nurturer
of comedy talent, but I never looked at
him as a unique comic artist before I
read your piece.
As far as Chaplin is concerned, I am
less convinced of your views, but I am
interested in taking another look at
THE CIRCUS, a film I've always looked
at much the same way the "received
wisdom" dictates---i.e. a lesser work in
the midst of a series of masterpieces: THE GOLD RUSH, CITY LIGHTS,
and MODERN TIMES.
As a regular contributor to the Chaplin
newsgroup (when it is active), I take note
of the expected slams from such monolithic Chaplin partisans as Connie
K, and to some degree, I am sympathetic
to her belief that THE CIRCUS is ~not~
CC as his peak.
Yet you've convinced me to revisit that
notion.
Your posts have brought unprecedented enlightenment to this newsgroup.
Lloyd Fonvielle
> As far as Chaplin is concerned, I am
> less convinced of your views, but I am
> interested in taking another look at
> THE CIRCUS, a film I've always looked
> at much the same way the "received
> wisdom" dictates---i.e. a lesser work in
> the midst of a series of masterpieces: THE GOLD RUSH, CITY LIGHTS,
> and MODERN TIMES.
Anything that provokes taking another look at "The Circus" is
automatically valuable. It's a wonderful, magical film. Though I've
argued over the general impression I have of the closing shot, the
argument has sent me back to look at it several times -- and whatever
meaning it conveys to you, the plastic beauty of Chaplin's movement is
unquestionably sublime.
But by all means track down the Image release supervised by David
Shepherd. The charming song Chaplin added for the Seventies reissue is
included as a supplement, but it doesn't appear in the body of the film,
where it doesn't belong. The paper hoop which opens the film in the
original release is echoed in the last shot, and this goes a long way to
reconciling one to the artificial set-up of that shot. It's an
exquisite visual rhyme.
George Shelps
>But by all means track down the Image
>release supervised by David Shepherd.
>The charming song Chaplin added for
>the Seventies reissue is included as a
>supplement, but it doesn't appear in the
>body of the film, where it doesn't belong.
>The paper hoop which opens the film in
>the original release is echoed in the last
>shot, and this goes a long way to
>reconciling one to the artificial set-up of
>that shot. It's an exquisite visual rhyme.
I saw the 70s reissue on its first run in
Manhattan. That remains the touchstone
of my experience with the film.
I haven't seen it theatrically since then.
I am not a huge fan of video or DVD's as media for making a definitive
judgment about any film. Nevertheless,
I am eager enough to re-see it, even if in those inferior nontheatrical
formats.
THE CIRCUS was screened at a recent Cinecon (with Sydney Chaplin as a
guest) and from what I gather, it was one of the hits of that yearly
event.
Constance Kuriyama
> On Sat, 25 Oct 2003 09:22:55 GMT, Lloyd Fonvielle
> <navi...@earthlink.net> wrote:
>
> >"The Circus" is in some ways the most revealing of all Chaplin's films
> >-- his last wholly satisfying masterpiece, yet at the same time
> >prefiguring the self-conscious artiness that marked his decline as an
> >true artist.
>
> Wholly satisfying is an opinion, but I have to agree - I like the film
> a lot, and personally enjoy it more than The Gold Rush. Possibly more
> than City Lights as well. I think it's because, for me, the film it
> not as wildly episodic. City Lights always bugs me because it seems to
> be a bit strung together, the locations and people just don't
> interact. With The Circus, the entire cast is nuclear, and all
> interact within the same space - there are no happy coincidences
> between characters who never meet. (Did that make sense?)
I suppose that's a happy accident of the circus location, but I've
never had
a problem with _City Lights_, for two reasons. First of all, the film
is
mythical and symbolic, not realistic, and in that mode coincidence
(i.e. Oedipus meeting his real father as soon as he flees Corinth) is
routine. But in fact city tramps tend to operate within a
circumscribed territory, so the repeated meetings with the millionaire
don't seem all that improbable to me. I think _City Lights_ has the
most brilliant plot of all of Chaplin's films. because the interwoven
plotlines involving love and "friendship," emotionally rich poverty
and emotionally impoverished wealth, comment ironically on each other
to form an intricate conceptual whole. _Circus_ is physically unified
but conceptually weak, though it can be quite entertaining.
Virtually every day of his life. It was one of his persistent
anxieties and nightmares.
The point for me is that it gives me another, sometimes deeper, way of
understanding his films, which have an obvious and acknowledged
autobiographical thread in them, as well as a great deal of less
obvious autobiograpical content. What bothers me about Lloyd's
approach is precisely its negative tone. To me it's surprising that
Chaplin did so many things right, given his volatile temperament and
early experience, and not at all surprising that he found it difficult
to sustain relationships.
Connie K.
David Totheroh
I haven't seen anybody ready to sue. But I think even you would have
to admit that any theory about the end of a film that initially
chooses to ignore evidence ("I never said a word about a shift in gait
-- either to confirm or deny it.") is less likely to gain acceptance.
I find it interesting that you see the walkoffs at the end of The
Tramp and The Circus so differently. Chaplin has, over that 12 year
span, managed to refine his physical performance before the camera
significantly, to make more subtle the physical nuances of his
performances. Yet I find it almost inconceivable that anyone as
otherwise logical as you could honestly see the kick of the heels (not
the kick of the star), the swings of the cane, the pace of the stride,
the lift of the shoulders and elbows, as intended to express anything
close to "resignation."
Can you ask yourself not what you see in the ending, but what you
think Chaplin intended to convey in the physical changes that occur in
the character from the time he kicks the star to the close of the
iris? If you answer that question honestly, I think the theory that
Chaplin wanted his audience to see the character as the "noble victim"
becomes less tenable.
Lloyd Fonvielle
> I haven't seen anybody ready to sue. But I think even you would have
> to admit that any theory about the end of a film that initially
> chooses to ignore evidence ("I never said a word about a shift in gait
> -- either to confirm or deny it.") is less likely to gain acceptance.
Nuttier and nuttier. I didn't describe the sequence in detail -- I just
offered my impression of it. Suddenly I'm told that failing to account
for a change of gait means I ignored evidence.
Jeez Louise -- why don't you jump on Connie with equal fervor for
arguing that the reason the Tramp left the circus was because he got
fired? That's flat-out wrong and totally distorts his motivation for
leaving.
> Can you ask yourself not what you see in the ending, but what you
> think Chaplin intended to convey in the physical changes that occur in
> the character from the time he kicks the star to the close of the
> iris? If you answer that question honestly, I think the theory that
> Chaplin wanted his audience to see the character as the "noble victim"
> becomes less tenable.
Here's my honest answer. I think Chaplin intended to convey that though
the Tramp was down, he wasn't out. That he would carry on. Perfectly
consistent with the idea of a "noble victim" (hint -- it's the noble
part.) I don't think it was meant to counteract the look of utter
devastation on the Tramp's face as he watches the girl and the circus
and his career vanish, and I don't think it does.
David Totheroh
> David Totheroh wrote:
>
> > I haven't seen anybody ready to sue. But I think even you would have
> > to admit that any theory about the end of a film that initially
> > chooses to ignore evidence ("I never said a word about a shift in gait
> > -- either to confirm or deny it.") is less likely to gain acceptance.
>
> Nuttier and nuttier. I didn't describe the sequence in detail -- I just
> offered my impression of it. Suddenly I'm told that failing to account
> for a change of gait means I ignored evidence.
> Jeez Louise -- why don't you jump on Connie with equal fervor for
> arguing that the reason the Tramp left the circus was because he got
> fired? That's flat-out wrong and totally distorts his motivation for
> leaving.
She also said he gave Garcia two black eyes, when he really only gave
him one and told Merna he'd give him the other if he mistreated her
again. But what does any of that have to do with your interpretation
of Chaplin's intentions with the end of the film?
Sorry. I thought, as you have said, that we're just discussing
impressions, interpretations and theories here. I didn't realize that
required "jumping on" people. Somehow I thought presenting, and
arguing evidence was all that was appropriate. I'll try and do better
from now on.
>
> > Can you ask yourself not what you see in the ending, but what you
> > think Chaplin intended to convey in the physical changes that occur in
> > the character from the time he kicks the star to the close of the
> > iris? If you answer that question honestly, I think the theory that
> > Chaplin wanted his audience to see the character as the "noble victim"
> > becomes less tenable.
>
> Here's my honest answer. I think Chaplin intended to convey that though
> the Tramp was down, he wasn't out. That he would carry on. Perfectly
> consistent with the idea of a "noble victim" (hint -- it's the noble
> part.) I don't think it was meant to counteract the look of utter
> devastation on the Tramp's face as he watches the girl and the circus
> and his career vanish, and I don't think it does.
But where's the "victim" part? Is "the look of utter devastation on
the Tramp's face" at the end of The Tramp, where you say you don't see
the same kind of "self pity" you see in The Circus, so different? If
not, then what is it in the actions of the character *on film* that
make you change your assessment?
I've also wondered, as I read your interpretations, why it is that you
see Chaplin's reaction to the Lita Grey marrage and divorce in the end
of The Circus, but not the same reaction to the Mildred Harris marrage
and divorce in the end of The Kid. I think, from the historic record,
it is clear that Chaplin felt his assets and most recent work at least
as threatened in that divorce as he did with Lita's. What accounts for
the difference in your perception of Chaplin's intentions and
motivation in those two situations? What makes one artistic and the
other self-conscious?
Lloyd Fonvielle
> Lloyd Fonvielle <navi...@earthlink.net> wrote in message news:<IWeob.8985$RQ1...@newsread3.news.pas.earthlink.net>...
>
>> Jeez Louise -- why don't you jump on Connie with equal fervor for
>>arguing that the reason the Tramp left the circus was because he got
>>fired? That's flat-out wrong and totally distorts his motivation for
>>leaving.
>
> She also said he gave Garcia two black eyes, when he really only gave
> him one and told Merna he'd give him the other if he mistreated her
> again. But what does any of that have to do with your interpretation
> of Chaplin's intentions with the end of the film?
Nothing. You just seemed to jump on my failure to provide a frame by
frame analysis to back up my impression as though it were some kind of
irresponsible dereliction of analytical duty, while Connie's plain
misstatement of fact elicited no comment. I wondered why your devotion
to precision was so selective.
> But where's the "victim" part? Is "the look of utter devastation on
> the Tramp's face" at the end of The Tramp, where you say you don't see
> the same kind of "self pity" you see in The Circus, so different? If
> not, then what is it in the actions of the character *on film* that
> make you change your assessment?
The ending of "The Circus" is grander, more portentous, more final than
the ending of "The Tramp" -- reinforced (before the final upbeat
measures) by a score which thunders forth a mood of Wagnerian
Gotterdamerung. In "The Circus" the Tramp has more, sacrifices more,
and his dejection is dwelled upon at greater length, in images of far
greater metaphorical suggestiveness. In the exit walk of "The Tramp"
the Little Fellow doesn't seem as down as he does at the end of "The
Circus" -- in fact, he seems positively hopeful, as opposed to resigned.
Can you find gestures in the performance in "The Tramp" which
suggesst resignation? Can you find gestures in the performance in "The
Circus" which suggest hopefulness? I'm sure you can. I'm talking about
the overall effect which story and staging and performance convey to me.
> I've also wondered, as I read your interpretations, why it is that you
> see Chaplin's reaction to the Lita Grey marrage and divorce in the end
> of The Circus, but not the same reaction to the Mildred Harris marrage
> and divorce in the end of The Kid.
I don't see self-pity in the ending of "The Kid" -- I don't see an
obvious artistic lapse . . . so I'm not moved to wonder about what
caused the lapse.
Constance Kuriyama
> David Totheroh wrote:
>
> > I haven't seen anybody ready to sue. But I think even you would have
> > to admit that any theory about the end of a film that initially
> > chooses to ignore evidence ("I never said a word about a shift in gait
> > -- either to confirm or deny it.") is less likely to gain acceptance.
>
> Nuttier and nuttier. I didn't describe the sequence in detail -- I just
> offered my impression of it. Suddenly I'm told that failing to account
> for a change of gait means I ignored evidence.
Oh come now. Surely you aren't saying that the body language at the
very
end of a Chaplin film doesn't matter, that a general impression of the
last
few minutes is good enough to support an interpretation. If we
believed
that, then we might conclude that _The Tramp_ ends tragically. It's
not nutty
to insist on detail when detail is the primary way meaning is
conveyed.
> Jeez Louise -- why don't you jump on Connie with equal fervor for
> arguing that the reason the Tramp left the circus was because he got
> fired? That's flat-out wrong and totally distorts his motivation for
> leaving.
That was an assumption, and not necessarily a wrong one. We don't see
the owner fire him, but do you seriously think the man wants him
around after being mauled by him? And why do the girl and Rex have to
threaten to leave
so he'll agree to let the Tramp stay--as you mentioned. The Tramp is
leaving
for the same reason he leaves the shipyard in _Modern Times_--he
doesn't
have to be told that he's sacked.
> > Can you ask yourself not what you see in the ending, but what you
> > think Chaplin intended to convey in the physical changes that occur in
> > the character from the time he kicks the star to the close of the
> > iris? If you answer that question honestly, I think the theory that
> > Chaplin wanted his audience to see the character as the "noble victim"
> > becomes less tenable.
>
> Here's my honest answer. I think Chaplin intended to convey that though
> the Tramp was down, he wasn't out. That he would carry on. Perfectly
> consistent with the idea of a "noble victim" (hint -- it's the noble
> part.) I don't think it was meant to counteract the look of utter
> devastation on the Tramp's face as he watches the girl and the circus
> and his career vanish, and I don't think it does.
I would hardly deny that the Tramp feels grief and pain as he watches
the
wagons pull out. That's quite clear. Probably he also feels more than
a little sorry for himself. Most people would in his position. One
dream has died, but when he back-kicks the crumpled star like a
discarded apple core or cigarette butt he's already putting it behind
him, literally and figuratively, and even expressing a certain
contempt for something he once felt was important.
When he picks up his pace and twirls his cane, I'm sure he'll recover,
which is not to say that the sadness doesn't linger. It's . . . well,
. . . Chaplinesque. What could be better or more appropriate? ;-)
Connie K.
Constance Kuriyama
> Lloyd Fonvielle <navi...@earthlink.net> wrote in message news:<IWeob.8985$RQ1...@newsread3.news.pas.earthlink.net>...
> > David Totheroh wrote:
> >
> > > I haven't seen anybody ready to sue. But I think even you would have
> > > to admit that any theory about the end of a film that initially
> > > chooses to ignore evidence ("I never said a word about a shift in gait
> > > -- either to confirm or deny it.") is less likely to gain acceptance.
> >
> > Nuttier and nuttier. I didn't describe the sequence in detail -- I just
> > offered my impression of it. Suddenly I'm told that failing to account
> > for a change of gait means I ignored evidence.
> > Jeez Louise -- why don't you jump on Connie with equal fervor for
> > arguing that the reason the Tramp left the circus was because he got
> > fired? That's flat-out wrong and totally distorts his motivation for
> > leaving.
>
> She also said he gave Garcia two black eyes, when he really only gave
> him one and told Merna he'd give him the other if he mistreated her
> again. But what does any of that have to do with your interpretation
> of Chaplin's intentions with the end of the film?
Nothing, of course. I stand by my assumption that the Tramp's fired, since
he's fired in other films for far less than assaulting his boss, but
I got ahead of the plot on the second black eye. It's been awhile
since I've screened _Circus_.
> Sorry. I thought, as you have said, that we're just discussing
> impressions, interpretations and theories here. I didn't realize that
> required "jumping on" people. Somehow I thought presenting, and
> arguing evidence was all that was appropriate. I'll try and do better
> from now on.
Careful, or you'll be accused of slamming Lloyd. But I assume Lloyd
didn't take it for granted that everyone would buy his theory or agree
with him completely. In fact, when he first started posing on this
I thought he was deliberately trying to provoke debate.
Connie K.
Lloyd Fonvielle
> Lloyd Fonvielle <navi...@earthlink.net> wrote in message news:<IWeob.8985$RQ1...@newsread3.news.pas.earthlink.net>...
>> Jeez Louise -- why don't you jump on Connie with equal fervor for
>>arguing that the reason the Tramp left the circus was because he got
>>fired? That's flat-out wrong and totally distorts his motivation for
>>leaving.
>
>
> That was an assumption, and not necessarily a wrong one. We don't see
> the owner fire him, but do you seriously think the man wants him
> around after being mauled by him? And why do the girl and Rex have to
> threaten to leave
> so he'll agree to let the Tramp stay--as you mentioned.
We do see the owner fire him. That's why he leaves the circus the first
time. We see Merna and Rex threaten to quit unless the Tramp is
reinstated. We see him reinstated. The Tramp then QUITS his job --
presumably because he can't bear to be around Merna and Rex.
He SACRIFICES his job at the circus out of heartache. This is
TOTALLY different from leaving because he's fired, which is what you
stated, in an attempt to mininalize the bathos of the ending.
This is not a big deal -- you just misremembered the details of
the story. I simply found it curious that David Totheroh chose not to
point it out in his obsession with precision in analysis.
> I would hardly deny that the Tramp feels grief and pain as he watches
> the
> wagons pull out. That's quite clear. Probably he also feels more than
> a little sorry for himself. Most people would in his position. One
> dream has died, but when he back-kicks the crumpled star like a
> discarded apple core or cigarette butt he's already putting it behind
> him, literally and figuratively, and even expressing a certain
> contempt for something he once felt was important.
> When he picks up his pace and twirls his cane, I'm sure he'll recover,
> which is not to say that the sadness doesn't linger. It's . . . well,
> . . . Chaplinesque. What could be better or more appropriate? ;-)
If only he were putting it behind him! In fact he's heading off to
another story in which he single-handedly and heroically rescues a girl
from wretchedness, demonstrating real love for her, only to have her
reject him for reasons that are never presented as anything but
superficial. This is bathos. This is self-pity. It would be even if
he danced a jig in the seconds before the fade out. It would be even if
he held up a sign which read "I'm happy in spite of it all!"
Details are important, but you can't single out details and claim
they override the effect of the drama as a whole. If you could, you
could cite Hamlet's very many witty lines as proof that "Hamlet" was a
comedy.
Lloyd Fonvielle
> Careful, or you'll be accused of slamming Lloyd. But I assume Lloyd
> didn't take it for granted that everyone would buy his theory or agree
> with him completely. In fact, when he first started posing on this
> I thought he was deliberately trying to provoke debate.
Slam away. I've thoroughly enjoyed this debate and learned a lot from
it. But I wasn't "posing" -- I really believe what I say!
Robert Lipton
Lloyd Fonvielle wrote:
I beg your pardon? Is it your insistence that it's the same character
in every movie? Is Harold Lloyd the same person in every movie? If so,
why does he keep marrying his leading lady? How do you explain Chaplin's
split personaluty in THE IDLE CLASS?
Bob
>
Matt Barry
The final shot of THE CIRCUS has always amazed me. I imagine there was
greater emotion involved in the final shot of CITY LIGHTS, and the
walk into the sunrise in MODERN TIMES finally sees Charlie with a
friend to walk off with, but there is something about that final
moment in THE CIRCUS, as he watches the wagons pull away, leaving him
standing amidst the clouds of dust. There is just this sense of
lonliness that the shot conveys that I find really moving. All this
discussion about THE CIRCUS got me to watch the movie again last
night, and I still find it to be one of Chaplin's best pictures.
However, I also watched more closely for some of the points people
have made here, namely in the story structure of the film. I can only
assume that given the incredibly hectic nature of the production,
Chaplin was not able to give the same attention to detail as he was to
his other productions. Of course that is just a possibility. I still
think it is the sheer funniest film Chaplin ever did.
I love the sequence where he is told to "go ahead and be funny". What
I find interesting about that scene (and this is just my opinion) is
that it's how Chaplin perceived a non-comedian's idea of "acting
funny"-the silly walk and such, compared to the nuance and subtlety of
a professional like Chaplin himself. Any other thoughts on that
particular scene?
Matt
Lloyd Fonvielle
> Lloyd Fonvielle wrote:
>
>> If only he were putting it behind him! In fact he's heading off to
>> another story in which he single-handedly and heroically rescues a
>> girl from wretchedness, demonstrating real love for her, only to have
>> her reject him for reasons that are never presented as anything but
>> superficial.
> I beg your pardon? Is it your insistence that it's the same character
> in every movie?
No -- I was being ironic. But Chaplin does seem to be using The Tramp
in similar ways, as a vehicle for self-pity, in both "The Circus" and
"City Lights", as I see it.
Constance Kuriyama
> Constance Kuriyama wrote:
>
> > Lloyd Fonvielle <navi...@earthlink.net> wrote in message news:<IWeob.8985$RQ1...@newsread3.news.pas.earthlink.net>...
>
> >> Jeez Louise -- why don't you jump on Connie with equal fervor for
> >>arguing that the reason the Tramp left the circus was because he got
> >>fired? That's flat-out wrong and totally distorts his motivation for
> >>leaving.
> >
> >
> > That was an assumption, and not necessarily a wrong one. We don't see
> > the owner fire him, but do you seriously think the man wants him
> > around after being mauled by him? And why do the girl and Rex have to
> > threaten to leave
> > so he'll agree to let the Tramp stay--as you mentioned.
>
> We do see the owner fire him. That's why he leaves the circus the first
> time. We see Merna and Rex threaten to quit unless the Tramp is
> reinstated. We see him reinstated. The Tramp then QUITS his job --
> presumably because he can't bear to be around Merna and Rex.
I don't want to spend too much energy on what is actually a technical
point.
You're right that I don't remember this part of the film in detail,
and I
haven't had time to watch it again. As I recall he's dismissed earlier
in
the film when he botches a stock routine. Later he attacks the owner
for reasons I don't remember exactly, and when he's sitting by the
campfire, it's my
impression that he's been dismissed again, for obvious reasons. After
getting the girl and Rex married, he leaves again, this time
voluntarily.
I don't think it's a sacrifice. He's opting out of a situation where
there's
no joy for him. It's a rational decision.
> He SACRIFICES his job at the circus out of heartache. This is
> TOTALLY different from leaving because he's fired, which is what you
> stated, in an attempt to mininalize the bathos of the ending.
> This is not a big deal -- you just misremembered the details of
> the story. I simply found it curious that David Totheroh chose not to
> point it out in his obsession with precision in analysis.
Because this was a side issue and not the main point being debated?
You'll
have to ask David.
> > I would hardly deny that the Tramp feels grief and pain as he watches
> > the
> > wagons pull out. That's quite clear. Probably he also feels more than
> > a little sorry for himself. Most people would in his position. One
> > dream has died, but when he back-kicks the crumpled star like a
> > discarded apple core or cigarette butt he's already putting it behind
> > him, literally and figuratively, and even expressing a certain
> > contempt for something he once felt was important.
> > When he picks up his pace and twirls his cane, I'm sure he'll recover,
> > which is not to say that the sadness doesn't linger. It's . . . well,
> > . . . Chaplinesque. What could be better or more appropriate? ;-)
>
> If only he were putting it behind him! In fact he's heading off to
> another story in which he single-handedly and heroically rescues a girl
> from wretchedness, demonstrating real love for her, only to have her
> reject him for reasons that are never presented as anything but
> superficial. This is bathos. This is self-pity. It would be even if
> he danced a jig in the seconds before the fade out. It would be even if
> he held up a sign which read "I'm happy in spite of it all!"
> Details are important, but you can't single out details and claim
> they override the effect of the drama as a whole. If you could, you
> could cite Hamlet's very many witty lines as proof that "Hamlet" was a
> comedy.
Hamlet's last line, as I recall, is "The rest is silence." But that
"self-pity"
is still coming out of nowhere, with no evidence whatsoever to support
it.
And of course the rejection is not everyone's take on the scene. So
you're
piling a huge logical leap on top of a debatable interpretation.
Connie K.
Robert Lipton
Lloyd Fonvielle wrote:
I am in substantial agreement with Ms. Kuriyama so I will let her carry
most of the argument here. What bemuses me is that you seem to view
Chaplin's films as vehicles of self-expression. They were not. They
were commercial, they were meant to make money and they were meant to
give value (i.e., pleasure) to the movie-going public, both to increase
the sales of tockets to the current movie and to ensure brand loyalty
for the next release after that. If Chaplin ever indulged in self-pity
over his movies, it was over the decision not to have made MODERN TIMES
a talkie and gotten another ten million in box office out of it.
Chaplin knew that and, given the impending divorce and fear of losing
everything, he was not going to sacrifice anything that could make it
commercially successful. If there was anything that Charlie, Syd and
Wheeler had learned, it was that it was better to be rich than poor.
Part of the reason that people look at you askance is that you came out
with a long lit-crit style piece that sees things in this movie that
other people have noticed and ignored things that other people seem to
have seen; when confronted with this, you response has been "Well, it
was just my take on it". I sit here wondering "Huh. Perhaps he didn't
realize that Chaplin is funny. Did he know he was supposed to laugh?
Did he laugh?"
I also must admit that I am more comfortable discussing the craft of
film making than the art. Art is a chancy and suspicious business, full
of reinterpreations and meaningless balderdash.
If, however, you insist on spouting material that reads like a master's
thesis, it seems to me that you should be prepared to defend your
thesis, not simply say "Well, I didn't look at it too closely. It's
just my impression." Are you trying to educate us to something we might
not have seen in Chaplin's work? In that case, you have a pretty
distinguished audience here, even if most of them are a pretty informal
lot -- I exempt myself from consideration -- with plenty of credentials.
You're going to have to talk pretty well to come up with something they
haven't heard.
Bob
Constance Kuriyama
> David Totheroh wrote:
> > But where's the "victim" part? Is "the look of utter devastation on
> > the Tramp's face" at the end of The Tramp, where you say you don't see
> > the same kind of "self pity" you see in The Circus, so different? If
> > not, then what is it in the actions of the character *on film* that
> > make you change your assessment?
>
> The ending of "The Circus" is grander, more portentous, more final than
> the ending of "The Tramp" -- reinforced (before the final upbeat
> measures) by a score which thunders forth a mood of Wagnerian
> Gotterdamerung. In "The Circus" the Tramp has more, sacrifices more,
Since it's come up again, what exactly did he have? He had an illusion
that
the girl would marry him, apparently based on overhearing a fortune
teller. He had an act which developed by chance, and no longer worked
once he discovered that the girl was attracted to Rex instead. He had
a boss who hated him. Where's the sacrifice here? I don't see it,
though I see disappointment and sadness.
> and his dejection is dwelled upon at greater length, in images of far
> greater metaphorical suggestiveness. In the exit walk of "The Tramp"
> the Little Fellow doesn't seem as down as he does at the end of "The
> Circus" -- in fact, he seems positively hopeful, as opposed to resigned.
Before he pulls himself together his shoulders are drooping, and he
looks
deflated--crushed rather than resigned. But _Tramp_ is much shorter
and
the execution necessarily rougher. Walter Kerr's complaint about the
abrupt
shift in tone when the Tramp is shot reflects this comparative
crudeness. But taking into account almost a decade of refinement in
Chaplin's technique, the two exits are very similar.
Connie K.
Feuillade
> The ending of "The Circus" is grander,
> more portentous, more final than the
> ending of "The Tramp" -- reinforced
> (before the final upbeat measures) by
> a score which thunders forth a mood
> of Wagnerian Gotterdamerung.
I just put in the VHS of "The Circus" to check this assertion.
And it is unsupported by the text (not to mention the score) of the film.
There is nothing even vaguely Wagnerian about the end of the score of "The
Circus."
It sounds nothing like "Götterdämmerung."
And since I own the VHS of "The Circus," and no less than ten complete
recordings of "Götterdämmerung" I think I'm in a position to say that.
There are Chaplin scores that use echoes of Wagnerian motifs ("The Great
Dictator" and the reissue of "The Gold Rush" among them -- the latter uses a
brief bit from "Tannhäuser"), but "The Circus" is not one of them.
Tom Moran
"Too many whites are getting away with drug use. The answer is to find the
ones who are getting away with it, convict them and send them up the river.''
-- Rush Limbaugh
Lloyd Fonvielle
> What bemuses me is that you seem to view
> Chaplin's films as vehicles of self-expression. They were not.
That idea bemuses me.
> Part of the reason that people look at you askance is that you came out
> with a long lit-crit style piece that sees things in this movie that
> other people have noticed and ignored things that other people seem to
> have seen; when confronted with this, you response has been "Well, it
> was just my take on it". I sit here wondering "Huh. Perhaps he didn't
> realize that Chaplin is funny. Did he know he was supposed to laugh?
> Did he laugh?"
>
> I also must admit that I am more comfortable discussing the craft of
> film making than the art. Art is a chancy and suspicious business, full
> of reinterpreations and meaningless balderdash.
>
> If, however, you insist on spouting material that reads like a master's
> thesis, it seems to me that you should be prepared to defend your
> thesis, not simply say "Well, I didn't look at it too closely. It's
> just my impression."
I never said I didn't look at anything closely. I stated my impression
of one particular scene, without offering a shot by shot, gesture by
gesture analysis, and was criticized for this. Simultaneously, other
people offered flat out misstatements of fact in defense of their point
of view and this was passed over without comment.
There seems to be a received wisdom about certain things, which
cannot be questioned without raising a demand for the most rigorous sort
of scholarly analysis, while the received wisdom can be defended by
saying just about anything, whether correct or not.
Chaplin is a very complicated artist and it's not surprising that
people interpret him in different ways. What's strange is the panic
that a deviance from the received wisdom seems to arouse.
Chaplin makes me laugh, but the ending of "The Circus" is not
funny and is not meant to be funny -- nor do I think it was motivated to
the slightest degree by commercial considerations.
Lloyd Fonvielle
the first to admit it. Of course, what I meant to say was "a mood of
Wagnerian Gotterdamerung" . . . not "a quote from Wagner's
'Gotterdamerung'".
What was I thinking?
Robert Lipton
Lloyd Fonvielle wrote:
> Robert Lipton wrote:
>
>> What bemuses me is that you seem to view Chaplin's films as vehicles
>> of self-expression. They were not.
>
>
> That idea bemuses me.
Try musing instead.
>
>> Part of the reason that people look at you askance is that you came
>> out with a long lit-crit style piece that sees things in this movie
>> that other people have noticed and ignored things that other people
>> seem to have seen; when confronted with this, you response has been
>> "Well, it was just my take on it". I sit here wondering "Huh.
>> Perhaps he didn't realize that Chaplin is funny. Did he know he was
>> supposed to laugh? Did he laugh?"
>>
>> I also must admit that I am more comfortable discussing the craft of
>> film making than the art. Art is a chancy and suspicious business,
>> full of reinterpreations and meaningless balderdash.
>>
>> If, however, you insist on spouting material that reads like a
>> master's thesis, it seems to me that you should be prepared to defend
>> your thesis, not simply say "Well, I didn't look at it too closely.
>> It's just my impression."
>
>
> I never said I didn't look at anything closely. I stated my impression
> of one particular scene, without offering a shot by shot, gesture by
> gesture analysis, and was criticized for this. Simultaneously, other
> people offered flat out misstatements of fact in defense of their point
> of view and this was passed over without comment.
> There seems to be a received wisdom about certain things, which
> cannot be questioned without raising a demand for the most rigorous sort
> of scholarly analysis, while the received wisdom can be defended by
> saying just about anything, whether correct or not.
Well, you did send people scurrying to re-examine the scene you
mentioned -- myself included (although I didn't look at it at home. I
went to a Greek restaurant where they run Chaplin movies and for some
reason, either MODERN TIMES or THE CIRCUS on Wednesday afternoons).
None of them saw what you saw. Do you not owe it to people to go back
and llook at the scene again and conside oter peoples' takes?
> Chaplin is a very complicated artist and it's not surprising that
> people interpret him in different ways. What's strange is the panic
> that a deviance from the received wisdom seems to arouse.
> Chaplin makes me laugh, but the ending of "The Circus" is not funny
> and is not meant to be funny -- nor do I think it was motivated to the
> slightest degree by commercial considerations.
This isn't panic. THis is "You brought up a point, this group is here
to discuss stuff like this. Let's discuss it.".
I must admit that I held off stating an opinion. I don't post much
here because there are lots of people I prefer to read and because it
occurred to me that you might be a troll. Still not sure you're not.
Bob
Feuillade
> Here you've caught me in a flat out
> misstatement of fact -- and I'll be
> the first to admit it. Of course, what I
> meant to say was "a mood of
> Wagnerian Gotterdamerung" . . .
> not "a quote from Wagner's
> Gotterdamerung'".
> What was I thinking?
Not much, from what I can tell.
The end of "The Circus," visually, aurally or in "mood," has about as much to
do with "Götterdämmerung" as the end of "The Gold Rush" has to do with "The
Godfather."
If you feel like you can prove differently, I would love to hear your
reasoning.
Lloyd Fonvielle
> Well, you did send people scurrying to re-examine the scene you
> mentioned -- myself included (although I didn't look at it at home. I
> went to a Greek restaurant where they run Chaplin movies and for some
> reason, either MODERN TIMES or THE CIRCUS on Wednesday afternoons). None
> of them saw what you saw. Do you not owe it to people to go back and
> llook at the scene again and conside oter peoples' takes?
I did go back and look at it again, and considered other people's
impressions of the final walk away from camera. I still found it muted,
suggesting resignation more than optimism -- and certainly not enough
optimism to counter the desolate images which precede it . . . the
circus wagons moving on, the empty center ring, the look of despair on
the Tramp's face. He does not look to me like a man who has just made a
sound career move, accompanied by a twinge of regret -- he looks like a
man whose whole world has collapsed and vanished around him, taking his
dreams along with it.
The images have a strong metaphorical suggestiveness to me,
conveying the sense of an inconsolable loss, the end of an era --
almost, one might say, a Gotterdamerung.
Feuillade
> The images have a strong metaphorical
> suggestiveness to me, conveying the
> sense of an inconsolable loss, the end
> of an era -- almost, one might say, a
> Gotterdamerung.
You've never seen a Wagner opera, have you? Not "Götterdämmerung," not
"Tristan," not nothing. Right?
Lloyd Fonvielle
> Lloyd Fonvielle navi...@earthlink.net writes:
>
>
>>The images have a strong metaphorical
>>suggestiveness to me, conveying the
>>sense of an inconsolable loss, the end
>>of an era -- almost, one might say, a
>>Gotterdamerung.
>
>
> You've never seen a Wagner opera, have you? Not "Götterdämmerung," not
> "Tristan," not nothing. Right?
I have, and I don't like them a lot. Portentous, overblown, and -- to
bring the subject round again to the ending of "The Circus" -- reeking
of pomposity and self-pity. Wagner strikes me as man who would rise up
from making grand passionate love for two minutes and then write a forty
minute aria about the experience.
Nietzche summed it up best -- "Is Wagner a man? Is he not rather
a disease? He has made music sick."
He was a genius but a bad artist. There is much brilliance in the
music, some of it wondrous and stirring, but I don't buy any of it
dramatically. It pains me to mention him in the same breath as Chaplin,
which is why the ending of "The Circus" disturbs me so.
I gather you feel differently about him -- to each his own -- but
so did Nietzche at one point. It is worth investigating the course of
Nietzche's disenchantment.
Constance Kuriyama
> I never said I didn't look at anything closely. I stated my impression
> of one particular scene, without offering a shot by shot, gesture by
> gesture analysis, and was criticized for this. Simultaneously, other
> people offered flat out misstatements of fact in defense of their point
> of view and this was passed over without comment.
I'm going to call you on this one.
I said the Tramp was fired. He was. You said no, he left voluntarily.
Also true--except for the denial that he was fired, which is false,
and
which you later contradicted when you reminded me that we do see the
boss fire him--a detail I had forgotten.
So my statement that he was fired was not a "flat out misstatement of
fact," but accurate, and more than a little pertinent. Even though
the boss is forced to reinstate the Tramp, he consigns him to the end
wagon, and it's obvious that all is not forgiven. This gives the Tramp
an excellent reason to leave, along with two others--his act no longer
works, and he didn't get the girl.
The fact that you keep harping on this alleged error, and on David's
not
making a federal case of it, looks like a transparent attempt to
deflect
criticism from yourself.
> There seems to be a received wisdom about certain things, which
> cannot be questioned without raising a demand for the most rigorous sort
> of scholarly analysis, while the received wisdom can be defended by
> saying just about anything, whether correct or not.
> Chaplin is a very complicated artist and it's not surprising that
> people interpret him in different ways. What's strange is the panic
> that a deviance from the received wisdom seems to arouse.
You'll have to tell me what the "received wisdom" is about the ending
of
_Circus_. Your own unsupported "self-pity" allegation is all too
familiar,
and I don't know of any generally held conviction that the ending of
this
film is "funny."
Certainly if you wish to emphasize some features of the ending more
than others, that's your prerogative, but if you broadcast your ideas
on a newsgroup, and make questionable claims, you can expect to take
some hits,
especially if you seem unwilling to admit that you just might be
grossly overstating your case. It's partly your aggressive,
intransigent attitude that's attracting all this negative attention.
Connie K.
Lloyd Fonvielle
> I'm going to call you on this one.
>
> I said the Tramp was fired. He was. You said no, he left voluntarily.
> Also true--except for the denial that he was fired, which is false,
> and
> which you later contradicted when you reminded me that we do see the
> boss fire him--a detail I had forgotten.
>
> So my statement that he was fired was not a "flat out misstatement of
> fact," but accurate, and more than a little pertinent. Even though
> the boss is forced to reinstate the Tramp, he consigns him to the end
> wagon, and it's obvious that all is not forgiven. This gives the Tramp
> an excellent reason to leave, along with two others--his act no longer
> works, and he didn't get the girl.
Connie, you're totally misrepresenting what you said. We were
discussing the last scene of the film. I stated, correctly, that the
Tramp chose to leave the circus, you stated that he left because he was
fired. We were not discussing the earlier time he left the circus, and
your attempt to conflate the two scenes -- one in which he was fired,
one in which he left voluntarily, after being rehired -- is unpersuasive.
> It's partly your aggressive,
> intransigent attitude that's attracting all this negative attention.
I think you should reread the "Circus" thread and the Sennett thread.
The aggression and intransigence are mostly found in the posts
disagreeing with me. They are quite extreme at times, with a an edge of
personal incivility which I have never been guilty of. I also think
they contain a higher incidence of factual misstatements than my posts
-- like your misremembering of the ending of "The Circus" and the
suggestions that Sennett did not exercise much control over his films.
There is also a fair amount of inconsistency in the arguments
offered against my observations. You point out correctly that I am
hardly the first to find an element of false sentiment and self-pity in
Chaplin's later films, yet my musings on the subject are treated as some
sort of bizarre and perverse provocation.
I stand by my conviction that there is an element of bathetic
self-pity in the ending of "The Circus", an element which is developed
further in "City Lights" and which all but overwhelms "Limelight".
David Totheroh
> Constance Kuriyama wrote:
>
> > I'm going to call you on this one.
> >
> > I said the Tramp was fired. He was. You said no, he left voluntarily.
> > Also true--except for the denial that he was fired, which is false,
> > and
> > which you later contradicted when you reminded me that we do see the
> > boss fire him--a detail I had forgotten.
> >
> > So my statement that he was fired was not a "flat out misstatement of
> > fact," but accurate, and more than a little pertinent. Even though
> > the boss is forced to reinstate the Tramp, he consigns him to the end
> > wagon, and it's obvious that all is not forgiven. This gives the Tramp
> > an excellent reason to leave, along with two others--his act no longer
> > works, and he didn't get the girl.
>
> Connie, you're totally misrepresenting what you said. We were
> discussing the last scene of the film.
Does the irony elude you? You're right, we WERE discussing the end of
the film. That's why I focused my comments on that scene and why for
the life of me I can't figure out why you found it so unfair that I
chose not to comment on other scenes or events in the film.
> I stated, correctly, that the
> Tramp chose to leave the circus, you stated that he left because he was
> fired. We were not discussing the earlier time he left the circus, and
> your attempt to conflate the two scenes -- one in which he was fired,
> one in which he left voluntarily, after being rehired -- is unpersuasive.
D
>
> > It's partly your aggressive,
> > intransigent attitude that's attracting all this negative attention.
>
> I think you should reread the "Circus" thread and the Sennett thread.
> The aggression and intransigence are mostly found in the posts
> disagreeing with me. They are quite extreme at times, with a an edge of
> personal incivility which I have never been guilty of. I also think
> they contain a higher incidence of factual misstatements than my posts
> -- like your misremembering of the ending of "The Circus" and the
> suggestions that Sennett did not exercise much control over his films.
> There is also a fair amount of inconsistency in the arguments
> offered against my observations. You point out correctly that I am
> hardly the first to find an element of false sentiment and self-pity in
> Chaplin's later films, yet my musings on the subject are treated as some
> sort of bizarre and perverse provocation.
> I stand by my conviction that there is an element of bathetic
> self-pity in the ending of "The Circus", an element which is developed
> further in "City Lights" and which all but overwhelms "Limelight".
My reading of the thread is that no one has questioned your
conviction, only whether or not there is evidence in the film to
support it. The question, as far as I'm concerned, is not whether or
not there are those who choose to see Chaplin's work as bathetic and
self-pitying, but what is it in the work that might lead them there.
For me, it is clear from the twirls of the cane, the kick of the
heels, the obvious change in gait and the lift of the shoulders and
elbows as the Tramp exits, that Chaplin's choice of actions indicate
he did NOT intend for his audience to be left with only the feelings
of pity just as obviously intended by the actions just prior to that
exit. Chaplin has the character shake it off and move on. I think it's
more than reasonable to infer that he meant for the audience to see
and assimilate those actions into their perception of the character's
emotions.
Even if one doesn't go the further step of implying Chaplin wanted his
audiences to see *him* in his character, I think it is still incumbent
on you not to ignore or minimize significant clues given by that
character. Since you seem to want your readers to take that extra step
with you, I would think it's almost mandatory to consider all the
evidence Chaplin provides instead of picking and choosing, at least if
you expect to be taken seriously.
Feuillade
> Feuillade wrote:
>> Lloyd Fonvielle navi...@earthlink.net writes:
>>> The images have a strong
>>> metaphorical suggestiveness
>>> to me, conveying the sense of
>>> an inconsolable loss, the end
>>> of an era -- almost, one might say,
>>> a Gotterdamerung.
>> You've never seen a Wagner opera,
>> have you? Not "Götterdämmerung,"
>> not "Tristan," not nothing. Right?
> I have, and I don't like them a lot.
> Portentous, overblown, and -- to
> bring the subject round again to the
> ending of "The Circus" -- reeking
> of pomposity and self-pity. Wagner
> strikes me as man who would rise up
> from making grand passionate love for
> two minutes and then write a forty
> minute aria about the experience.
If you knew anything about Wagner, you would know that he didn't write "arias"
-- not in his major operas, anyway.
You strike me as a man who is trying to bullshit his way through an argument
and is unwilling to admit his ignorance.
Oh well. Your mileage may vary.
David Totheroh
The REALLY funny part of this is that both the plot of the film and
the reality of the October 1927 production schedule is that this
closing scene takes place at sunrise, the BEGINNING of a new day.
Gotterdamerung? Hardly. That already happened a couple of scenes
earlier.
Lloyd Fonvielle
> If you knew anything about Wagner, you would know that he didn't write "arias"
> -- not in his major operas, anyway.
Many vocal passages from Wagner's operas, including the major operas,
are commonly referred to as "arias". Check out the classical music
section of your local record store for numerous collections of same.
Wagner didn't like the term applied to his work, or the way arias were
used in the structure of traditional operas -- but he was also a
pretentious humbug, whose aesthetic terminology needn't be taken at face
value, and in the common parlance of the music world normally isn't.
Lloyd Fonvielle
>>Connie, you're totally misrepresenting what you said. We were
>>discussing the last scene of the film.
>
> Does the irony elude you? You're right, we WERE discussing the end of
> the film. That's why I focused my comments on that scene and why for
> the life of me I can't figure out why you found it so unfair that I
> chose not to comment on other scenes or events in the film.
Connie flat out misrepresented the LAST SCENE of the film, which, as you
say, is exactly what we were discussing, in order to counter my
observation about it. You did not find this misrepresentation worth
mentioning -- presumably because you share Connie's opinion about the
last scene. Or does she have some special dispensation to err which is
not granted to others?
I didn't give a gesture by gesture breakdown of Chaplin's
movements away from camera in the last few seconds of the film, because
they didn't and don't seem to me to counteract the potent images of
desolation that precede them, nor do I think they were intended to. In
this I apparently committed the error of "ignoring evidence".
There's a double standard at work here.
> For me, it is clear from the twirls of the cane, the kick of the
> heels, the obvious change in gait and the lift of the shoulders and
> elbows as the Tramp exits, that Chaplin's choice of actions indicate
> he did NOT intend for his audience to be left with only the feelings
> of pity just as obviously intended by the actions just prior to that
> exit. Chaplin has the character shake it off and move on. I think it's
> more than reasonable to infer that he meant for the audience to see
> and assimilate those actions into their perception of the character's
> emotions.
I read the last few gestures in the last few seconds of the film
differently. The Tramp's "noble" but still muted pantomime of "carrying
on" in spite of his loss seems designed to accentuate the pity we are
meant to feel for him. So misunderstood, so mistreated -- and yet so brave!
> Even if one doesn't go the further step of implying Chaplin wanted his
> audiences to see *him* in his character, I think it is still incumbent
> on you not to ignore or minimize significant clues given by that
> character. Since you seem to want your readers to take that extra step
> with you, I would think it's almost mandatory to consider all the
> evidence Chaplin provides instead of picking and choosing, at least if
> you expect to be taken seriously.
I think it is you are are picking and choosing, in a way that distorts
the mood and meaning of the film's ending. The story in general, the
Tramp's choices, the images of his isolation and loss are what set the
tone and fix the meaning of the final episode. The very -- very --
brief coda when he shakes the dust of the circus off his feet and
saunters on are grace notes at best.
Feuillade
> Feuillade wrote:
>> If you knew anything about Wagner,
>> you would know that he didn't write
>> "arias" -- not in his major operas,
>> anyway.
> Many vocal passages from Wagner's
> operas, including the major operas,
> are commonly referred to as "arias".
Not by anyone who knows anything about Wagner.
There is a generally agreed-upon form to an aria -- a form which Wagner (after
"Die Fliegende Holländer," anyway) deliberately deviates. It's one of the many
things that makes him such a titan in his field -- as Tolstoy or Proust was in
theirs.
> Check out the classical music
> section of your local record store
> for numerous collections of same.
> Wagner didn't like the term applied
> to his work, or the way arias were
> used in the structure of traditional
> operas -- but he was also a
> pretentious humbug, whose aesthetic
> terminology needn't be taken at face
> value, and in the common parlance of
> the music world normally isn't.
Have you ever heard the expression, "When you've dug yourself into a hole, the
first thing you need to do is stop digging"?
I'd stop digging if I were you.
Philip
If you are commonly referred to as a "clown", does that make you a "clown"?
Wagner set out to write integrated music dramas which flow continuously
without interruption by traditional devices such as arias. There may be
pieces you can cut out of his later operas and call "arias", but you
mutilate them in the process. Record companies are not the arbiters of
musical form.
You may not like Wagner or his music, or agree with his musical/dramatic
aims, or you may be turned away by his racial views, but in the opinion of
many (including myself) he achieved what he set out to do. Which makes him
not a "pretentious humbug" but an "artistic genius".
Lloyd Fonvielle
> Wagner set out to write integrated music dramas which flow continuously
> without interruption by traditional devices such as arias. There may be
> pieces you can cut out of his later operas and call "arias", but you
> mutilate them in the process.
Wagner would certainly say so, but some of the greatest interpreters of
his work recorded such fragments or performed them in concert programs
as "arias". The fact that record companies refer to them as arias when
issuing them on disc says nothing about musical form but is a fair
indication of the common parlance of the music world when discussing
such "fragments".
To me, Wagner's music is only endurable when presented in this way
-- the experience of the "integrated music dramas which flow
continuously without interruption" being somewhat insufferable, to put
it mildly. As Stravinsky said after sitting through a performance of
"Parsifal" at Bayreuth, "It's a long time to go without a cigarette."
George Shelps
>To me, Wagner's music is only
>endurable when presented in this way --
>the experience of the "integrated music
>dramas which flow continuously without
>interruption" being somewhat
>insufferable, to put it mildly. As
>Stravinsky said after sitting through a
>performance of "Parsifal" at Bayreuth,
>"It's a long time to go without a cigarette."
Wagner's esthetic ideal required an excessive amount of transitional
material
to disguise the "numbers" (i.e. arias) that
were buried in the "integrated music
drama." It was inefficient and results
in what Stravinsky was referring to.
__________________________________
"The past is never dead. It's not even past."
__William Faulkner
David Totheroh
I wonder how you'll be able to integrate the fact that Chaplin chose
Irving Berlin's 'Blue Skies' in his original compiled score as the
theme for the film's ending. Do you think that's consistent with your
theory of "bathetic self-pity?"
Feuillade
> I wonder how you'll be able to integrate
> the fact that Chaplin chose Irving Berlin's
> 'Blue Skies' in his original compiled
> score as the theme for the film's ending.
Well, clearly that was to achieve a mood of Wagnerian Gotterdammerung.
(It being well known that Irving Berlin and Richard Wagner have so many
thematic similarities.)
Constance Kuriyama
> Constance Kuriyama wrote:
>
> > I'm going to call you on this one.
> >
> > I said the Tramp was fired. He was. You said no, he left voluntarily.
> > Also true--except for the denial that he was fired, which is false,
> > and
> > which you later contradicted when you reminded me that we do see the
> > boss fire him--a detail I had forgotten.
> >
> > So my statement that he was fired was not a "flat out misstatement of
> > fact," but accurate, and more than a little pertinent. Even though
> > the boss is forced to reinstate the Tramp, he consigns him to the end
> > wagon, and it's obvious that all is not forgiven. This gives the Tramp
> > an excellent reason to leave, along with two others--his act no longer
> > works, and he didn't get the girl.
>
> Connie, you're totally misrepresenting what you said. We were
> discussing the last scene of the film. I stated, correctly, that the
> Tramp chose to leave the circus, you stated that he left because he was
> fired.
He DOES for Pete's sake. What else is he doing by that campfire? And
he
leaves at the end partly because of the obviously cool reception he
gets
when the girl forces his rehire.
> We were not discussing the earlier time he left the circus, and
> your attempt to conflate the two scenes -- one in which he was fired,
> one in which he left voluntarily, after being rehired -- is unpersuasive.
We were discussing why he left, and the attack on the boss has a
lasting effect. I have now watched the film again, and it is quite
obvious that the Tramp is in for no picnic if he stays with the
circus. The rehire is grudging and means very little, so the sacrifice
involved in his leaving is virtually
nil.
> > It's partly your aggressive,
> > intransigent attitude that's attracting all this negative attention.
>
> I think you should reread the "Circus" thread and the Sennett thread.
> The aggression and intransigence are mostly found in the posts
> disagreeing with me.
Some of the responses have been immoderate, but you might considere
what
caused these otherwise civil people to respond as they did.
> They are quite extreme at times, with a an edge of
> personal incivility which I have never been guilty of. I also think
> they contain a higher incidence of factual misstatements than my posts
> -- like your misremembering of the ending of "The Circus"
Let's say partially remembering. But some of your statements are far
more
outrageous, because they are based on nothing but a subjective
impression.
> and the
> suggestions that Sennett did not exercise much control over his films.
I never made such a suggestion, though I don't believe that his
control was as absolute as you claim because of my knowledge of
Chaplin's Keystone films.
> There is also a fair amount of inconsistency in the arguments
> offered against my observations. You point out correctly that I am
> hardly the first to find an element of false sentiment and self-pity in
> Chaplin's later films, yet my musings on the subject are treated as some
> sort of bizarre and perverse provocation.
If your musings were phrased in a cooler style, you might not
get such a hot reception.
> I stand by my conviction that there is an element of bathetic
> self-pity in the ending of "The Circus", an element which is developed
> further in "City Lights" and which all but overwhelms "Limelight".
Repeated assertion and personal conviction are not proof.
Connie K.
Constance Kuriyama
> David Totheroh wrote:
>
> >>Connie, you're totally misrepresenting what you said. We were
> >>discussing the last scene of the film.
> >
> > Does the irony elude you? You're right, we WERE discussing the end of
> > the film. That's why I focused my comments on that scene and why for
> > the life of me I can't figure out why you found it so unfair that I
> > chose not to comment on other scenes or events in the film.
>
> Connie flat out misrepresented the LAST SCENE of the film, which, as you
> say, is exactly what we were discussing,
Beg to differ. There is good reason to think that he leaves BECAUSE HE
IS
FIRED. You keep asserting that it was misrepresentation, and I'll keep
asserting that it wasn't. That will be constructive, won't it?
Intelligent
adult debate of the sort for which you are setting the standard.
Shall we try "Did!" and "Didn't" for short?
I freely admitted that my memory of some details in my earlier
posts was hazy. So far in this discussion you have NEVER admitted to
an error or misstatement, though you have made plenty of them.
> in order to counter my
> observation about it. You did not find this misrepresentation worth
> mentioning -- presumably because you share Connie's opinion about the
> last scene. Or does she have some special dispensation to err which is
> not granted to others?
> I didn't give a gesture by gesture breakdown of Chaplin's
> movements away from camera in the last few seconds of the film, because
> they didn't and don't seem to me to counteract the potent images of
> desolation that precede them, nor do I think they were intended to. In
> this I apparently committed the error of "ignoring evidence".
> There's a double standard at work here.
There are different ideas of how arguments should be supported at work
here, that's clear. But aren't you whining a bit? This couldn't be
self-pity, could it?
I suppose you'd also say that it is wrong to regard the final seconds
of
_The Kid_, when the Tramp discovers that he is being taken to visit
Jackie, as significant because the reunion follows a much longer
sequence emphasizing the Tramp's feelings of loneliness and anxiety.
The last few seconds of Chaplin films--i.e. _The Tramp_, _The
Immigrant_,_The Pilgrim_, _Modern Times_--are typically quite
important.
Connie K.
George Shelps
>>>Some of the responses have been
>>>immoderate, but you might considere
>>>what caused these otherwise civil
>>>people to respond as they did.It's
>>>partly your aggressive, intransigent
>>>attitude that's attracting all this
>>>negative attention.
>>I think you should reread the "Circus"
>>thread and the Sennett thread. The
>>aggression and intransigence are
>>mostly found in the posts disagreeing
>>with me.
>Some of the responses have been
>immoderate, but you might considere
>what caused these otherwise civil people
>to respond as they did.
This I used to call the "Chaplin Shuffle,"
a phenomenon wherein criticism of
Chaplin is rebutted by an
attack on the critic's motives, character,
or intellect.
Don't you know, Lloyd, that you ~deserve~ incivility from these
otherwise
spotless lambs of civility?
>>They are quite extreme at times, with a
>>an edge of personal incivility which I
>>have never been guilty of. I also think
>>they contain a higher incidence of factual
>>misstatements than my posts -- like your
>>misremembering of the ending of "The
>>Circus"
>Let's say partially remembering. But
>some of your statements are far more
>outrageous, because they are based on
>nothing but a subjective impression.
On what basis do "subjective impressions" justify incivility?
Where has Lloyd sunk to the level of, say,
Moran? He has been relentlessly civil
in all his expression.
Lloyd Fonvielle
> I wonder how you'll be able to integrate the fact that Chaplin chose
> Irving Berlin's 'Blue Skies' in his original compiled score as the
> theme for the film's ending. Do you think that's consistent with your
> theory of "bathetic self-pity?"
I can only repeat what I wrote before -- in "The Circus", as in "City
Lights", the Tramp "heroically rescues a girl from wretchedness,
demonstrating real love for her, only to have her reject him for reasons
that are never presented as anything but superficial. This is bathos.
This is self-pity. It would be even if he danced a jig in the seconds
before the fade out. It would be even if he held up a sign which read
'I'm happy in spite of it all!'" I can add that it would be even if
Chaplin played Irving Berlin's "Blue Skies" as the exit music.
All of these things could be read as an indication that the Tramp
is well rid of Merna and the circus, and is looking forward to a bright
future ahead. They could also be read as heart-wrenching counterpoint
to the plain tragedy we have just witnessed -- which is how I would read
them.
At the end of Shakespeare's tragedies, a character usually steps
forward to give a curtain speech regretting the sad ending of the tale
and offering bright hopes for the future. They're still tragedies,
despite the formulaic optimism of the closing words.
Incidentally, you mentioned that the storyline of "The Circus" leads us
to imagine that the final episode of the film happens at sunrise. I
don't see how you conclude this, since that final episode is immediately
preceded by Rex and Merna's wedding, which seems to be taking place in
broad daylight. Unless they are having the traditional pre-dawn
wedding, in which case Chaplin has done a singularly bad job of shooting
day for night, or unless the Tramp has been waiting outside a hotel room
for about 24 hours while Rex and Merna consummate their union, then I
don't see how we can possibly read the last scene as unfolding at sunrise.
It's not happening at twilight, either, which is, I guess, the
point you were making, but you don't need actual twilight for a
metaphorical Gotterdamerung.
Lloyd Fonvielle
> There are different ideas of how arguments should be supported at work
> here, that's clear. But aren't you whining a bit? This couldn't be
> self-pity, could it?
All I can say is, I feel like I'm sitting on a box in an empty circus
ring as everything I care about in life vanishes around me.
And yet . . .
Somehow I seem to hear the thunder of Wagnerian doom give way to
the joyful strains of Irving Berlin's "Blue Skies" -- and I feel that I
mustn't give up. I feel -- no, I KNOW -- that my heart will go on . . .
And by the way I wasn't criticizing you for mixing up the events at the
end of "The Circus" a bit. This is not a scholarly forum, a lot of
films and scenes and issues are discussed by a lot of people with a
broad general knowledge of film, who can't be expected to get every
detail exactly correct all the time.
I was just suggesting that a different standard of precision seems
to be demanded of those who disagree with the consensus view of things
than is demanded of those who agree with it.
In short, I was whining.
Lloyd Fonvielle
> Wagner's esthetic ideal required an excessive amount of transitional
> material
> to disguise the "numbers" (i.e. arias) that
> were buried in the "integrated music
> drama." It was inefficient and results
> in what Stravinsky was referring to.
Exactly. Wagner's later style in general involved prolonged and
repetitive musical passages, a kind of overblown vamping, leading up to
a final release. Some experience this as moving and profound, others
find it formulaic and trite and wish he'd just get on with it.
Feuillade
> George Shelps wrote:
>> Wagner's esthetic ideal required an
>> excessive amount of transitional
>> material to disguise the "numbers"
>> (i.e. arias) that were buried in the
>> "integrated music drama." It was
>> inefficient and results in what
>> Stravinsky was referring to.
> Exactly.
Nonsense.
Neither one of you has a clue what you're talking about.
> Wagner's later style in general involved
> prolonged and repetitive musical
> passages, a kind of overblown vamping,
> leading up to a final release. Some
> experience this as moving and profound,
> others find it formulaic and trite and wish
> he'd just get on with it.
I wish both of you would just get on with it -- it's blatantly obvious that
neither one of you knows anything about Wagner.
Which leads me to wonder how much you know about Chaplin.
Not much, from the looks of it.
Lloyd Fonvielle
> I wish both of you would just get on with it -- it's blatantly obvious that
> neither one of you knows anything about Wagner.
I admit that I know ten percent less about Wagner than you do, since I
only own nine versions of the "Gotterdamerung". However, I have just
ordered two more from amazon and when they arrive, boy -- look out!
Philip
It's "Gotterdammerung", not "Gotterdamerung", as you keep spelling it, or
maybe you just wish it was shorter...
Anyway, some people "get" Wagner, and some don't. Just like some people
"get" Chaplin, and some don't, to bring this thead remotely back on-topic
(and my brief participation in it to an end).
Lloyd Fonvielle
> It's "Gotterdammerung", not "Gotterdamerung", as you keep spelling it, or
> maybe you just wish it was shorter...
Apologies for the misspelling.
> Anyway, some people "get" Wagner, and some don't.
Quite right. So much of what's being argued here involves matters of
taste and subjective affinity, and really shouldn't be disputed as
though they were matters of fact or hinged on issues of terminology.
Greater and wiser people than I am love and admire Wagner. People who
own larger collections of Wagner recordings than I do love and admire
Wagner. But nothing on earth will ever move me to listen to the Ring
Cycle again or watch another production of it.
Feuillade
> Philip wrote:
>> It's "Gotterdammerung", not
>> "Gotterdamerung", as you keep
>> spelling it, or maybe you just wish
>> it was shorter...
> Apologies for the misspelling.
Actually, if we're going to be pedantic about it, it's Götterdämmerung.
>> Anyway, some people "get" Wagner,
>> and some don't.
> Quite right. So much of what's being
> argued here involves matters of
> taste and subjective affinity, and really
> shouldn't be disputed as though they
> were matters of fact or hinged on
> issues of terminology.
Only partly right. But when you allege that the mood of the end of "The
Circus" is reminiscent of Wagner's "Götterdämmerung," you're making a statement
that no one who is familiar with both works would agree with.
The two works have nothing in common. And the score of one does not even
remotely sound like the score of the other.
And you keep leaping through hoops trying to deny the obvious -- that you
didn't know what you were talking about. And in denying that you just make
your position worse.
> Greater and wiser people than I am
> love and admire Wagner.
No sane man admires Wagner.
They may admire his work, which is a totally different thing.
> People who own larger collections
> of Wagner recordings than I do love
> and admire Wagner.
If you're referring to me, see above.
Wagner as a human being was an abomination.
As an artist, however, he was one of the greatest who ever lived. Quite
possibly equalled only by Shakespeare.
> But nothing on earth will ever move
> me to listen to the Ring Cycle again
> or watch another production of it.
As someone once said in "Doonesbury": "Your loss, toots."
Lloyd Fonvielle
> . . . when you allege that the mood of the end of "The
> Circus" is reminiscent of Wagner's "Götterdämmerung," you're making a statement
> that no one who is familiar with both works would agree with.
>
> The two works have nothing in common. And the score of one does not even
> remotely sound like the score of the other.
I'm prepared to accept that the ironic tone of my comment was lost on
you, perhaps as a result of my shortcomings as a writer. But no sane
man could read what I wrote and infer that I was comparing the two works
or suggesting that the portentous music Chaplin wrote for the circus
wagon's departure was comparable AS MUSIC to the portentous music Wagner
wrote for the "Gotterdammerung". I did not even reference the opera
itself, but only the "Twilight Of the Gods" mood found in Wagner's work.
(Note that in the passage in question I did not enclose the word
Gotterdammerung in quotes -- a clue to careful readers!)
I understand fully why you might have misread what I wrote in this
way -- it must be very exciting to share with others the fact that you
own ten recordings of the "Gotterdammerung", and I for one am very
impressed by this. I myself own four recordings of the "Liebeslieder
Waltzer" by Brahms, and if the opportunity ever arises to make this fact
known here I will jump on it in a flash.
As you can see, I have cheerfully added the m I left out of
Gotterdammerung, although I have not troubled with the extra keystrokes
it would take to add the umlauts, even on the word umlauts. Life is too
short.
Constance Kuriyama
> David Totheroh wrote:
>
> > I wonder how you'll be able to integrate the fact that Chaplin chose
> > Irving Berlin's 'Blue Skies' in his original compiled score as the
> > theme for the film's ending. Do you think that's consistent with your
> > theory of "bathetic self-pity?"
>
> I can only repeat what I wrote before -- in "The Circus", as in "City
> Lights", the Tramp "heroically rescues a girl from wretchedness,
> demonstrating real love for her, only to have her reject him for reasons
> that are never presented as anything but superficial. This is bathos.
> This is self-pity.
Reasserting this free-floating self-pity doesn't make it any more
credible.
Actually, if this is what the films are depicting, which I don't think it
is, it would merely be a realistic portrayal of ingratitude. There are
instances of ingratitude in a number of Chaplin films. He experienced it
often, and probably thought he experienced it even more often, but he
seems to have considered it just another form of human perversity, hardly
grand enough to be tragic.
> At the end of Shakespeare's tragedies, a character usually steps
> forward to give a curtain speech regretting the sad ending of the tale
> and offering bright hopes for the future. They're still tragedies,
> despite the formulaic optimism of the closing words.
This is typical of the kind of vague impressionism you're offering
here. There's no optimism at the end of _Lear_, _Hamlet_, _Othello_,
_Macbeth_, etc., just an indication that life will continue somehow. The
protagonists all die--no future for them. The Tramp is both alive and
back-kicking. Only some of Shakespeare's comedies have truly optimistic
endings.
> Incidentally, you mentioned that the storyline of "The Circus" leads us
> to imagine that the final episode of the film happens at sunrise. I
> don't see how you conclude this,
It's obvious from the mist and the quality of the light. And it *was*
filmed at sunrise.
> since that final episode is immediately
> preceded by Rex and Merna's wedding, which seems to be taking place in
> broad daylight. Unless they are having the traditional pre-dawn
> wedding, in which case Chaplin has done a singularly bad job of shooting
> day for night, or unless the Tramp has been waiting outside a hotel room
> for about 24 hours while Rex and Merna consummate their union, then I
> don't see how we can possibly read the last scene as unfolding at sunrise.
We're in Chaplinland, not the "real world." Time and space are imaginary,
as in Shakespeare, who frequently garbles his time scheme for effect or
convenience (or just because he forgot).
Connie K.
Lloyd Fonvielle
> Lloyd Fonvielle <navi...@earthlink.net> wrote in message news:<_oCqb.855$nz....@newsread2.news.pas.earthlink.net>...
>
>>Incidentally, you mentioned that the storyline of "The Circus" leads us
>>to imagine that the final episode of the film happens at sunrise. I
>>don't see how you conclude this,
>
> It's obvious from the mist and the quality of the light. And it *was*
> filmed at sunrise.
>
>>since that final episode is immediately
>>preceded by Rex and Merna's wedding, which seems to be taking place in
>>broad daylight. Unless they are having the traditional pre-dawn
>>wedding, in which case Chaplin has done a singularly bad job of shooting
>>day for night, or unless the Tramp has been waiting outside a hotel room
>>for about 24 hours while Rex and Merna consummate their union, then I
>>don't see how we can possibly read the last scene as unfolding at sunrise.
>
> We're in Chaplinland, not the "real world." Time and space are imaginary,
> as in Shakespeare, who frequently garbles his time scheme for effect or
> convenience (or just because he forgot).
I was responding to David Totheroh, who wrote that the plot of the film
leads us to conclude that the scene takes place at sunrise. Can you
explain to me how the plot of the film leads us to conclude that the
scene takes place at sunrise?
Or is this another example of details of fact not mattering if
they're offered by someone you agree with?
You and Mr. Totheroh are starting to sound like a tag team. One
of you will offer a misstatement of fact, I call you on it, the other
jumps in to say that the fact in question is irrelevant. This is your
idea of rational discourse?
RFCSAC627N
>Can you
>explain to me how the plot of the film leads us to conclude that the
>scene takes place at sunrise?
Would it make sense that the circus was about to move out at dusk?
Richard Carnahan