Tag silent-film

City Lights

Anthony Panariello Leave a comment

Category: Silent Film, Comedy

Starring: Charlie Chaplin

Another Chaplin movie (a lot of his seem to make most ‘best movie’ lists and I can start to see why.  In this particular one he reprise the role of the tramp and the movie opens with him taking a nap under a tarp that is later revealed to be a statue that is having a big unveiling.  The usual slapstick shenanigans happen and he eventually escapes the authorities. He then meets a flower girl who is selling flowers and is instantly smitten.

As he’s leaving the flower girl hears a fancy car with a chauffeur and thinks it’s the tramp. Later that night the tramp is down by the water and he sees someone trying to kill themselves. He saves them from the attempt and it turns out the guy’s a millionaire and he takes the tramp back to his house to keep the party going. The guy’s a complete lush and when the tramp asks him for money to buy more flowers from the flower girl he peels off a few from a fat stack and sends him on the way telling him to take his car – a very nice Rolls Royce.

The thing is – the millionaire only really remembers the tramp when he’s hammered – once he’s sober he is a cruel and abrupt stereotype of a 1920’s tycoon.  It’s something that is repeated a few times with the millionaire who always seems to find the tramp when he’s sauced out of his mind.

Meanwhile the tramp keeps visiting his blind girl and one day she isn’t at her usual street corner. He eventually tracks her down and finds out that she is ill, so he keeps her company by reading her a newspaper. One of the articles is about a doctor who has a procedure to restore sight – the girl smiles and said it’d be wonderful because then she can see him. The tramp knowing he’s pretending to be rich and is aware of his looks isn’t enthused with this idea. However, as he’s leaving he finds an eviction notice and realizes her family is getting kicked out of the apartment.   Determined to help her he decides to get the money to pay her back rent.

The problem is he’s visited the blind girl too many times and the foreman fires him. One of his buddies ropes him into a fixed fight to make some cash but the crooked boxer takes off because the police are coming the his replacement is a giant of a man with murder in his eyes.  A comical drawn out boxing match happens which includes the tramp hitting the boxer with a shovel, the boxer punching the police, and general mayhem. However, the boxer eventually beats the tramp and he goes away without the money needed for the girl.

It’s at this time that the millionaire rolls up on the tramp, three sheets to the wind, and invites him to party (again). They have a good time and the tramp asks if he can give him the money for the girl. The rich guy says sure – and all seems to be solved, except that at that moment burglars break into the house and rob it – with the tramp making his getaway by running from the police (something he does quite frequently, to be honest)

Knowing that it’s a matter of time he runs to the girl and gives her the money – telling her that he’ll see her “in a while” shortly after the police find and arrest him. A while later he gets out of prison and goes to her street corner, only to find her gone.  One day as he’s walking down the street he looks in a store window and there she is! She runs a florist shop now and her sight has been restored! He nervously starts to approach but some newsboys who have taken a dislike to him start harassing him and she sees it through the window. She offers him a coin and a flower and when she touches his hand she realizes who he is and they share a smile.

4/5 – At this point the whole tramp gets the girl thing seems to have been done this is just another angle on it. The deranged millionaire was pretty funny and the slapstick bits are pretty consistent and humorous. Chaplin’s ability to express emotion without words is without peer and I can see why he dominated the silent film industry and his fame endures to this day.

Gold Rush [1925]

Anthony Panariello Leave a comment

Charlie Chaplin

Silent Movie / Comedy

In a reprisal of Chaplin’s ‘tramp’ persona he heads off to the Alaskan territory with just his cane (and woefully underdressed) looking to capitalize on the gold rush.  He runs into a storm and takes shelter in what seems to be an abandoned cabin – but its currently being used by an escaped criminal who isn’t too happy with the new company. He chases Chaplin off in a comical wind/storm scene but then a prospector (Big Jim) who found gold seeks shelter from the storm in the cabin and overpowers the criminal. There’s an uneasy standoff where the three men begin to starve and they draw straws to see who goes out into the storm to get food. The criminal is sent off and promptly finds bounty hunters looking for him who have a nice sled full of supplies. He shoots them and steals their supplies and promptly vanishes from the movie (I’m not really sure why he even was in the plot except maybe as an antagonist for the staged cabin scenes)

Cut back to the cabin and there’s the famous scene of Chaplin boiling his shoe to have something to eat (imagery featured frequently in images of hobos) and then Big Jim being delirious due to hunger and imagining Chaplin as a giant delicious chicken they have a quick chase and then big Jim comes to his senses and leaves to find his gold only to be assaulted by that criminal guy and left unconscious in the snow!

Cut to a different movie altogether for a while for a weird romance subplot where Chaplin meets a dancer who flirts with him to anger another guy and then agrees to go to dinner with Chaplin on NYE. On NYE Chaplin sets up his cabin all nice and then does the famous dancing roll bit (Oceana roll) then falls asleep waiting for her to arrive. She never does (quite a sad bit where he looks in the window and see her dancing with that handsome fella. He wanders off and then Georgia and her friends go to cause trouble for ‘the tramp’ but then see all the effort he want to for the party and she clearly feels guilty at her behavior. Later Chaplin goes into the party to confront them when big Jim rolls in (having lost his memory after the assault) and grabs Chaplin and says ‘we need to find the cabin! Then we can find my gold and I’ll share it with you!’ — so they head back to the cabin and get some rest before they head out but then a crazy storm blows in and blows the entire cabin to a cliff edge!

They wake up and a funny bit ensues where they walk back and forth and the cabin teeters on the edge but they think it might be a hangover but then when Chaplin opens the door he sees he’s dangling off a cliff and then they spend a few minutes figuring out how to escape but fate has smiled on them – the storm blew them right to big Jim’s mine! They’re rich!

Cut to them dressed fancily in furs and smoking cigars walking on a ship to sail back to America as millionaires – we see Chaplin’s girl also sailing out as it seems things didn’t work out with handsome man (she never really seemed that into him to begin with). Some various hijinks ensue where she shows she’s a somewhat good and remorseful person (offering to pay for his ticket when the crew thinks he’s a stowaway) and Chaplin goes in for the kiss and roll credits.

4/5 stars – The movie is iconic for a reason – so many tropes were born from this movie as well as call backs in many modern movies (the bread roll dance in Benny and Joon, countless eating your boots scenes.. Etc.) and for a silent movie it conveyed both comedy and pathos very effectively you forget it’s a silent movie and are drawn into the narrative completely.

(side note: apparently there’s a 1941 version re-cut by Chaplin that includes his own score and narrated interstitial panels. .might watch that if I have the time)

The General [1926]

Anthony Panariello Leave a comment

Type: Silent Movie, Comedy

Starring: Buster Keaton

The origin of slapstick comedy in movies? This movie is 100 years old but the laughs are pretty timeless.  Keaton plays a train engineer who loves his train and Annabelle, a woman in his town. The movie is set at the outbreak of the civil war and when a general muster is called for the town Keaton tries to enlist (to impress his lady mostly) and he is deemed to important as a train engineer to fight on the front lines.

He tries several times to enlist but is rebuffed before he leaves rejected (the famous shot of Keaton sitting glumly on the train wheels as the train starts to move).  The union general sends some troops undercover to steal a train at the end of the line and then take it along the line destroying infrastructure on the way. They decide to steal Keaton’s train – and by happenstance his woman is on the train looking for something from her trunk.  He proceeds to chase the train using a variety of methods before commandeering a confederate train to chase them. He finally catches up with them and is hiding under a table when he hears plans for a union surprise raid and he sees that Anabelle is there! She’s been captured by the union and is held hostage.

He rescues her and they escape into the night.. When day breaks they see they are near a union train depot and lo and behold his train ‘The General’ is there! They sneak aboard and steal the train heading back to confederate lines being chased all the way. 

After setting a fire on a critical bridge they alert the confederate army who mount a counterattack on the union and drive them off and the Keaton gets the girl and a promotion to lieutenant

3/5

I really enjoyed the comedy elements of this movie – and Keaton did all of his own stunts, some of which were really straight dangerous! The plot existed to serve the comedy but was passable but the treatment of the actress was pretty poor (She was the inept comic relief who was dumb as a box of rocks) — yeah yeah I get it was the 1920s but it was still jarring to see.