|
The jester born, not made, his transience soon picked up by Ozu (A Story of Floating Weeds). "Oh no, I have a charmed life." Charles Chaplin's Tramp in his natural condition, hungry and pursued, multiplied in the hall of mirrors and transformed into a mechanical figurine at the funhouse. On the margins of the margins, an outsider even at the circus where the bareback rider (Merna Kennedy) is denied food as punishment by her stepfather the ringleader (Al Garcia). The clowns are a waxy and bulbous bunch, they find no favor with the audience until the stranger stumbles into the ring and brings down the house. Audition time: "Go ahead and be funny." Intentional versus accidental hilarity is the crux of Chaplin's consideration of performance, where traditional pagliacci routines are consciously taken apart. (The bitten apple in the William Tell act is replaced with a banana, a protracted barbershop skit can't compete with the impromptu removal of a chair from under the boss.) The nature of stardom, the artist's attributes, reflexive themes arranged in a lambent flow of gags, a fountain for Carné and Bergman and Fellini. "He's a sensation but he doesn't know it." Birds and rabbits endlessly out of the magician's top hat, in the cage with a lion whose yawn reveals an alarming number of fangs. The rival is a tightrope walker (Harry Crocker), who gets the Tramp's applause only when he seems about to plummet. Up in the air with the monkeys is a perfectionist's portrait of chaos, the constitution of the métier, elevate yourself and then cut the strings. Home turns out to be as ephemeral as anything else, wagons depart and all that's left is a circle in the dust and a figure in the landscape. Chaplin in Limelight shaves all of this into an autumnal image, Beckett does the same in Mirlitonnades ("En face / le pire / jusqu'à ce / qu'il fasse rire"). With Henry Bergman, George Davis, John Rand, and Tiny Sandford. In black and white.
--- Fernando F. Croce |