Tweet Dislike Chaplin's work?

Unlike Chaplin, other great comedians from Lloyd to Fields were neglected for decades until rediscovery made them seem fresh and new. Max Davidson's enjoying that process right now. Chaplin's never had the advantage of temporary obscurity

Oh please, which disadvantage? Since he was never forgotten NONE of his films are lost. How do the others whose films are completely lost & forgotten really benefit from "the advantage of obscurity"? Btw, even if their films still exist, they are sitting on archival shelves, and never being re-discovered simply because nobody can identify them.

I was only suggesting that we're probably more intrigued during our first viewing of Pass the Gravy than during our tenth viewing of The Tramp. You are welcome to disagree.

Unlike Chaplin, other great comedians from Lloyd to Fields were neglected for decades until rediscovery made them seem fresh and new. Max Davidson's enjoying that process right now. Chaplin's never had the advantage of temporary obscurity

Oh please, which disadvantage? Since he was never forgotten NONE of his films are lost. How do the others whose films are completely lost & forgotten really benefit from "the advantage of obscurity"? Btw, even if their films still exist, they are sitting on archival shelves, and never being re-discovered simply because nobody can identify them.

I was only suggesting that we're probably more intrigued during our first viewing of Pass the Gravy than during our tenth viewing of The Tramp. You are welcome to disagree.

Familiarity breeds contempt.

Bob

I was only suggesting that we're probably more intrigued during our first viewing of Pass the Gravy than during our tenth viewing of The Tramp. You are welcome to disagree.

Familiarity breeds contempt.

Bob

Not necessarily, but new toys are still fun to unwrap.

Unlike Chaplin, other great comedians from Lloyd to Fields were neglected for decades until rediscovery made them seem fresh and new. Max Davidson's enjoying that process right now. Chaplin's never had the advantage of temporary obscurity

Oh please, which disadvantage? Since he was never forgotten NONE of his films are lost. How do the others whose films are completely lost & forgotten really benefit from "the advantage of obscurity"? Btw, even if their films still exist, they are sitting on archival shelves, and never being re-discovered simply because nobody can identify them.

Point of order, one of the Chaplin Keystones is lost.

Actually, given the confusion over names, I nurse the suspicion that A THIEF CATCHER is the HER FRIEND THE BANDIT that is missing. Can one of the more scholarly inclined among us who has perused the relevant files confirm or deny this?

Bob

Actually, given the confusion over names, I nurse the suspicion that A THIEF CATCHER is the HER FRIEND THE BANDIT that is missing. Can one of the more scholarly inclined among us who has perused the relevant files confirm or deny this?

I think one of the familiar Chaplin Keystones was later re-issued under the title The Thief Catcher. But the newly-discovered A Thief Catcher and Her Friend the Bandit were definitely separate and official Keystone releases.

Chaplin had been on the Keystone lot, and drawing a salary, for a solid month before his earliest known film (Making a Living) began production, so there's a good possibility that he appears in one or more films that are unknown to us.

Maurice Bessy's book includes a frame enlargement of Chaplin (out of costume) and Mabel Normand, one that no one's been able to identify. Brent Walker thinks the film might be How Motion Pictures are Made (1913), a lost film.

At least one early Chaplin filmography adds The Baggage Smasher, another lost film, to the list of Chaplin Keystones. Chances are, he's not in it, but who really knows?

Chaplin (with Arbuckle and Normand) attended an event in San Francisco late in 1914, and Moving Picture World reported that the festivities were filmed and shown at a private gathering a month later. Its whereabouts are unknown.

I don't like his Keystones that much, but except for a few Chaplin and Arbuckle Keystone comedies, I don't like the Sennett Keystone comedies anyway. His Mutual comedies are great, except for The Fireman (1916).

THE FIREMAN may not be great, but it's still damned good.

And I agree with you on the uselessness of tearing down one comedian to praise another.

I so dislike Chaplain way overrated.

Now tell me straight -- was it your mother who offed Taylor?

Stop penalizing Chaplin for being popular. Actually, his reputation has risen and fallen many times over the years. He was the best ambassador silent films ever had. Someone has to be popular and transcend the medium that gave birth to them. Think Louis Armstrong, Hitchcock and on and on. Let's not forget that many thought him crazy to stick with silent film after the Circus. He gave us many more masterpieces (including Monsieur Verdoux...yes, I said it). Think "Welcome Danger" by the equally wealthy Lloyd for some perspective. It took me three tries to get through that monstrosity. So bad they wouldn't even put it on the box set. As far as his personal life, we could use a few artists with his nerve today. By the way, I love Lloyd, but his honorary Oscar as "master comedian and good citizen" in the wake of Chaplin's exile was deserved artistically, but a sham politically. Lastly, I've got a book of 3D photos that illustrates that Harold, too, had a certain "interest" in younger women. It is not Chaplin's fault that the survival rate of silent films is abysmal. This is America. We throw out everything that happened yesterday. I was up and down the radio today and couldn't find Fred Allen anywhere. I suppose that's Chaplin's fault, too. You don't like him, don't watch.

I don't and I don't.

Nobody can please everybody, not even Charlie. But he came pretty close.

The Fireman isn't a bad comedy, it's just that it's a potboiler anyone could have made.

Anyone could have made it, but not as well as Charlie.

Unlike Chaplin, other great comedians from Lloyd to Fields were neglected for decades until rediscovery made them seem fresh and new. Max Davidson's enjoying that process right now. Chaplin's never had the advantage of temporary obscurity

Oh please, which disadvantage? Since he was never forgotten NONE of his films are lost. How do the others whose films are completely lost & forgotten really benefit from "the advantage of obscurity"? Btw, even if their films still exist, they are sitting on archival shelves, and never being re-discovered simply because nobody can identify them.

But that ain't Charlie's fault, and there's a reason that he was never forgotten.

I saw most of Buster Keaton's films after getting into him during college. However, I saw none of Lloyd over the years and not very much of Chaplin. I resisted seeing Chaplin's work because of all I had read about him from critics: "Chaplin's films contain too much pathos and sentiment. Keaton is more "modern". His work has aged better." I believed the critical consensus and so didn't "waste my time" on the antiquated Little Tramp.

And I was stupid for doing so.

In the past month I've watched all of Chaplin's, Lloyd's and Keaton's silent features. All three filmmakers are fantastic, but Chaplin was a revelation, probably because I was prepared to not be too impressed by his work. Instead, I was blown away. The man was truly one of the great artists of the cinema, and the critiques I mentioned above are nothing but fashionable nonsense, yielding to the temptation to tear down the biggest kid on the block in order to elevate the previously forgotten underdog (Keaton). It's way more fun to "discover" and champion the thing that nobody knows about than it is to affirm longstanding tradition and received wisdom. There is an understandable impulse to unearth the obscure and explore something new, and for many people being "in the know" and excited about the obscure makes one feel smart and superior. Chaplin, the most famous actor of the 20th Century, was anything but obscure. There was only one place his artistic reputation could go from where it was, and that was down.

His films are not "too sentimental'. They are quite effective and earn the emotions they bring forth from the viewer. You not only laugh when watching Chaplin, but you feel the weight of the artist at work beneath the surface. There's a "complete" feeling to all of his features, even the relatively slight The Circus, which I don't always get with Lloyd and Keaton. And I think the greatest of all 27 features from the big three (or 28 features, if you count Lloyd's A Sailor Made Man as one, which you shouldn't) is a Chaplin film, City Lights.

Of Buster's 12 silent features (I'm not counting The Saphead), I count 8 of them as being "great" films. Of Lloyd's 10 silent features (again, I don't count A Sailor Made Man as a feature), I count 5 or 6 as being "great" films. Chaplin only made 5 silent features, but all five of them are "great" in my estimation.

Has Chaplin knocked Keaton off his perch for me? No. Buster is very unique, offers things Chaplin does not, and had greater output than Chaplin, making more "great" pictures. But Chaplin definitely joins him on that perch for me, and I'm very glad to have him. Lloyd is terrific, too - not quite "an artist" in the sense of Chaplin or Keaton but one amazing filmmaker in his own right. Though he doesn't have as "deep of a bench" as the other two with his features, his top four or five features may hold up for modern audiences and their sensibilities even better than the other two, as sheer entertainments. In fact, if I had to show a silent comedy to somebody who'd never seen one, and I didn't know their taste, I'd put in Lloyd's The Kid Brother without hesitation, as it really shows off what silent filmmaking can be, and it does so in the context of a very funny, touching and involving narrative. Second would be The Freshman.

These three guys were all great in their own unique way, and I don't think there's any need to dump on one in order to elevate another.

I so dislike Chaplain way overrated.

Now tell me straight -- was it your mother who offed Taylor?

One thing's sure: Desmond Taylor is dead — murdered — and somebody's responsible! (my hat's off to Plan 9 for that line)

These three guys were all great in their own unique way, and I don't think there's any need to dump on one in order to elevate another.

Here's the deal. I'm not saying "Chaplin is awful." I'm saying "I don't like Chaplin." There is a difference. It is also not negotiable.

These three guys were all great in their own unique way, and I don't think there's any need to dump on one in order to elevate another.

Here's the deal. I'm not saying "Chaplin is awful." I'm saying "I don't like Chaplin." There is a difference. It is also not negotiable.

Yes, that's what I stated in the very first post -I can take him or leave him - and I'm a-stickin' with it.
I certainly don't feel "smart and superior" to anyone because of it.

I'm definitely more of a Buster Keaton girl. I don't personally dislike Chaplin but I've never really found him funny. The Great Dictator is a visually fun film but that's the only one of his I like.

I can't see how any silent comedy fan couldn't at least find one of his many films funny, like THE RINK for instance. An absolute blast.

These three guys were all great in their own unique way, and I don't think there's any need to dump on one in order to elevate another.

Here's the deal. I'm not saying "Chaplin is awful." I'm saying "I don't like Chaplin." There is a difference. It is also not negotiable.

I wasn't speaking to any specific individual view about Chaplin expressed here. No artist is going to appeal to everybody. I was referencing that amorphous "critical consensus" that kept me away from Chaplin for so long. These things ebb and flow, but the critiques I heard about Charlie Chaplin at certain amplitudes of critical favor were just over the top, and I feel, having just seen all his work in comparison with the others, unfair.

One reviewer in the New York Review of Books in 1980 cited The Gold Rush and College, and proclaimed something like "the worst film of Buster Keaton's is better than the best film of Chaplin's." Having now just seen College and The Gold Rush only a few days apart, this claim strikes me as particularly preposterous. The reviewer also said that while Buster (paraphrasing) was "concerned with art, though he wouldn't admit it, Chaplin was not. He was only concerned with himself." This is a head-scratching claim. College was a quickie film intended to cash in on Llloyd's The Freshman in an attempt to make a quick buck back for Schenck after the super expensive The General, and it certainly feels like it. There are things I like about the movie, but a serious attempt at art on Buster's part it is not. Chaplin, on the other hand, was obsessed with his "art" from the time the critics started calling him an artist in the teens throughout the rest of his life. He agonized over individual scenes in his movies for longer than the time it took Keaton to shoot all of College. Say what you will about Chaplin, he certainly cared about his art, and was striving for it throughout his career, as some of his later films unfortunately make painfully obvious.

Then there is the "sin of sentimentality" boulders critics liked to hurl at Chaplin for the longest time, accusing him of exploitative mawkishness and cheap pity. This was a very fashionable critique for years, as critics began to elevate irony and cynicism over anything that dared to display emotion. Buster's films aren't filled with irony and cynicism, but they also didn't drip with emotion like some of Chaplin's movies do, so he became "the guy" for a lot of these post-modern critics. Now certainly there are few things worse in film than unearned sentimentality or plays on emotion, but I don't think Chaplin is guilty of that. The emotions in his films are logical and earned in the contexts of his stories, making critiques of their power some kind of bizarre penalty for his artistic effectiveness. After all, emotions are part of the human experience, often mightily so, but to these critics any attempt to convey them too powerfully on screen, as Chaplin often did, was somehow something to hold against him.

It was critiques of Chaplin like these, that were very fashionable at the time I got into silent comedy, that were responsible for coloring my view of Chaplin for years. Lately, it seems like the ebb is back to a much more balanced and fair view of Chaplin. I think a lot of that has to do with the wide availability of his films on DVD - it's plainly clear that many of Chaplin's artistic sins were mere critical hot air when you can just pop the DVD in the player and see for yourself. But there are still a lot of the echoes of these unfair shots at Chaplin bouncing around.

Again, I am not talking about any specific individual view of Chaplin and certainly not any of the ones expressed previously in this thread. Going back and looking at your specific comment now, Frederica, I find nothing unreasonable at all in what you said and I wouldn't quibble with you a bit - you certainly don't seem to be "tearing down" one comic in order to "build up another". No artist is a catch all. It's just the unfair or over-the-top criticisms I'm arguing against, not understandable matters of taste.

I can't see how any silent comedy fan couldn't at least find one of his many films funny, like THE RINK for instance. An absolute blast.

Honestly, Waverboy, though I've been extolling my newfound appreciation for Chaplin here, that so far has not extended to his short films for me. I just got The Mutuals, and have watched The Floorwalker so far, and have seen one or two others here and there over the years (I think Easy Street and The Rink), but so far I like Chaplin much better in his features than I do in his shorts. Maybe I'm too used to the Keaton shorts, and some of the Lloyd shorts I've seen, all of which are later in the development of film language and film comedy than the Chaplin ones, but so far Chaplin's short films haven't really done it for me. I'm sure this would probably change if I got to see them in a theater with an audience, however, which is how they were intended to be seen.

so far I like Chaplin much better in his features than I do in his shorts.

Now that you mention it, I think Chaplin's Mutuals are his best work.
Like most folks, I first came to Chaplin through his features. I didn't find most of them that funny, other than a few scenes - great and touching, indeed, but not very "comic". The gags tended to be the weakest parts. Then I watched his Mutual shorts, and was astonished. With many of the Mutuals, and to a lesser extent his First National films, I had the same experience I get with Buster Keaton, that I was thrilled & amused at the same time - they were often so brilliant I forgot to laugh.

These three guys were all great in their own unique way, and I don't think there's any need to dump on one in order to elevate another.

Here's the deal. I'm not saying "Chaplin is awful." I'm saying "I don't like Chaplin." There is a difference. It is also not negotiable.

Yes, that's what I stated in the very first post -I can take him or leave him - and I'm a-stickin' with it.
I certainly don't feel "smart and superior" to anyone because of it.

I do feel that starting a thread on the subject, thereby inviting comments and later insisting you didn't mean anything is disingenuous.

Bob

[Mike Gebert]

I was referencing that amorphous "critical consensus" that kept me away from Chaplin for so long. These things ebb and flow, but the critiques I heard about Charlie Chaplin at certain amplitudes of critical favor were just over the top, and I feel, having just seen all his work in comparison with the others, unfair.

One reviewer in the New York Review of Books in 1980 cited The Gold Rush and College, and proclaimed something like "the worst film of Buster Keaton's is better than the best film of Chaplin's." Having now just seen College and The Gold Rush only a few days apart, this claim strikes me as particularly preposterous.

The most extreme example of that is in (early editions at least) of David Thomson's Biographical Dictionary of Film, in which he states that he'd trade Geraldine Chaplin's performance in her husband Carlos Saura's Cria Cuervos for all of her pop's work.

Cria (as it was known stateside) is a fine film, but it's no The Kid by a long shot.

These three guys were all great in their own unique way, and I don't think there's any need to dump on one in order to elevate another.

Here's the deal. I'm not saying "Chaplin is awful." I'm saying "I don't like Chaplin." There is a difference. It is also not negotiable.

Yes, that's what I stated in the very first post -I can take him or leave him - and I'm a-stickin' with it.
I certainly don't feel "smart and superior" to anyone because of it.

I do feel that starting a thread on the subject, thereby inviting comments and later insisting you didn't mean anything is disingenuous.

Bob

Where did I insist I "didn't mean anything"???

I did mean something - I meant I can take Chaplin or leave Chaplin. Which part of that is unclear??

Now that you mention it, I think Chaplin's Mutuals are his best work.
Like most folks, I first came to Chaplin through his features. I didn't find most of them that funny, other than a few scenes - great and touching, indeed, but not very "comic". The gags tended to be the weakest parts. Then I watched his Mutual shorts, and was astonished. With many of the Mutuals, and to a lesser extent his First National films, I had the same experience I get with Buster Keaton, that I was thrilled & amused at the same time - they were often so brilliant I forgot to laugh.

Interesting....I first came to Chaplin watching on TV in the 60's, and I saw his shorts, both Essanay and Mutual long before his features, which were hard to see until the 70's. I loved them from the first I saw them, and I agree that the Mutuals are probably his best films overall. My favorite feature is Modern Times, partly because I think it is closest in feel to the Mutuals.

Stan Laurel grew up in the same English Music Hall tradition that Chaplin did. Did he progress as quickly as an actor, writer, director, away from the cadence of what was done in the music hall? You bet he did, but Chaplin didn't.

Excuse me ??? Stan and Charlie were contemporaries......they were on the same Karno tours; Charlie, though, started his metamorphosis very early indeed; what started as the stock inebriated swell(One AM, say), combined with another stock character the aggressive tramp, (as in Kid Auto Races) became TheTramp/The little feller by about 1916; Billie Ritchie certainly would have played both types, it was Chaplin who combined them; created the sympathetic tramp with some out-of-place delicacies and manners. Something quite new, instantly recognised, and global in the matter of a year or two.

Meanwhile, Stan, bless him, couldn't get arrested. Although he did appear in films, some of them very good, it wasn't until the late 20's that the Stan Laurel we know and love cemented the persona we would recognise.....more than a decade after Chaplin had achieved that from a level start.

If you don't like Chaplin, that's fine; each to their own.....but please don't try to justify your taste by historical revisionism......Chaplin was all but revered by his contemporaries for a reason.

Yes, that's what I stated in the very first post -I can take him or leave him - and I'm a-stickin' with it.

I certainly don't feel "smart and superior" to anyone because of it.

I do feel that starting a thread on the subject, thereby inviting comments and later insisting you didn't mean anything is disingenuous.

Bob

I don't see that. I think Mick was just dipping a toe in the water to see if anyone else was paddling in the same pool.

That it raised a lot of excited comment is, in itself, interesting.

Thank you, Fred

Pssssttt....
what does disingenuous mean? Maybe it's something good he was saying?!

Stan Laurel grew up in the same English Music Hall tradition that Chaplin did. Did he progress as quickly as an actor, writer, director, away from the cadence of what was done in the music hall? You bet he did, but Chaplin didn't.

Excuse me ??? Stan and Charlie were contemporaries......they were on the same Karno tours; Charlie, though, started his metamorphosis very early indeed; what started as the stock inebriated swell(One AM, say), combined with another stock character the aggressive tramp, (as in Kid Auto Races) became TheTramp/The little feller by about 1916; Billie Ritchie certainly would have played both types, it was Chaplin who combined them; created the sympathetic tramp with some out-of-place delicacies and manners. Something quite new, instantly recognised, and global in the matter of a year or two.

Meanwhile, Stan, bless him, couldn't get arrested. Although he did appear in films, some of them very good, it wasn't until the late 20's that the Stan Laurel we know and love cemented the persona we would recognise.....more than a decade after Chaplin had achieved that from a level start.

If you don't like Chaplin, that's fine; each to their own.....but please don't try to justify your taste by historical revisionism......Chaplin was all but revered by his contemporaries for a reason.

Agreed 100%. JUST RAMBLING ALONG (1918) is the perfect Exhibit A. Made two years after Charlie's watershed year of 1916, Laurel is still doing Chaplin-inspired shtick.

Agreed 100%. JUST RAMBLING ALONG (1918) is the perfect Exhibit A. Made two years after Charlie's watershed year of 1916, Laurel is still doing Chaplin-inspired shtick.

I wouldn't argue that Stan had more talent than Charlie, but isn't it a little unfair to compare Stan's early Rolin shorts to the Chaplin Mutuals?

Stan at that point was basically just a contract player, doing what the director told him to do, and batting out roughly one film a week. Charlie was essentially producing his own films and taking about six weeks on each of them.

It would be a decade before Stan had much real creative control and reasonable shooting schedules, and that's when his work became so good that many people prefer it to everybody else's.

Agreed 100%. JUST RAMBLING ALONG (1918) is the perfect Exhibit A. Made two years after Charlie's watershed year of 1916, Laurel is still doing Chaplin-inspired shtick.

I wouldn't argue that Stan had more talent than Charlie, but isn't it a little unfair to compare Stan's early Rolin shorts to the Chaplin Mutuals?

Stan at that point was basically just a contract player, doing what the director told him to do, and batting out roughly one film a week. Charlie was essentially producing his own films and taking about six weeks on each of them.

It would be a decade before Stan had much real creative control and reasonable shooting schedules, and that's when his work became so good that many people prefer it to everybody else's.

True enough, but that was what Charlie had been doing at Keystone in 13/14.....and because he leapt off the screen in even those circumstances he was able to parlay greater opportunities and greater control and those Essanay and Mutual contracts; that Stan failed to do so for another decade is the point I was making....and while Stan is often cited as the brains of the outfit, and the films' comic technician, without Oliver, he struggles to make an onscreen impact; his movie spoofs of the early 20's are particularly good, but on their own you couldn't possibly see that he was going to be the diamond he would be when teamed up with Hardy. And his old friend had moved far ahead in terms of achievement by then.
Whether you find them as funny is personal taste; Charlie was after making people think as well as just amusing them by then.