by Allan Fish
(USA 1916 22m) DVD1/2
Mutual Affection
p/d/w Charles Chaplin ph Rollie Totheroh, William C.Foster ed Charles Chaplin
Charles Chaplin (the tramp), Edna Purviance (the girl at the mission), Eric Campbell (the bully), Albert Austin,
Many film critics, including Barry Norman and Leslie Halliwell, have pointed out how much they prefer Chaplin’s early shorts to his later features. Certainly the features aren’t flat out comedies, relying much on the pathos that many critics now decry. Yet though I agree in essence with what they are saying, one cannot help but admit that his features are at least more ambitious, though that doesn’t make his shorts any less funny. It’s long been the subject of debate what Chaplin’s greatest short was. Certainly his early Essanay period yielded nothing spectacular, but his golden Mutual Period from 1916-1917 yielded at least six major short comedies; The Pawnshop, One a.m., The Cure, The Immigrant, The Adventurer and this, first shown in late 1916, prior to a general release the following year. Though One a.m. is a balletic masterpiece, the finest individual comic drunk put on film, The Cure makes hilarious fun of the rich attending health spas and The Immigrant is his most political short, taking swipes at the American immigration bureau, Easy Street sums up all Chaplin’s concerns, loves, hates and individual genius as well as any other.
These films of course all have to be put into the context of when they were released. Though America didn’t enter The Great War until 1917, Chaplin, as an Englishman abroad, was all too aware of the low morale at home and it’s no coincidence that this greatest and most productive flowering of his genius occurred right at the time when the Allied forces were suffering their greatest losses at places of infamy such as Passchendaele. Indeed, soon after finishing with Mutual, he released the mini-feature Shoulder Arms, a hilarious anti-war piece set in the trenches just in time for the armistice.
Easy Street, like all his other shorts, involves the travails of a little down and out, who we first see huddled up against the timbers of a poverty-stricken Mission house, which he enters to get out of the cold and join in the hymn-singing. Here he meets a young woman, the mission pianist, who he instantly falls in love with. Going out again he notices jobs going in the local police force and signs up, not knowing the violent neighbourhood he’ll be called on to police; Easy Street, a place where new recruits are brought back on stretchers, unconscious and otherwise out of it, seemingly every few minutes. This is a place where all Chaplin’s pet hates, from poverty (six children huddled in a tiny room in a manner reminiscent of that recalled by the Pythonesque Four Yorkshiremen) to starvation to urban violence and vice are well in evidence. Chaplin, as gentleman at heart (personified in the closing shot where he insists on walking on the road side of the pavement rather than Purviance), seems ill-prepared, but this little man is resourceful if nothing else, at one point hilariously trapping the villain’s head in a gas lamp and gassing him unconscious. He may possess Victorian values, right down to his perennial leading lady, Purviance, a round faced plain sort of girl who would have been seen as beautiful in the 1890s but who today would be said to have serious “weight issues.” Then there’s the music hall blackening of the villain’s eyebrows to the point where Eric Campbell would strike jealousy in everyone from Oscar Homolka and Eugene Levy to Leonid Brezhnev and Denis Healey. Yet to this Victorianism Chaplin adds his old mentor Mack Sennett’s frenetic pace, with the police force reminding one of his infamous Keystones. He also rather daringly to modern eyes shows one of the ruffians, in an attempt to rape Purviance, try to get her to sit on a needle that could quite easily be assumed to contain cocaine (especially from the way Chaplin reacts after sitting on it). If the finale seems too pat, with everyone, including Campbell, heading off to the new mission house (think Vic McLaglen at the end of The Quiet Man), we have to have a happy ending. The opening caption read “a new beginning.” And that’s just what Charlie gives us. That and a smiling face as we up and leave.
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Along with The Immigrant my favorite Chaplin shorts. The Mutual period as whole was spectacular. Bits of brillance in every short from that time. Excellent stuff, Allan!
ATTENTION ALLAN!!!! I feel I owe you an apology (although this could turn into a compliment); Usually, I am quite in attentance on these blog threads, chiming in with my views-words of disdain or pleasure. But, since the unveiling of this count, I have been quietly out of attendance. I cannot fully put into words my feelings of prematurity when it comes to my knowledge of this period of film. I have seen some, this film above being one of the few, but would rather step back, remain silent, and learn. There is so much on display here that I, ashamedly, have yet to see. The praise I give, however, to you should be in the form of thanks. For, in my silence, I am learning. Learning about films and a period that have been sorrowly abscent from my education. I have enough to keep afloat. But, this education you bring is definately pulling me on deck. I wanted you to know I read your posts here everyday even if I say nothing. Thank you for this. Your Friend, Dennis
Don’t be silly, Dennis. When I set out on this countdown I knew that around half of the posts would have next to no action if any at all, and even those that did wouldn’t necessarily be for reasons regarding the film but because of what talkies they influenced or other underlying reasons (as with Birth of a Nation).
The fact is that silent film is the most neglected period of film there is, especially in the US but frankly everywhere to a degree. It also gives me an opportunity to review dozens of films for the 2000s poll which follows immediately afterwards.
Perhaps you could browbeat Sam into putting on some of the title already listed in this backlog. Joking apart, I cannot get him to watch anything these days. Maybe you could give him a nudge to watch say La Merveilleuse Vie de Jeanne d’Arc or Le Diable au Coeur.
First of all, I’ve seen mostly everything. I had a “head start” so to speak on many of the bloggers that visit WitD, as I am 20 to 25 -or more- years older than them. When they reach their 50’s they will have been able to say they saw as much or more thaqn I did. Your constant reminders make it seem as if I was some kind of cinematic neophyte, when in fact there is very little of supreme importance that I have not seen. In fact, when I look back on my life I feel that my movie obsession deprived me of so much more in life.
Silent film is NOT especially ignored in the USA by any stretch. In fact it is especially revered, restored and understood here more than anywhere else.
Oh I beg to differ, nearly all the major restoration houses for silent film are in Europe and always have been. Even Brownlow and Gill restored most of the American films in the late seventies because no-else could care less.
On a silent film scale of what you have seen, though, old boy, I agree, you’re an 8. The average WitD reader would be a 4-6, through no fault of their own, as you say, age, availability, etc.
Before you ask, I’m a 9.5 🙂 There’s no such thing as a 10. You get to 10 and you’re dead.
here is a fascinating BBC Radio 4 2005 documentary from ‘The Archive Hour’, which has taken me two weeks to track down. It’s 1 hour on Kevin Brownlow, as he talks about his book and the interviews for it (with lovely snippets) from the conducted with Keaton, Brooks, Karl Brown and a whole host of others. Utterly fascinating and something that can be played in the background whilest blogging.
here is a fascinating BBC Radio 4 2005 documentary from ‘The Archive Hour’, which has taken me two weeks to track down. It’s 1 hour on Kevin Brownlow, as he talks about his book and the interviews for it (with lovely snippets) from the conducted with Keaton, Brooks, Karl Brown, Karloff and a whole host of others. Utterly fascinating and something that can be played in the background whilest blogging. An mp3 is avilable for downloading
http://speechification.com/?s=Paul%20Gambaccini&key=Presenter
I have to agree with JOHN GRECO. The MUTUAL period for Chaplin, for me, firmly grounded him into a position of such brilliance that he rises higher than any of the other comic/film-making geniuses out there. To me, the MUTUALS are a clear precursor of the genius he will unveil in his features. Its almost like a brewing tea-pot. With the mutuals he’s put the water in, capped the pot and set it on flame at high heat. With each short the water gets closer and closer to boiling point. The FEATURES (GOLD RUSH, THE CIRCUS, CITY LIGHTS, MODEN TIMES) are that moment when the boiling has hit its highest heat and the steam barrels through the cap in a furious bust of whistles and wetness. I know of no other film-maker in history whose meteoric rise was so evident. Really, his genius is all over these films ans so OBVIOUS. Personally, one of the five giants in American cinema.
Just thinking, Dennis, I can’t help but ask, of the five giants of American film, how many are actually American?
Let’s see. I’ll go with seven and see how things go.
Bergman
Bresson
Ozu
Chaplin
Welles
Murnau
Dreyer
Two, if you count Charlie as American.
But mentioning only seven is insanity.
It was of American film, Sam old boy…
HA-HA!!!!! Allan, you got me. Well, Chaplin, English, is one. John Ford would be there too. Welle’s to a degree, but I wish he were more prolific. Wilder, you have me there. Capra, um, Italian? And, if you wanna include a few recents, I guess Scorsese (he was born in the U.S.) And Spielberg (as American as apple-pie). I don’t count Hitchcock, he’s obviously English. But, KUBRICK, regardless of his working in the U.K. Is definately American.
P.S. Allan-Trying to get Sam to do anything other than blog, not pick up the phone, scream, bitch about the dogs, yell that the kids are disorganized, spend the entire weekend torturing the family in a never-ending string of movie-houses is a futile mission at best. I WILL TRY THOUGH. His new one, God, was showing everyone at the DINNER TABLE last Tuesday the stent they removed from him for the kidney stones he passed. We’re all eating, talking about sports, politics, joking with the kids, when, out of the blue, he holds up this wire!!!!!! LOL!!!! You cannot make this stuff up. Again, I will try…….. Whoops, thers goes my telephone: Sam calling me to scold me…..
He’s a one man walking sitcom. He’s like a bizarre amalgam of the wizard of Oz, the mad professor from Nightmare Before Christmas, Ed Norton, Shrek and Tony Soprano. Frightening.
As for yelling that the kids are disorganised, that’s like the generals of World War I bemoaning the waste of human life in Iraq. He has the organising skills of a three toed sloth.
OK, I think I have to amend what I said earlier and REWORD it. I meant directors who are either born in the U.S. Or were born elsewhere but worked exclusively under U.S. production. Here’s who I think they should be. Chaplin, Ford, Welles, Capra, Kubrick, Cassavetes, Nichols, Kazan, Stevens, Coppola, Scorses, Allen, Spielberg. After that, I don’t think of too many as TITANS in the field or directors based soley in the states.