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The Eighth Annual Allan Fish Online Film Festival 2024
Kid Auto Races At Venice (aka The Kid Auto Race ; The Pest): Director / Screenwriter / Actor: Henry Lehrman
Shoulder Arms: Director / Screenwriter / Actor / Producer: Charles Chaplin
By Roderick Heath
Charlie Chaplin. 110 years after he made his debut in the costume of his ‘Tramp character, Chaplin is very possibly still the most recognisable and emblematic performer in cinema history. Even those who have never seen his films, and indeed would not be caught dead daring to watch a silent movie, know on sight the figure with the bowler hat, little moustache, cane, ballooning trousers, and odd ways of ambulating. The mystique of Chaplin feels inextricable from the phenomenon of popular cinema itself. Although movies had around for twenty years by the time his face first flickered upon a screen, Chaplin became the first bona fide superstar of cinema. Perhaps of history altogether. Before, performers had been limited, however far their names travelled, to whatever locale they were in. Then Chaplin was on screens all over the world, completely uninhibited by place or language but exploring life with image and gesture and motion – precisely why, arguably, only a physical comedian like Chaplin was equipped to truly make the best of what cinema was in his day. Chaplin’s life arc has long been inseparable from his art, and indeed Chaplin owed much of his colossal success precisely to the way he made the overt stylisation of his performance, the archetype he stepped into with his costume, somehow nonetheless suggest a lowered veil between performer and audience, that Chaplin was inviting the viewer into his personal mental universe and that he was also accessing theirs.
And there was truth to this. Chaplin had assimilated his childhood and maturation and turned it into a running blend of high comedy riven with pathos and pain, even horror. Chaplin’s parent, Charles Snr and Hannah, were music hall performers, and Charles Snr had Romanichal heritage on his mother’s side. His parents’ marriage, whilst never officially dissolved, was essentially over just a couple of years after his birth in 1889. His mother, whose singing career never took off, also suffered from bouts of mental illness and venereal disease. Their father never provided support, so young Charles and his brother Sydney both eventually had to go into a workhouse and later to schools for pauper children. When their mother was finally hospitalised, Charles and Sydney were taken in by their father, but his severe alcoholism was also driving him to an early grave. Chaplin later recounted that his first stage performance came one night in Aldershot when he filled in for his ill mother with a short song and dance act. Forced to support both himself and his mother, Chaplin pursued performing as the only thing he could do, and spent a period time sleeping rough around London in the meantime. Chaplin had a steady stream of juvenile parts through his childhood and teenage years, including acting in the play Sherlock Holmes opposite actor William Gillette, who had co-written the play with Arthur Conan Doyle, on several national tours. Chaplin’s skill as a dancer later gained him success in a member of a clog dancing group, but he quit as he felt increasingly attracted to comedy.
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