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The Tramp's Last Social Commentary

 

Two of the most well known silent film stars had deeper messages for their audiences beyond their humor and physical comedy. While Keaton was the king of the outcasts, Chaplin was the champion of the workingman. Buster Keaton was much quieter about broad political concerns. He tended to focus on the struggles of the individual. In the films that I have reviewed previously, Buster focuses on family dysfunctional relationships.  Although, he does depict himself as unemployed in his short film, The Goat.  His follies are often a result of missing the social cues.  In the Goat, there is a scene with a breadline.  Buster goes to the bread window cutting the long line of fellow jobless.  Upon learning of his mistake, he heads to the back of the line or so he thinks.  He gets behind some mannequins placed near the line.  By the time he figures out the stationary line he’s standing in is merely an illusion the bread window closes.  The breadline depicts desperate times. And the dummies are a depiction of the dehumanization of the impoverished. The line is really just an example of those who understand the system, which eludes Buster.

Chaplin on the other hand was particularly supportive of the plight of the working class, and uses his films to impart his criticism of post war and newly industrialized society. Utilizing his character “The Tramp” Chaplin would vocalize his distaste in the treatment of the lower class though his physical comedy. As one of Chaplin’s first non-silent films, Modern Times depicting the hardships experienced by the impoverished was an important message to be communicated by Chaplin.  In the film’s opening scene, sheep are squeezed together as they travel along a chute. Then, there is bird’s eye shot of men emerging from a subway, crowded together on a sidewalk rushing to their jobs in a factory.  This quick intellectual montage creates a feeling of hopelessness as the faceless crowd of workers shuffle into the factory. One cannot help but notice the comparison Chaplin has made between the sheep headed to a distasteful destiny and the workers heading to mindless, meaningless monotony. Furthermore, the only consistent sounds in the film come from the machines in the factory, while the characters are silent. Chaplin is further asserting that machines rule modern society and there is no longer a place for the individual.

In Modern Times, Chaplin is a worker on the conveyer line with two other men.  His job is to tighten the bolts on a plate before it gets to the others who have other simple tasks.  Of course as precursor to other future conveyer scenes such as Lucille Ball’s famous chocolate factory foible, this scene pans over to “The Tramp” out of sync with the others and the rhythm of conveyer belt.  He encroaches on the other workers who never seem to move from their spots. At one point later in the film, he lands on the belt and goes through and around giant gears before the belt is reversed.  Of course, there is more going on than just the work delay in section five where the Tramp is stationed.  We see the boss who unlike his workers is reading a paper and working on a jigsaw puzzle, which symbolizes more of a puzzle as to why he seems to be out of touch with anything other than production matters.  Certainly, management is not interested in the worker only the whirl of mechanical production. In a Wizard of Oz like fashion, the boss is able to see and be seen by the workers in order to speed up production at his whim.  In attempt to give his workers more time on the line, he is shown a mechanical feeding machine that can make mealtime more efficient.  Of course, the Tramp extracted from his job on the assembly line is the test candidate.  A close up of the Tramp strapped into the machine provides hilarity when it malfunctions shoving bolt into his mouth instead of pastries, and finally hits in the face with a cream pie.  The boss deems the prototype a failure-“It’s no good-it isn’t practical” as shown by the title card. After a mental breakdown and a stay at a mental hospital, the Tramp returns to the factory which has shut down; so although he is cured, he is now unemployed.  There is footage of crowded streets crammed with others who are jobless, yet another intellectual montage depicting desperate times.  Grim, gray masses move without direction.

After his dismal portrayal of factory life and workers, Chaplin shows us how he prefers life in prison to being unemployed and starving in the streets.  Chaplin makes a bold socialist statement by having the Tramp “mistakenly” lead a workers protest. After picking up a red flag that falls from a construction vehicle, he gets caught in a worker demonstration and mistaken for its leader by the police.  Once in jail, he discovers a prison is a place where he is happy and comfortable.  Although he has a few comical altercations with fellow prisoners, he stops an escape attempt and wins the favor of the guards. Unfortunately he is not able to stay in prison forever.  He repeatedly tries to break the law to get back in prison to get back to the better life.  As a perk for heroism, he is given a letter by the warden attesting to his superior character.  Chaplin is suggesting that perhaps the prison offenses are unjust.  Just in Victor Hugo’s novel, Les Miserables, the poor suffer wrongs and are incarcerated because they are poor.  Perhaps, Modern Times is the Chaplin American film version of the Hugo story as there are many similarities.

Chaplin continues to highlight the dichotomy between the haves and the have-nots.  As Gamine and Chaplin pass a department store, the night watchman is being carried to an ambulance with a broken leg.  Gamine encourages Chaplin to apply for the position.  With his letter, he is given the job.  Once all the employees have left, he brings Gamine into the store where they have the good life.   The Tramp and his love interest Gamine dress in furs and live the good life in a department store after hours.  The good times are coming to an end. In his rounds, he encounters burglars who are his former steel workers who have hit the store in hard times-“We ain’t burglars, we’re hungry”.  Rather than call the authorities as The Tramp can relate to their predicament, the group begins opening champagne. After drinking in the department store café with his friends in solidarity, he passes out.  Discovered among the fabrics, he loses his job and is thrown in jail.  Released, he finds Gamine has waited for him. Gamine has managed to build a shack so they can try to live the life they envisioned.  It looks like their luck has improved when the factory has reopened.  Their fortune is short lived when the workers go back on strike the same day the Tramp has been hired, and again the Tramp is jailed.  Again released, Gamine is transformed.  Gamine has landed a cabaret job and also gets Chaplin hired a singing waiter.  Within this turn of events is rare scene of Chaplin singing.  This film had been planned to be the first talkie, but he abandoned that idea as it was feared that a departure from the silent genre would ruin his film career.  As ever, the love birds luck disappears with an arrest warrant for vagrancy for Gamine.  The film concludes with their escape from the police and with the Tramp and Gamine free from society’s restraints to walk hand in hand into the sunset hoping still for a better life.

It was in this film, Modern Times, that Chaplin made his last appearance as the “little tramp”.  Chaplin was viewed as someone with very strong views on economic and social problems of this era.  He was well read on the subjects. He created his own economic theory, and used this film to turn his concerns into comedy. For many reasons, this is a film that is worth watching as entertainment and as a historical societal commentary.

Zombies: Our Greatest Fears Come to Life

Zombies. The undead. The walking dead. The living challenged. Whatever you want to call them, they’re everywhere. Zombie films have been around since the beginning of cinema and are now more popular then ever. What is it about the undead that continues to fascinate and terrify audiences? Zombies are the physical representation of what we fear most: Death and the unknown. Not only do they embody the fear of what happens after death, even further than that, zombies reflect the greatest fears of each era.

 

White Zombie (1932) is given credit for being the first feature length zombie flick

 

 

The film centers around a maleficent master of voodoo in Haiti who turns a young woman trapped in a bizarre love triangle, into a member of living dead. America was experiencing an influx in immigration. The idea of strange, new people infiltrating in the country brought animosity and fear to America. White Zombie plays on that fear as an innocent American girl is put into an unbreakable trance by voodoo. The zombie in this film is your typical slow moving, non contagious zombie.

The King of Zombies (1941) is a film about a couple who crash lands at the doorstep of a Nazi Doctor who has harnessed the power of voodoo to raise the dead for his own diabolical purposes.  The America public was well aware of Germany’s cruelty and inhumane treatment of Jews during the Second World War.   Hitler was thought to have a fascination with the occult. Hitler used science in terrifying ways, such as using fertilizer products to make nerve gas.  Zombies could be produced in a terrifying rate using this mad scientist’s formula.

 

 

      Night of the Living Dead (1968) is the most famous zombie film ever produced.

This is the first time zombies are seen as hunters that could leave their environment to seek out food sources, albeit slow moving predators.  It was believe the zombies were caused by radiation given off by an exploding space probe. In the heart of the cold war, radiation given off by an atomic bomb was a very real fear for many people.  Even the Congress and Senate had a secret fallout shelter nestled in West Virginia to escape radiation from an atomic device.

 

In 2002, films like 28 Days Later and Resident Evil gave rise to the zombie apocalypse. The faster moving zombies physically represent the quickened spread of the flesh eating undead. In other words, with these guys after you, you’re screwed. These films displayed the public’s fear in gene alteration and the idea of super-viruses that could spread with such speed that escape was virtually impossible.

 

Zombies are the loss of a person’s uniqueness and humanity.  Zombies feed on other humans turning their victims into someone devoid not only of life, but individual essence.  Cannibalism is just one of the frightening elements.  In each period of time, these films capitalized on the fear that was known, but unknown so seemingly plausible.  As knowledge and experience change so evolves the zombie, the embodiment of the new fear.

 

Sources:

Film posters for ''White Zombie'' ''King of the Zombies'' and Night of the Living Dead all used in accordance to Wikimedia Commons

Buster Keaton’s Southern Idealism Rewriting a Lost Childhood

 

Buster Keaton is in no sense of Southern gentleman.  He spent most of his early life between the Midwest and the East Coast on Vaudeville tours and later settled in New York, and finally in Los Angeles (1). However, in his two of his most famous films The General and Steamboat Bill Jr. Buster not only treats southern culture with reverence, but also paints his heroic protagonist as Southern gentlemen. In The General, Buster goes to great lengths to stay extremely accurate to costuming, sets, and historical facts surrounding one victorious feat for a Southern train operator during the Civil War. Steamboat Bill Jr. has a northern protagonist returning to his southern roots as to pilot a steamboat in order to impress his father. In both cases, a misfit engineer in the Deep South has to complete a seemingly impossible task in order to impress a father figure and win the girl in the end.

Perhaps Buster was motivated by the demand for southern romances or was paying his respects to a pioneer of American film with an appreciation for southern landscapes and one of his personal heroes D.W. Griffith. Although one could tie Buster’s infatuation with the South to less of an aesthetic and more of a reflection of his deep seeded issues with his father.  As violent as Buster’s father was on the stage where he used Buster as a prop, he was much more of a destructive force at home with his crippling alcoholism. Buster could never live up to his father’s standards, even after he became wildly successful in film and continued to support both parents. Buster’s father would trivialize the film industry despite his son’s talent and popularity, as well as the revenue that allowed him to retire early (1). One would think that Buster would idealize the north and technological improvements, like the movie camera that rescued him from the vaudeville stage and brought him to his stable adult life. Instead, Buster is preoccupied with the Deep South, and a pattern of reliving and rewriting his past through characters in his films.  Perhaps with his herculean feats and having the losing force triumph bring him satisfaction his real life cannot provide. 

In The General, Buster plays a train engineer named Johnnie Gray in a small southern town during the Civil War. In order to impress his sweetheart and win the approval of her father, Johnnie decides he will enlist in the military along side her brother. Even though Johnnie fights his way to be first in line, he is deemed ineligible because as a train engineer he is more valuable to the South. However, Johnnie is not told why he is rejected so he begins to compare himself to the other men in line. He sees tall, short (none shorter then him however), old and young men all receive their draft cards. This scene is one of many self-deprecating ones that draw attention to his inadequacies in height and anxiety towards his own masculinity. After trying to fool the man behind the counter with everything from pulling his hat down over his eyes, pretending to be someone else, and by attempting to steal someone else’s card, he is quite literally kicked out of the office. Deemed a coward by his girlfriend and her father, he returns to his engine in shame. Later on, northern spies hijack his train and kidnap his girlfriend who has been somehow left in the train boxcar that they are hijacking.  At first he chases them on foot and on bike.  The handcar scene is the most revealing of the emphasis of his puny size. His small stature will not allow him to move the handcar by strength alone until he propels his body in the air to use all his weight to bring down one side of the pump.  And to add insult to injury once he gets the car moving it goes backwards.  When Johnnie finally gets to another train he can use in the chase, the engine disconnects from the cars carrying the reinforcements to help rescue his girl. He is now alone and against the entire Southern army.  After finding cannon along the way, he finally catches up with the captors. He loads the cannon attached to the back of the engine and fires it at the hijackers in the train in front of him; only to see the cannon ball fly a few feet in the air and land on the floor of his engine. Despite the failure (and not so subtle jab at his masculinity) he loads the cannon again with more gunpowder but accidentally aims it at himself. Realizing his mistake and in complete and utter terror, Johnnie disconnects the cannon, tosses a plank of wood at it. He turns and runs to hide on the front of the train. While rounding a corner, the cannon fires and miraculously hits just behind the enemy train.

After crossing northern lines, he escapes detection and ends up under the table where the entire was strategy is laid out. He rescues his girl. Somehow he manages to steal another engine after purposely disconnecting the car carrying the enemy soldiers.  Similar difficulties that faced him in his pursuit reappear to create another comedic chase. Johnnie rushes back and successfully warns the confederates of the attack. He ends up caught in the battle. He accidentally fires the shot that sends the northern troops into a retreat. He is promoted to lieutenant for winning the battle and causing a captured northern general to surrender. He discovers that the man he knocked out initially stealing the train is a general who he then escorts to surrender. In the end, he gets the girl, wins his soon to be father-in-law’s respect, and more importantly demonstrates his value to the cause despite his statue.

 Steamboat Bill Jr. places more weight on the father’s perspective and his negative characteristics rather than emphasizing Buster’s shortcomings. Steamboat Bill Jr. depicts Keaton as a similar character as his character in The General.  Willie Canfield (Buster) is an outcast in his southern hometown who tries to please his father, a steamboat pilot. His father is a strong, violent brute with a temper. The film begins with Bill learning of Willie’s return. Bill pictures his son as this bigger, stronger, picture of himself. Willie is below average height and weight. Although Buster introduces this film with a critic of his physical flaws, his focus is to highlight the father’s character flaws. At the train station, Bill mistakes a few tall, strong, men for his son. Conversely, Willie mistakes sophisticated intellectual types to be his father which may be a jab at his own father. When Bill learns that Willie is his son, he is repulsed and deeply disappointed. At this poignant moment, the camera pans to Willie jumping around with his ukulele trying to calm a crying baby. This whimsical display distracts the viewer from the tragic parallels between the father’s perception of son and his Buster’s relationship with his father. When Steamboat Bill tries to take Willie back to the boat, Willie tries to go back to Boston on a bus. Bill pushes the bus driver who tries to help Willie. He drags him to his car. In the car, Bill socks Willie most likely for trying to leave. Bill is rough with Willie throughout the rest of the film, sadly similar to Buster’s experience own father who tended to knock him around both on the stage and off (1). Bill also criticizes Willie’s style, forcing him to shave off his mustache and update his dress. In the gags, the barber shaves him in an instant without harm, but scares Willie in the process. At the clothing shop, Willie tries a variety of ill-fitting hats from Chaplin’s bowler to Buster’s signature porkpie hat, each time ending with his father tearing them off and throwing them in a fit of rage until they settle on a non-descript brimmed hat (which is swept away immediately after they leave the store). Again, Buster uses a silly gag to mask the much deeper issues between him and his father.  Buster’s father does not approve of his decision to go into film just as Bill chastises Willie’s choices. Bill continues to physically abuse Willie, as well as verbally berate him for being unable to pilot the steamboat well. In the end and after a freak storm floods the town, Willie single handedly saves his father, his girlfriend, and others using the steamboat. He finally wins his fathers approval.

Although Buster Keaton has been quoted saying he made movies just to make others laugh (2), it seems they serve a much more personal purpose. Although Buster’s story was one of a success, it was in no way a fairy tale. As depicted in his films, The General and Steamboat Bill Jr., Buster was only able to achieve a sense of approval from a father figure on the silver screen. It makes one wonder if Buster’s emotive yet seemingly stoical expressions would be as profound if he were not such a troubled man. 

 

 

Bibliography:

1. Keaton, Buster, and Charles Samuels. "Ch. 1." My Wonderful World of Slapstick. New York, NY: Da Capo, 1982. Print.
2. Kline, Jim. "Funny Sublime: The Uncanny Genius of Buster Keaton:." The San Francisco Jung Institute Library Journal 16.2 (1997): 45-57. Print.
3. Photo Credit: Wikimedia Commons: United Artists Screen Shot

Roscoe “Fatty” Arbuckle Fundamental Physical Comedy Pitted Against the Agile Acrobatic Buster Keaton in The Bell Boy.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

    At the tail end of the 19^th century, Joseph “Buster” Keaton tumbled into a life of stunt work at the tender age of three joining his parents as the third member of their Vaudeville act, The Three Keatons. After being tossed around stage as his father’s prop, Buster quickly learned how to take a pratfall, as well as developing other skills of stunt etiquette. At the age of twenty-one, Buster left the family business in order to transition to the meteoric silver screen.  Buster was immediately apprenticed to silent comedy veteran Roscoe “Fatty” Arbuckle as a fellow funnyman with vaudevillian beginnings. Arbuckle had been in the film industry for ten years prior to meeting Buster and was at this point, the lead actor, head writer, and director of short films for Paramount Pictures[1]. 

    The Bell Boy (1918) was one of the first couple of silent shorts where Buster and Arbuckle worked exclusively side by side. Although Buster sees more screen time in this film than usual, he still plays second fiddle to Arbuckle. Buster and Arbuckle both two inept bell boys with various responsibilities ranging from the mundane, carrying luggage and mopping the floor, to the utterly ridiculous, artfully barbering and managing a horse drawn elevator gone awry. Essential to silent comedies of the time, there is also a romantic interest (played by Alice Lake) that both Buster and Arbuckle initially fight over, but then work together using an elaborate scheme to woo for Arbuckle. In this case, Buster and the hotel clerk, Al St. John stage a bank robbery so Arbuckle can heroically intervene and in doing so, sweep the girl off her feet. Of course, at the time of the feigned robbery a gang of brutish criminals actually hold up the bank.

    This silent film, like Arbuckle’s other shorts, exemplifies his distinct comedic presence while showcasing the skill of his counterpart Buster. The heart of Arbuckle’s gags was in his robust, clumsy nature and the bizarre agility of his pratfalls. He believed in using simple and often predictable visual cues rather than complex ones for the sake of what he believed was the dim-witted moviegoer[2].  The first couple stunts consist of Arbuckle and Buster taking a fall after an unfortunate placement of luggage later followed by a similar tumble over a bucket of soapy water (a gag that resonates throughout the film). When a strange bearded patron checks into the hotel, Arbuckle offers him his barber services.  In this sequence Arbuckle armed with comically large scissors and a straight razor transform this mystery guest into a dead ringer for Civil War General Ulysses S. Grant, then with a few snips he becomes Abraham Lincoln, and with a close shave finally Keiser Wilhelm (each caricature followed by a title slide leaving no doubt which painfully obvious historical depiction is which.) Meanwhile Buster and St. John are tumbling all over the heavily soaped floors.  The most impressive stunt which takes places in the elevator, is one of the only opportunities Buster is able to show off his acrobatic prowess other than a brief moment of jumping over the bank walls to elude the criminals. The emphasis is still placed on Arbuckle as he repeatedly tries to push Buster back into the elevator car with a 2x4 before his head is crushed between the two floors. When the car falls back to the ground floor, the love interest is propelled into the air after stepping on the unfortunately placed board. Buster jumps onto Arbuckle’s shoulders and crawls up the wall to retrieve the girl from the moose head perch. Arbuckle catches the girl and then leaves Buster to fend for himself. Using the 2 x 4 as a springboard, Buster defies gravity and manages several masterful feats eventually crashing and knocking over St. John who has tried to saw the board in attempt to save him. After the arduous rescue from the moosehead, Arbuckle and his love interest Miss Cuticle who is the hotel’s manicurist skip the hotel’s work day to take a romantic carriage ride. At this point, the movie might have ended since Arbuckle is cozy in the carriage and gets a kiss from Miss Cuticle.

    In order to further secure his love interest affections, Arbuckle devises a plan to which he can emerge as a hero by foiling a robbery.  The plot takes a departure to the absurd as Arbuckle enlists the aid of Buster, his bellboy counterpart, and hotel clerk, St. John. Director Arbuckle demonstrates his comedic sensibility in this next scene.  Buster in league with St. John are behind the hotel counter preparing for their scheme by throwing pick axes, shovels and all manner of tools from a seemingly endless arsenal.  Once outfitted, our two bungling burglars head to the bank where they encounter the real criminals. Delayed by the encounter, Buster and St. John fly around the bank like gymnasts.  Of course, you might wonder how they will finally reconnect with Arbuckle who seems to be doing quite well on the dance floor with Miss Cuticle. Arbuckle ventures into the bank we assume to check on the progress of his wayward friends. And after another scuffle, and two ceramic pots to the face, Arbuckle sends the buglers out of the bank by ripping a door off its hinges and throwing it at the lot of them. After an elaborate chase scene, they are apprehended in the hotel lobby and Arbuckle is rewarded with glory, a cash reward, and the affection of the girl he was attempting to impress.

    This film is very important to Buster's history as this one of the first films where Arbuckle lets Buster assume a major role. Arbuckle excels by using his stature in simple rough and tumble gags with little to no deviation (except for a brief bizarre nod to pop culture icons in the barber shop scene).  Seemingly limited by straight-man role, Buster still wows with the aerobatic feats and stupendous stunts all the while carrying a slightly melancholy expression that hints at something more. Although Arbuckle and Buster have distinct comedic styles (taking note that Buster's is still developing and Arbuckle had the last say as writer and director of the film) they seamlessly complement each other by providing the audience with separate but necessary visual elements. While Arbuckle has found his niche in silent comedy, Buster will go to create more complex and profoundly athletic stunts while further developing his signature stone face expression and soulful eyes that continues to captivate audiences, commanding their attention to hang on every hint of a smile, frown, or sigh.

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Bibliography:

[1] Keaton, Buster, and Charles Samuels. "Ch. 1." My Wonderful World of Slapstick. New York, NY: Da Capo, 1982. Print.

[2] Telotte, J. P., Arbuckle Escapes: The Pattern of Fatty Arbuckle's Comedy , Journal of Popular Film and Television, 15:4 (1988:Winter) p.172-179

Photo Credit:

Dr. Macro

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