...is the sweetness, you know...
...that innocence, that purity. But at the same time...
...there is that other side, that rascal.
I remember watching The Immigrant again recently...
...and for a second being really stunned.
Chaplin is playing cards.
He loans a guy money, and the guy gives him his pistol as collateral.
And when Chaplin wins, the guy gets violent.
And I was stunned when Chaplin pulls the gun on him...
...and gives him this look, like, "Hey!" You know, just for that second.
And then he immediately goes back to this pure being, this innocent thing.
He was ever willing to kick authority in the pants...
...though genteel America muttered disapproval of his anarchic side.
I think we've definitely lost comic patience.
Everything needs to be now, and what those guys did...
I mean, what Chaplin was able to do was milk a gag...
...and really stretch it out and really draw it out.
Even if you knew what the result was gonna be, it was still hilarious.
It's the starving Tramp walking outside a restaurant looking at the door...
...you know, thinking, " God, I'd love to go in and have a meal there."
He picks up the coin on the ground, dumps it in his pocket...
...heads towards the restaurant. Ding! It hits the ground.
He goes inside, has his meal.
Some guy walks in holding the coin that he dropped.
That gag lasts for, I don't know, seven, eight minutes, and you're there.
You can't take your eyes off him.
You need more than comedy, more than laughs, to make a feature film.
A feature film has to have some kind of an emotional string to it.
Chaplin called it his favorite two-reeler.
In fact, in one of his later books...
...he said The Immigrant touched him more than any film he made.
He liked the ending in particular, that these two young immigrants...
...getting married on a rainy day. He thought it was very poetic.
I, frankly, prefer the longer, more ambitious Chaplin films...
...even to the funniest of the early films.
Comedy transposition, the idea of one thing suggests another...
...was not unique to Chaplin, but it was one of his great gifts.
The Pawnshop is a great example of that where, as a pawnbroker's assistant...
...he's asked to look at an alarm clock. And of course, in his hands...
...he becomes the doctor and the clock becomes his patient.
Late, middle, early Chaplin, his gift for transforming one object into another...
...remained central to his comic genius.
These transformations...
...deliberate manipulations of our perceptions of the real...
...were also central to modernity...
...with its fluid, ever-changing definitions of what constitutes reality.
This idea of transformation goes back right to the start.
I can't quite think where it comes from. Everything he looked at...
...suggested the possibility of something else.
My favorite one is where he has to move a whole heap of bentwood chairs...
...and so he puts them all on his back. He becomes a hedgehog.
I just think that's wonderful.
He could certainly bring things to life...
...bring something inanimate and static and give it life...
...give it some kind of movement and life.
And that was certainly a great gift that he had.
Old-fashioned man that he was, Chaplin would have denied being a surrealist.
But unconsciously, that's what he was.
Who else would have thought of turning a massage into a wrestling match?
Or a fire engine into a cappuccino machine?
"All that is solid melts into air," Karl Marx said.
In Chaplin, all that seems solid melts into something else.
Of his many gifts, this one is among his most enduring and endearing...
...sophisticated visions converted into playful, childlike action.
Skeptical Sydney was one of Charlie's perfect comic foils.
But he remained even better at business.
His year at Mutual ending, Chaplin received an attractive overture...
...from First National.
This time, the Chaplins had a very firm ideal in mind.
They asked him to come to New York to negotiate a deal...
...and so he got on the train with Sydney...
...who was going to do the negotiating for him.
And he said to Sydney " All right, Sydney, you go in, and you negotiate.
And you know I want a million dollars."
Sydney said " All right, now as for you, if you're going to play your violin...
...you gotta stay in the bathroom and play because it's terrible."
So Charlie went in the bathroom, stood in the tub, empty of water...
...and played his violin to soothe himself while Sydney went down the corridor.
He came back, and he said "Charlie, they're offering $500,000."
Charlie said, " We're not gonna even talk to them about that.
You gotta go back." He went back, 600,000.
"You gotta go back." He went back.
And finally he came back, and he said:
"Charlie, they've come up to $ 750,000 and not a nickel more."
And Charlie, bowing away, said, "Tell them I am an artist.
I know nothing about money. All I know is, I want a million dollars."
And Sydney went back, and he came running back in. He said:
"Charlie, throw away your violin. Get yourself a bull fiddle.
You got a million dollars."
He began building a studio in the groves of La Brea Avenue.
Chaplin created this time-lapse sequence for a promotional short.
His dream studio took the form of a poor English lad's dream of luxury...
...suburban London facades.
Think of it. In a matter of three years...
...Charles Spencer Chaplin, age 28, had become a millionaire...
...and one of the world's most famous people.
Most important to him, his First National deal granted him...
...absolute control over his films and his own destiny.
In all of movie history, no rise was ever more meteoric than his.
He had to give them the performance because he knew better than anyone...
...what he wanted and what he needed from the actor...
...and the best way to do it was to show.
And this isn't very much different...
...from what an actor/manager did in the English music halls.
This is standard practice of what Chaplin knew. The actor was also the director.
Chaplin was not necessarily a terribly articulate man.
He was just a Cockney lad.
And I think he had trouble with words, particularly in his early days.
The easiest way to tell someone how to do something was just to show them...
...because no one was more articulate than Chaplin, physically.
He has his own studio, his own team.
He can take as much time as he likes, which is really what he wanted.
Chaplin didn't just use the first shot.
He would take a shot not twice or three times...
...but he would take a shot 20 times if he was to get it right.
This was something completely new.
So was this. In Spring, 1918...
...with America now a combatant in World War I...
...Chaplin and the movies ' other greatest stars...
...Mary Pickford and Douglas Fairbanks...
...embarked on a personal appearance tour selling Liberty Bonds.
It was the first major demonstration of movie stardom 's unprecedented power.
Everywhere they went, the crowds were vast and impassioned.
They sold millions of dollars ' worth of bonds.
The tour was especially important for Chaplin.
He had come under the first personal criticism of his life...
...for not enlisting in the English army.
Mostly this came from the press, trying to create a scandal.
Chaplin professed his willingness to serve...
...but the British government knew he was infinitely more valuable...
...raising money for the war effort. The Liberty Loan adventure proved that.
But this was the first mild controversy...
...of a life that would eventually be plagued...
...occasionally dominated by them.
Later that year, he made this short, promoting another Liberty Loan drive.
Syd Chaplin played the hapless Kaiser.
His most lasting wartime work was Shoulder Arms. The Tramp in uniform.
He'd always been a brave little guy...
...but he'd never been tested on such a huge and tragic field.
The spirit was willing, maybe a little too much so.
Chaplin began production of Shoulder Arms...
...while the First World War was being fought.
And many in the Hollywood community were persuading him not to do it.
But Chaplin went on with it, trusting his own artistic instincts.
But he had doubts. He was unsure of the result.
But when the film was released, it was a huge hit.
It was one of the most popular films of the entire First World War period.
The picture was released just weeks before the armistice...
...so it didn 't do much for morale.
But the movie proved especially popular with returning doughboys.
They thought it caught, humorously, something of the horror...
...and absurdity of trench warfare.
Capturing a large enemy group, the Tramp becomes an unlikely hero.
But his treatment of the aristocratic officer aligns him...
...with the common people of both sides.
Not that the Tramp was allowed to capitalize on his heroism.
That would have been out of character.
But he was allowed time for a little cross-cultural wooing with Edna.
In real life, their romance was coming to an end.
Though, typically, Edna was a good sport about it.
He loved young girls. The younger the better, and he really did.
He only saw pureness and innocence and youth and beauty.
He was a romantic.
In principal, it might have been okay to marry these girls of 16 or 17.
The big problem was this: That they looked great...
...but having got them home, they were not very rewarding partners.
Chaplin met Mildred Harris, a young actress, then 16 years old...
...while working on Shoulder Arms.
Seen here in Cecil B. DeMille's...
...Fool's Paradise, she convinced him, falsely...
...that she was pregnant. And he married her three days after his film 's release.
They were never happy together, and a portion of the public...
...was not happy thinking of Chaplin with a child bride.
In the summer of 1919, however, she delivered a baby...
...who died three days later.
Chaplin 's personal anguish was reflected in his blocked creative life at the time.
It's remarkable that Chaplin always made what he wanted...
...and put his own money behind it...
...and would do it and do it and do it until he got it right.
I mean, he was Kubrick before Kubrick, and Kubrick didn't use his own money.
That megalomaniac sense of "I've got a vision.
Although, maybe I'm not seeing it yet, but I'll see it when it's there.
I'll know it when I see it. And let's shoot for a year."
Which really is not an exaggeration in some cases. "Until we get it."
That's crazy.
Perhaps justifiable craziness in this case.
Starting, stopping and starting again on major productions...
...Chaplin cobbled together this film, A Day's Pleasure...
...from old footage and some new material, trying to satisfy First National...
...which was desperately pressing him for releasable product.
I've never been clear about who chose when to use a title card.
And Chaplin uses them as brilliantly as anybody in some movies...
...and then other movies... There's one where the family is driving a Model T...
...and they're resurfacing the road.
And quite clearly, a dump truck dumps a lot of tar onto the road...
...but somebody decided they had to put a title that said, "Tar." So one word:
Then you come back and see people with their feet stuck.
The old " shoes nailed to the stage" gag...
...which Chaplin uses great because his feet are stuck in the tar.
His major preoccupation was The Kid.
He'd seen the remarkable Jackie Coogan in vaudeville, signed him...
...then appeared with him before this assemblage of visiting exhibitors...
...promoting his unfinished dream.
Laughter is very unpredictable. You cannot sit down and write out:
"We will do this, this, this and this. That is the gag."
And then do it and hope it will be funny.
It's quite true that weeks and sometimes months would go by...
...when he didn't have the inspiration, and everybody sat around the studio...
...and he would or wouldn't come in, but nothing would happen.
That happened very badly before he started on The Kid, for instance.
Mildred Harris sued Chaplin for divorce in 1920.
Her attorneys threatened to attach his negative.
Chaplin fled to Salt Lake City to finish editing The Kid.
He ate women up, and they came and they went in extraordinary numbers.
If you're leading a life like that, you're gonna have trouble sooner or later.
You're gonna get involved with women who are too young...
...women who've got dangerous mothers or dangerous lawyers.
It was a year and a half before he finally turned the negative of The Kid...
...over to his distributors.
It was worth the wait.
A masterpiece and a huge step forward for Chaplin.
Early in the film, Chaplin keeps trying to abandon the abandoned baby.
He injected within something, such as The Kid...
...a truth, a poignancy, which was just magical.
He's been landed with this baby. He doesn't know what to do with it.
There's one brutal moment when he's sitting on the pavement...
...holding this baby, and there's a drain there. He just lifts up the drain cover.
Oh, why did he do that? Is he going to drop the baby down the drain?
They're passing thoughts that flit through his head...
...but he gets them over to the audience.
It was a very daring film in many ways. The idea of mixing slapstick comedy...
...with dramatic scenes had not been done. And many intelligent people...
...told Chaplin it could not be done...
...that one of the story elements was bound to fail.
And the performance that he created with Jackie...
...a miraculous piece of cinema acting and relationship.
Jackie Coogan was his greatest costar. The reason being...
...that Coogan was so malleable. I mean he was the perfect Chaplin actor.
He could just repeat and do exactly what Chaplin would show him to do.
Including stealing quarters from the gas meter.
The Kid was Chaplin 's most directly autobiographical film.
He had been a waif on London 's streets. He had yearned for a father.
His own had abandoned him. He had been, until she went mad...
...lovingly tended by his impoverished mother.
He had known all the emotions The Kid played upon.
In the autobiography, he talks about that he was not very healthy as a little boy.
And his mother would sit at the window when he was in bed, sick...
...and she would just describe everything that went on outside and imitate it...
...and say, "And now there's this man." And she would imitate the man.
"And there's this little boy, and there's this woman."
And she would tell stories about what was going on outside.
He knew how every part should be played.
More than anything, he'd have liked to play every part.
Every boy, every girl, every old man, everything in the film.
Of course, he couldn't. He had to use, unwillingly use, other actors.
What he really wanted to do was to tell them...
...and show them exactly how he would do it.
He wanted them to be him playing the part.
This was absolutely fine when you had a brilliant little mimic like Jackie Coogan.
Charlie just did something and Jackie could do the exact imitation of it.
By a strange chance, I saw The Kid last night...
...and I am once again convinced it is his best work.
That intensity when there's the threat that the Kid is going to be...
...taken to an institution, I think that has to come out of his own childhood...
...his own feelings, his own memories of being taken off...
...separated from his mother and his brother and incarcerated in an institution.
And I think that that is what gives The Kid its peculiar intensity.
The scene where he becomes a madman in his effort to rescue the child.
Is there a more tragic moment in pictures than the Kid begging to go with him?
It's one of the greatest things I have ever seen...
...that kid pleading to be taken to him.
In The Kid, the big emotions are in the boy.
The little boy that's being taken away from where he should be...
...from love and affection, by the state, to do good...
...to do good because this will be better for him.
In The Kid, they're taking this little kid to a horrible orphanage.
He was taken away from his mother...
...and put in the Lambeth Workhouse at the age of 7.
He was taken away from his mother. It's so terrible.
He and Sydney, and they were in the workhouse.
He knows what it is, that wrenching, being pulled away. Why?
Because the mother was in no fit mental state, and the father had disappeared.
And they were destitute.
Charles Chaplin Sr. Had been a headliner, until he succumbed to drink.
All his life, his son abhorred alcohol.
When they really hit rock bottom, then the only recourse...
...was to go to the workhouse, which was the place for the destitute...
...of this parish.
Not much of it remains.
And what there is of it is blackened over by a hundred years of London soot.
After becoming a star, Chaplin supported his mother in a London asylum...
...and eventually brought her to America.
But he largely avoided her.
Both his parents had lost control of their lives...
...to the irrational forces he deeply feared.
Meantime, while still fulfilling his First National contract, Chaplin...
...with D. W. Griffith, Mary Pickford and Douglas Fairbanks...
...created United Artists.
They would now have full ownership of their films.
The plan had been hatched on the Liberty Loan Tour.
Ever the performer, Chaplin donned costume and makeup...
...for the newsreel cameramen.
Despite these affectionate poses, Chaplin and Pickford...
...were often at odds within the company.
But her husband, famously athletic Doug Fairbanks, was Chaplin 's closest...
...and, obviously, most supportive friend.
Doug and Mary saw Chaplin off for London in 1921.
It was his first trip home since leaving on the Karno American Tour in 1912.
As he set sail, Chaplin had no idea...
...of what was awaiting him in his native country.
As the SS Olympic sailed eastward, a relaxed Chaplin supervised...
...a shipboard contest aimed at discovering his best imitator.
Hundreds of such contests were going on all over America at the time.
One of their winners was a 6-year-old Milton Berle.
The Olympic docked at Southampton on September 9th.
The mobs greeting him were without precedent.
It was a repeat of the Liberty Loan Tour, but now raised to flash point.
Until these mobs emerged to meet Chaplin, no one had quite imagined...
...how movie stardom had upped the stakes in the celebrity game.
So how did that affect him? I think he always fought to keep his integrity...
...and part of his fighting things, too, was fighting himself, fighting to keep...
To keep his humanity in the face of this enormous fame he had.
Keeping your humanity. It's celebrity's most basic issue.
For the rest of his life, even when he was an old man in exile...
...Chaplin would have to contend with mass adoration...
...whenever he went out in public. It does something to a man.
Chaplin sneaked away from his hotel to visit the scenes of his childhood...
...as he always would whenever he returned to London.
A friend, the writer Thomas Burke, once said of Chaplin that;
"He needed London as an actor needs a script."
This pub had once been owned by his uncle.
It was here that he observed an aged retainer, Rummy Banks, a horse-holder...
...doing the toes-out walk that Chaplin would make the most famous aspect...
...of his Tramp character.
He returned, too, to the humble flats he'd once shared...
...with his mother and brother.
This was once a pickle factory...
...the stench of which he never got out of his nostrils.
The Chaplins lived hard by it in this little street.
On this trip, Chaplin was also tumultuously welcomed...
...in Paris and Berlin, where he experienced...
...something of their decadent, aristocratic life.