The Sunday Intertitle: He couldn’t get arrested

When a man who wants to go to jail meets a girl who doesn’t want to go to jail, you have a pretty good meet cute on your hands. Paulette Goddard stares in bewilderment at Charlie as he voluntarily takes the rap for her loaf-snatching. (As Elaine May explains in Mike Nichols: A Life, you should only steal flat things. Bread is too bulky. An Elaine May purloined sandwich would consist of a slice of cheese between two steaks. This doesn’t apply if you happen to be Divine, who could shoplift portable televisions, but who among us is Divine?) Charlie appears to her as both hero and lunatic — a fairly accurate impression of him, given what he’s seen.

We can see MODERN TIMES as Charlie’s origin story — fittingly enough, since it’s his last appearance as The Tramp (the Jewish barber in THE GREAT DICTATOR both is and is not the Tramp). It’s like Clint Eastwood acquiring his poncho at the end of THE GOOD THE BAD AND THE UGLY — Charlie starts as one worker among many, then loses his job and his wits, is put back together by Dr. Ludovico, then finds he can’t settle into any one role, and exchanges his profession for “a life of aimless wandering” as Ulysses Everett McGill might put it.

The Gamin will play a central role — as an underclass wanderer herself, she can show him the ropes.

But for now, Charlie’s noble and opportunistic deceit is thwarted when the “Stop, thief!” busybody puts the finger on the Gamin.

There’s a funny exchange when Charlie extends the appropriated bread product. He shows it to the cop, who shows it to the baker, saying something like “Is this your loaf?” and the baker nods earnestly.

Having failed as criminal samaritan, Charlie decides to eat a hearty meal and refuse to pay, a gratifying and near-victimless way of getting arrested. There’s something very beautiful about the shot of him sliding his mountainous trays along the counter. The scenario puts me in mind of the melancholy death of Clyde Bruckman, Keaton’s old gag man and co-director, who, hard-up since the coming of sound, and sued by Harold Lloyd for recycling gags from THE FRESHMAN for a Three Stooges short, borrowed Keaton’s gun, ate a hearty meal at a swank eatery, and then shot himself dead in the phone kiosk.

There’s no good way to go, but that one has admirable as well as regrettable aspects.

Charlie compounds his initial impudence by smoking a cigar, which he also can’t pay for, while under arrest. Style. You’ve either got it or you haven’t.

Charlie has learned the secret of not caring about society.

Meet cute 2 — in the black maria or paddy wagon if one can still use that expression. After being nauseated by a dyspeptic “gypsy” (Chaplin traducing the Romany people again — in spite of his own probably heritage), Charlie meets the Gamin now that she’s rearrested. The police wagon is surprisingly similar to a bus, and I guess we’re not in the south as there’s a black lady passenger, who Charlie sits on by accident, thrice. Knowing his humour, he’d probably have preferred to sit on a dignified dowager, but it’s not probable that one would be present. Is it, arguably, a compliment that Chaplin instead chooses to settle his tiny bottom on this dour, thick-set woman? She does have dignity, despite her lowly status.

The van is moving very fast (rear projection), hence Charlie’s unsteadiness. A little too fast, as it now crashes and with one bound our heroes are free. Actually, it’s unclear if it crashes — it does a wheelie, seemingly, leaning over at a 45 degree angle with screeching tyres. The implication is that it’s come to rest leaning against a lamppost or something (maybe the one Eric Campbell urigellered in EASY STREET?). But anyway, Charlie and the G are OUT. The kop who’s fallen out with them can easily be reconcussed so they may make good their escape.

Beautiful shot of Paulette waiting at the corner for him to join her. In the foreground, trash cans — his present. In the background, a billboard showing a car, pointed in the direction of escape — the future!

Her closeup reveals an even more pointed detail: a second billboard, showing some kind of pioneer couple, he gesturing towards the landscape ahead — a role-reversal of our current scene. Kudos to production designer Charles D-for-Danny Hall.

Charlie considers whether to escape or not. A Look To Camera is indicated. I should be able to tell you if this is his first in the film, but I can’t remember. It could be. Which would make it his first ever, if this is his origin story. He at first doesn’t intend to go, but what the hell — he can always get himself rearrested later. The G, who has been visibly upset, obviously needs a friend. The decision to escape = the decision to be a Tramp, but it’s not a FINAL one — he will attempt other professions throughout the film, as the Tramp would throughout Chaplin’s career.

FADE OUT. FADE IN — on the road. We are halfway through the film. TO BE CONTINUED.

The Wedding Marx

For our anniversary, Fiona and I ate out and then decided to astonish the world by watching a movie. Yes, a year already. It seems to be lasting. Of course, we’d been together for twenty years before we got hitched. It’s a good system: a lot more marriages would last until death us do part if the couples waited until they were nearly dead before making it legal.

We considered various movies to watch for this special occasion — things that got us both interested in movies in the first place, like KING KONG and Ray Harryhausen, classic science fiction like FORBIDDEN PLANET and THE INCREDIBLE SHRINKING MAN, classic horror like FRANKENSTEIN etc. But in the end we plumped for the Marx Bros, and the one I proposed was HORSE FEATHERS (1932), just because we’d never watched it together. It’s the Paramount one without Margaret Dumont, which was why Fiona always chose a different one.

But HORSE FEATHERS is very good, even if it doesn’t have the Grande Dame herself. It has Thelma Todd, and it had been so long since I’d seen it that this time I recognised a lot more people, like Robert Greig, the butler from SULLIVAN’S TRAVELS, partially eclipsed by his beard, and Vince Barnett standing at a bar with no lines (somebody thought another comedian might come in handy), and Theresa Harris (as a maid, of course) and Nat Pendleton.

If the faces hadn’t previously registered, the dialogue was mostly etched in memory. Groucho’s address to the college, his address to the class, the password routine, And Groucho’s perfect response to a threatened musical interlude from Chico, stepping up to the camera and telling us: “I’ve got to stay here, but there’s no reason you folks shouldn’t go out in the lobby until this thing blows over.” I actually like Chico’s recitals, it’s Harpo’s that make me tired.

Just watched a documentary on clowns produced by the estimable Lobster Films. It tells the story, at one point, of Harpo’s trip to the USSR. His baggage containing various pistols, daggers, prop bombs and sticks of dynamite (all part of the act) he was detained and interrogated by the Soviet police, a scenario for a play if ever I heard one (to be entitled So You Won’t Talk, Huh?)

HORSE FEATHERS has a big slapstick football game climax. I hate sport. I am to sport what Richard Dawkins is to religion. And while I admire Keaton’s COLLEGE and Lloyd’s THE FRESHMAN, I don’t like the way the bookworm turns and beats the jocks at their own game. It isn’t realistic, and it’s a betrayal of their identity. So, although it isn’t so very funny, I quite like the way the Marxes just destroy the whole concept of a rues-based competitive sport, racing to the touch-line by chariot and producing a whole series of balls to raise their score.

Marx Bros films usually fizzle out, being predicated upon nothing and defying narrative structure, but this one has a good, if arbitrary ending, with all three brothers (Zeppo may be there, but he’s wisely framed out) marrying Thelma and then aggressively clambering aboard her as the Wedding March blasts out, applying to the rules of matrimony the same freeform approach taken to football.

 The Marx Brothers Silver Screen Collection

A Gala Day Is Enough For Me

Rosey Grier and Ray Milland in THE THING WITH TWO HEADS.

Because I didn’t read to the end of David Robinson’s welcome note to guests at Pordenone, because I am an idiot sometimes, I was unaware that the closing gala was a ticketed event. I had been cheerily breezing into films all week, waving my pass, and suddenly discovered that wouldn’t work here. And it immediately became clear that I had not a squid’s chance in OLDBOY of getting a seat.

This is a blow since (1) Not only are they showing Harold Lloyd in THE FRESHMAN, which I’ve actually seen extracts from, but (2) they’re showing it with an orchestral score conducted by Carl Davis and (3) they’re prefacing it with a newly-discovered, extended alternate cut of Buster Keaton’s THE BLACKSMITH, with accompaniment by Neil Brand. Amazing. But I’ll never see any of this, unless a particularly ruthless miracle occurs.

I’m about to become an unsympathetic character in this story so bear with me.

The people at the box office, who are not unsympathetic, say something about “It’s in your welcome pack,” which I don’t have with me, so I race back to my accommodation to rummage through it. It’s five minutes to curtain and the flat I’m in is five minutes away. I make it there in two, wheezing and sweating, and rifle my paperwork. Sure enough, there’s Robinson’s note warning me to buy my ticket well in advance. That would have been very helpful a few days ago.

I race back to the Teatro, now further behind in the queue/crowd waiting for return tickets than ever. My only hope now was to either throw my weight around, using my “status” as one of the few living filmmakers with a movie in the fest (I think there were about four of us), or collapse sobbing on the floor and hope they take pity on me. Also, I’m slightly inspired by a story the great animator Don Herzfeldt told about getting to see his heroes, the Monty Python team, perform live, just because he had the optimism to walk through an open door that should’ve been shut. Nothing ventured…

I see Mr. Robinson in the foyer. Breathless, I explain the situation. And at that moment a festival volunteer shows up with an envelope, obviously containing a ticket and marked “David.” David Robinson explains my problem to this guy, to see if anything can be done for me, there is a moment which may in hindsight have been confusion, and the guy offers me the envelope. An expressions flits across Mr. Robinson’s face which may, again in hindsight, have been horror. I take the ticket, thanking him profusely.

I go in, and find I’m sitting in something of a place of honour, next to 91-year-old Jean Darling, the festival’s most important guest, a co-star in the OUR GANG films from 1927-1929. Three separate people try to persuade me I’m in the wrong seat. I tell them Mr. Robinson gave me his ticket, but I’d be happy to sit somewhere else. David Robinson appears and introduces me to Jean Darling, who has already started chatting to me. I don’t perceive any subtext that he’d like me to stand up/get out — either he’s happy for me to have the seat, he’s too much of a gentleman to say he’d appreciate a seat at his own festival, or he’s giving me signals I’m too autistic to read. In this life, it’s not only survival of the fittest, it’s survival of the most crassly insensitive to social nuance.

THE FRESHMAN begins, and I find myself identifying, with unusual intensity, with Harold’s struggle to find the his place in life.

“Comedy is tragedy,” observes Jean Darling.

***

Afterwards, I locate Mr. Robinson and anxiously ask if he found a seat at his own festival. A bit late, but it’s apparently my evening for being a bit late with things. He assures me he was fine. I tell him that when he was director of Edinburgh FIlm Festival he screened my first short (THE THREE HUNCHBACKS) and it got a special mention at the Chaplin Awards before the final screening. And I couldn’t afford a ticket so I wasn’t there to hear it. And so in a way, I feel like I have finally kept my appointment with that Closing Gala.

***

THE CONFRONTATION, the lesser of two Miklos Jancso films at Cannes ’68, is addressed by Scout Tafoya over at Apocalypse Now. A lesser Jancso is still a Jancso…