Spotlight: Charlie Chaplin

1914 · Henry Lehrman

The costume is complete before the character is. Chaplin at a pushmobile race, walking into Lehrman's frame and refusing to leave, with a real crowd. Split reel, six minutes, the first time an audience saw the Tramp. The last shot is a man annoying a camera. He would keep doing that.

1914 · Mack Sennett

The villain in a bowler. Chaplin robs Marie Dressler in Sennett's first feature, and he is not the Tramp; he is the Keystone method with a moustache. Useful as the world the walk escaped from. Watch him next to Normand, who knew the job.

1915 · Charlie Chaplin

The film that names him and the first that lets him lose. He saves the farmer's daughter, stays on, and bungles the work. Then a note, a hat tipped, and the road alone. That last shot is the collection's spine. He walks away from every film after this.

1917 · Charlie Chaplin

The Mutuals at their densest: a slum block built on the lot, a mission, a giant bully, and a lamppost used as an anesthetic. Every gag comes out of the geography. Watch the street at the end, reformed and swept. The road is a block long here.

1917 · Charlie Chaplin

The last Mutual, and the fastest. A convict, a rescue from the surf, a party, ice cream down a dress, a balcony, a chase through the house. No plot to speak of and no need. Ten thousand dollars a week, and the next move was owning the studio.

1918 · Charlie Chaplin

First National, three reels, and the first film lit as if it would have to last. The Tramp and Scraps, a sausage theft, a wallet dug up, a dance hall. Syd behind the lunch counter. Watch the last shot: a cradle, and what is in it. The road has a farm at the end this once.

1918 · Charlie Chaplin

The trenches as a job, released weeks before the Armistice. A tree disguise, a flooded dugout, a letter from home read over someone's shoulder. He captures the Kaiser in a dream the film does not label until it must. Watch the waking. The face is the last shot.

1919 · Charlie Chaplin

The one people argue about. A farmhand, a village belle, and a dream dance with nymphs modeled on Nijinsky. Made in a bad year, and it shows. Watch the dance anyway. It is the first time the Tramp wants something that is not a meal or a girl, and Chaplin did not know what to do with that yet.

1921 · Charlie Chaplin

The first feature and the first argument. A man and a boy, windows broken and mended as a trade, and a rooftop chase when the welfare men come. He cut it in a Salt Lake hotel room to keep it out of a divorce. Watch the truck. Watch the last shot, a door, and who is on the other side.

1922 · Charlie Chaplin

The last two-reeler. A bricklayer on a site, bricks arriving exactly when they should not, then a night out and a wife with a rolling pin. The construction gags are a mason thinking in courses. The last shot is a bathtub. After this, everything was a feature.

1923 · Charlie Chaplin

An escaped convict in a parson's suit, mistaken for the new minister in a Texas town. The David and Goliath sermon in pantomime is the film. The censors objected, which tells you it was a sermon. Watch the last shot: a border, a sheriff, one foot on each side.

1923 · Charlie Chaplin

Almost no Chaplin in it: a porter, a few seconds. Menjou underplays on instruction, and Lubitsch took notes. It failed because the Tramp was not in it and taught the drawing-room film how to behave. The last shot is a road with two people on it who do not see each other.

1925 · Charlie Chaplin

The one he wanted remembered. The boot, the rolls, the cabin on rockers, and a cabin-mate who turns into a chicken. The dinner rolls are a minute. The hunger underneath is the film. Watch the last shot in the 1925 cut. For once, a face instead of a road.

1928 · Charlie Chaplin

Funny only when he is not trying. The Tramp becomes a clown by accident and is fired the moment he does it on purpose. A fire, a divorce, a tax case, and an honorary award he did not discuss for forty years. The last shot is the road again, a circus ring left in the dirt.

1931 · Charlie Chaplin

A silent four years after the talkies, with a score he wrote. The boxing match is the method at its most exact. The flower girl, sighted now, touches a hand and knows it. Chaplin holds the close-up and ends. The face, not the road, and the whole collection points at it.