There’s a common misunderstanding that silent era comedies aren’t funny, especially to modern audiences, and they’re only interesting to film historians. Watching The Gold Rush (1925) or Buster Keaton’s proto-surrealist Sherlock Jr (1924), as just two examples, will blow that opinion right out the water.
Chaplin: The Collection is released on 14th November and with distributor Park Circus calling for articles as part of the Chaplin Blogathon, I wanted to write about a scene that, when I first saw it, struck me with not only how funny it was but how ingenuously crafted. Modern Times features a supreme cocaine gag to rival Woody Allen’s party faux pas in Annie Hall (1977).
Chaplin is one of my screen heroes. The guy wasn’t a saint and his films far from perfect, but without doubt one of cinema’s first true geniuses. He might have borrowed heavily from Max Linder’s shtick and Mack Sennett’s school of slapstick but he refined both to incredible degrees. He took elements and weaved something new for audiences. His persona – the Tramp – became a universally loved figure and as time went on, an icon representing the ‘little man’ often threatened to be crushed by the world and the upper classes. Even romantic entanglements were never clear cut and fraught with incident.
Chaplin took the madcap zany scenarios favoured by Sennett and his company and gave them more complexity in theme, fleshing out stories and characters. He had vision and with faithful cameraman Roland Totheroh, set out to deliver some of the finest pictures in history. If we want to go further and be as sentimental as Chaplin, we can say he showed how the medium could provide plenty of heart and pack an emotional punch which moved away things experienced before.
The early days of film had plenty of screen clowns with pantomime skills wedded to comic routines. Fatty Arbuckle, Mabel Normand, Buster Keaton, Harold Lloyd, Harry Langdon and the Canadian producer Mack Sennett and Ford Sterling (one of the legendary Keystone Kops) are just some pioneers of screen comedy. In France, Max Linder was a director and star in a series of comedies where he played a dapper chap always getting into scrapes. Although Charles ‘Charlie’ Chaplin was influenced by Linder to a great extent, the British former music hall entertainer would give cinema its first truly global icon: the Little Tramp.
The kid from south London worked in show business from a very early age. He sailed for America with Fred Karno’s act and made his name in early Mack Sennett shorts with the likes of Normand and Eric Campbell before he sort autonomy and creative control. The films would become more sophisticated in technique as they would dip into sentimentality.
The film’s grew more distinctly as political encounters of a socialist kind. This is most explicit in Modern Times (1936). Chaplin was booted out of the US in the late 1940s. Sex scandal after sex scandal along with left wing political views didn’t endear him to many, especially when he started to get a bit preachy. He never forgot his humble roots, one could say he was haunted by them, despite the immense wealth and although he believed himself partly Jewish in heritage a recent letter found among his possessions refer to Romany blood and him having been born in a gypsy caravan in Birmingham.
Modern Times was released almost seven years after the industry conversion to sound. City Lights, released in 1931 and considered Chaplin’s greatest film by many, was another reluctant to change. By 1936 it was positively anachronistic. Yet the filmmaker fought against being dragged into making talkies. Modern Times is considered a silent picture despite sound effects, music and minimal dialogue. Of course the tramp doesn’t speak and it would have been odd to introduce it during what is the character’s farewell to audiences.
As usual with Chaplin, and given his perfectionist tendencies, he experimented with the project before deciding on its final form. The Tramp appears as a factory worker literally caught in the great industrial machine. After being arrested as a political agitator he’s sent to jail where one of the director’s greatest gags occurs.
The cocaine scene, in which the poor chap inadvertently gets high off the drug synonymous with Hollywood whilst thinking its salt (the drug has been concealed in a salt shaker), is inspired. What makes it work so well is the innocence of the user within the scenario.
It begins with the march to the dinner hall where the prisoners are served their meal of what looks like a sort of cold lumpy broth. There’s bread at the table but the tramp doesn’t have a chance given the burly bloke next to him insists it’s for him alone. But since when has this stopped the little fella before?
A sly-looking individual sat next to the tramp (screen left) places a wrap of cocaine inside a salt shaker before the guards do a quick search then take him away. Since the main focus of the tramp’s attention has been on securing bread, the prisoner’s exit doesn’t mean much and never saw what happened to the salt shaker. The tramp, thinking nothing of it, seasons his soup with coke then puts even more on his bread. However the absolute moment of hilarity occurs when the tramp casually wipes his nose with a shirt sleeve whilst munching away, the gear now all over his moustache and face.
The effects of the narcotic take hold and the tramp all of a sudden begins to get over-confident with the bruiser next to him and flicks food in the guy’s face! This accidental drug taking serves as a plot device to get the tramp out of jail and off into the next episode of the narrative where he’s hailed a hero despite being as high as a kite. His unknowing bid for freedom happens as the prisoners are recalled to their cells. The tramp loses sense of direction and spins out of jail.
The set up and execution are exquisite. There might be better scenes in Chaplin’s films but in Modern Times the filmmaker sets up a stellar joke that never fails to raise a laugh. It’s the act of him thoughtlessly wiping his nose, whilst staring at the big guy next to him, with the shirt sleeve powdered with cocaine that gets me every time. The Tramp, as a screen character, has been put through a lot of hardships and absurdities but this final movie outing packs a message along with the laughs. It’s also got the best cocaine gag ever.
