The Tale of a Real Little Man – Weekend – Kommersant

Sergei Eisenstein, in his essay on Charlie Chaplin, wrote that the life perception of a brilliant colleague is much more interesting to him than his worldview, explaining this by the fact that in Chaplin’s works it is not so much directing, tricks or comic technique that is important, but a view of things, absolutely devoid of moral and ethical assessment. Eisenstein rightly believed that only children for whom practically any phenomenon, including death, are “harmless” can have such a look. Many of the founding fathers of modernism strove for a childlike view. Take, for example, Picasso, with whom Chaplin was close, both of them, albeit to varying degrees, sympathized with the communists. Almost everything is funny to a child, because his perception is not mediated by judgment. When a child laughs at something really funny, it’s contagious. When a child laughs at something touching or sad, his laughter reconciles with reality. But when a child laughs at something terrible, that laugh is scary. Analyzing Chaplin’s cinematography, Eisenstein was unable to compare the screen image with the original. They met with Chaplin sporadically, and Chaplin outlined the difference between his life perception and worldview in his memoirs only in 1964, explaining in detail whether there is a place in art for the promotion of goodness and the struggle for justice, who should be pitied and who he actually feels sorry for himself. After re-reading the “History of my life”, one can be convinced that the person behind the legend, both in deeds and in words, and, most importantly, in his work, was surprisingly very consistent.

Text: Zinaida Pronchenko

Charles Spencer Chaplin believed that life is a series of ridiculous accidents, which means that everything will end either well or very badly. Moreover, the chances for a tragic ending for “regular Joe” are immeasurably greater. His autobiography, written in the sixties, when he was practically retired from business and from people – on an estate with a dizzying view of Lake Leman, is preceded by a deceptively lyrical epilogue, depicting other views – of London in the last quarter of the 19th century: Waterloo Bridge in fog, Kennington Road at sunset , pubs for noble ladies and gentlemen like the White Horse and the Corsair … and the tiny room in which he once found his mother staring out the window as if at a blank wall.

“Why don’t you go to your neighbors, there’s nothing here for you,” she said without turning her head.

At that moment, – says Chaplin, – I, a six-year-old, realized that something terrible was about to happen, that we were at the mercy of chance – and this accident was unfortunate. A little more than half a century remained before the words that turned into a famous quote that everyone deserves the view from the window that they have – in fact, a paraphrase of the communist slogan about needs and abilities – there were a little more than half a century: two world wars, four marriages, three Oscars.

What kind of view did he himself deserve – frightening at the distraught mother, who then spent years in psychiatric hospitals, or soothing at the alpine beauty? A pseudo-philosophical question that Chaplin avoided asking himself, believing justice to be the most hopeless undertaking in the world. Society can be arranged unfairly, and life is unfair by default – if only because it is given once and not forever.

Contrary to the opinion of the naive for the most part of the public, as well as the American government and intelligence agencies, who declared Chaplin a communist, that is, a traitor, Chaplin did not fight for justice, showing the disenfranchised proletariat wandering like a flock of sheep to the factory in New Times or the outcast single mother in “Baby”. On the contrary, even in flagrant injustice, Chaplin managed to find shades of beauty. In a dispute with Chaliapin and Stravinsky in the resort of Biarritz, he once said: “My concept of beauty is this – the omnipresence of death and a little kindness, a slight sadness that we notice everywhere, both in nature and in man, a ray of sun falling on a trash can , flower petals that fell into the stream, El Greco, for example, the body of the Savior hanging on the cross seemed beautiful. Art for Chaplin was humanity’s chance for this kindness, at times capable of supplanting death as the main injustice, but, of course, not completely defeating it. Cinematography, the high point of mimesis, the final push of realism, which dominated until the search for verite led to the opposite result – modernism, provided incredible opportunities for demonstrating the power of death and the weakness of kindness, their unequal, but eternal duel.

At the same age of six, when life first showed its true face – a music hall artist who lost her engagement, and after him, her mind because of humiliating poverty, Chaplin began to work, selling his mother’s costumes on the street. There were no people who wanted to buy a shabby boa, as a result, a significant part of the theatrical wardrobe was changed into a school uniform, which was laughed at by other students of boarding schools for orphans, where they were beaten with sticks for the slightest offense, and for more serious pampering they were literally driven through the ranks. Years later, among Chaplin’s acquaintances – of course, entirely celebrities – there were enough great writers: Bernard Shaw, H. G. Wells, John Steinbeck and further down the list of the Encyclopædia Britannica. One of the greats, Somerset Maugham, having heard about the wanderings of Chaplin, who did not have a native corner in childhood, expressed the theory that, they say, Charlie’s love for the little man is explained by his nostalgia for the “real” life – in poverty, in crampedness and resentment. Chaplin was terribly indignant and called Maugham a complete idiot in his memoirs. The stories of Dickens and Hector Malo, lived through personal experience, did not cause any emotion in Chaplin. He perceived poverty as a disease of the so-called “free society”, as a stain on the shirt-front of democracy, which neither Zhou Enlai, nor Khrushchev, and even less Churchill could remove – with each of them he talked for a long time at different periods, always coming to the conclusion that the powers that be are most often powerless, they are only good at unleashing wars and appropriating revolutions (even Chaplin was far from having a high opinion of Gandhi).

Chaplin’s humanism was not of a religious nature, the humiliated and offended already in his first films – under the auspices of the Keystone and Essanay studios – are in no way equated with the face of saints or martyrs. Many of those whom the hero Charlie encounters on the streets of the big city, under the bright light of its indifferent lights, belong to the shadow – stupid, mean and hard-hearted, despite their own experience of hardship. And Charlie himself, no, no, and yes, he will use his cunning or show selfishness. In the “Gold Rush” he is quite a conformist, agreeing on any, even cannibalistic, occasion with those who are not the truth, but heavy fists or colts. In “The Kid” he cowardly tries to get rid of the foundling, slipping it to a woman with a stroller or placing it next to the urn – only the intervention of the police awakens a conscience in him.

Having lived for almost forty years in California, Chaplin did not want to become a US citizen (which eventually allowed the authorities to expel him from the country due to political unreliability), nevertheless, he shared the national ideology of his second homeland, where, as you know, everything is business, including itself America. Chaplin ridiculed and criticized capitalism many times – not so much the dictates of money, but the violation of freedom of speech and sympathy for absolute evil (Nazi Germany) in purely selfish interests. Disrespect for censorship or calls to urgently open a second front in Europe subsequently cost Chaplin his career. However, in capitalism, which, judging by his autobiography, he rhymed with Randism, Chaplin most valued the concept of personal responsibility. Life is a series of ridiculous accidents, noise and rage, but in the end it always means what you said and did. On this issue, Chaplin radically disagreed with his compatriot Shakespeare.

Poverty is not a vice, and the poor are usually not to blame for eking out a miserable existence, wealth is not a virtue, but the rich in modern times have made efforts in one way or another to achieve the luxury in which they live. Chaplin loved money and valued communication with successful people, no matter whether genius or calculation brought them to Olympus. At the same table in his house, the anti-Semite and billionaire Hurst dined more than once (descriptions of the holidays at Hurst’s villa in Santa Monica, which clearly influenced David Fincher’s father when working on the Munk script, are given dozens of pages in The Story of My Life), Albert Einstein, Baronesses and Trade Union Leaders, Hart Crane and Theodore Dreiser. Entire chapters of memoirs are devoted to detailed reports of who paid him and why, where and why he spent these profits – at the Savoy or the Ritz, on random women or legal wives. And the point here is not at all vanity or pettiness. Chaplin believed that the rich and famous were proof of the existence of kindness. Chaplin believed that the rich and famous deserved the same compassion if their luck failed them as the most disadvantaged. Chaplin believed that art can help everyone, but not everyone is able to ask for or accept help from art.

At the end of The Great Dictator, filmed in 1940, Chaplin delivers a great speech (which incited such fury in Nazi propaganda that all its resources were immediately thrown into declaring Chaplin a Jew). Her words, according to Chaplin, are inspired by the pacifist song “I Didn’t Raise My Son To Be A Soldier”, which became a bestseller in the United States at the height of the First World War. The text of this speech immediately after the release of The Great Dictator, even Hollywood bosses were placed on corporate greeting cards – each phrase can become a New Year’s wish even more than 80 years later.

“Soldiers! Do not give in to these beasts who despise you, make you slaves, rule your life, order you what to do, what to think and how to think!”

Or:

“Hatred is transient, dictators will perish, and the power they have taken from the people will return to the people. And as long as people die for it, freedom will not perish.”

Did Chaplin believe in his words? Undoubtedly. Did he believe they would work? Of course not. But he was also sure that even an unequal duel should be continued, because the noise will never subside, and the rage will not evaporate anywhere – and it will be completely unbearable if we do not even know what it all meant.

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