Judge — February 17, 1923 — page 13: what you’re looking at

Machine-transcribed from the original scan — historical spelling and the odd misread are preserved.

a Charlie and the Children rs in his newest picture, ‘The 1m,” but, like the Venus of Milo, I 1s A limited Charlie Chaplin who It so fts we ost in him are nowhere to be found in “The Pilgrim,” and we came away a little disgruntled, but looking back’ on it, more dispassionately than we could have looked at it, we remember a few scenes that we wouldn't have missed for the world. Chaplin is always in danger of being taken over by the highbrows. He lends his vital modes and inspirations to. so many different theories of life and death, tragedy and comedy, sloth and endeavor and the whole of underlying human ethics that he is almost as good as the Bible as a source of texts. We have heard it stated and upheld that Charlie stood for the common honest man, for the neces- sary exorcism of the evil man, and for all manner of gay things to the heedless man. We might as well array oursel didly at once among these sinners, for we approached Charlie with a It is, in fact, very hard not to, so that we are not entirely con- vinced that to do so is wrong. We are not sure, for instance, that this lovely little comic genius might not be partially lost if nobody tried to explain him, After all, he has committed more destruction upon the Purjtanie forces of this country than all the jeremiad lite ture that was ever written. Charlie behaves with a warm, un-Christian vio- lence that is hugely funny. Nobody could possibly set up a resistance against him. He never appears to invade the field of moral controversy, so nobody puts on any armor, He is so ingratiat- ing that he would surely be imitated, but imitation is a sterile and impermanent thing. The little band of solemn com- mentators who follow after him and ex- plain how right it is that he should be so bad and so funny have, by. this token, their uses—that the thing that Charlie does so blithely is really a tremendous and portentous thing, to be cherished in the heart and let to grow there. es can- DERHAPS we better hurry into the “for instan First, who would say, offhand, that he could watch an actor kick a child in the stomach and hurl him right out of sight, and greet the per- by Ruth Hale formance with roars of approving laugh- ter? There is no place in any man’s set of ideas or ideals of behavior which would accept such a monstrosity with calmness—kick a child in the stomach, indeed! Nevertheicess, below the level of idealistic behavior, there is another man, every man, we would say, and every woman, who has longed with a tigerish longing to kick some child clean back through the dust and ashes of his fathers. Charlie Chaplin knows two things: first, that © dult human has itched beyond endurance to commit some sort of in- fanticide; second, that. every — adult human has been too civilized to let the blow fly. He knows further that. too much civilization is not good for man- kind, that it permits too little ventilation. Somewhere that kick must be kicked. It can be done for everybody in a given theater, within « tof the film in which Chaplin kicks. It is done vicari- ously, but the potency of the vicarious emotion is not at this late date to be denied. N oF course Chaplin cannot simply get up and kick a child. If he did that he would throw his audience into its mental levels at once, where the tradi- tions would rise in arms against’ him. The world is far from being in such a conscious state of exasperation against its young that it is ready to have just any child slammed. But Chaplin knows his way about. He addresses himself to his audience about follows: In his_pil- grimage, it becomes necessary for him to pretend to be the new curate, and on his first Sunday afternoon, neighbors bring in a child to tea. Now this child is a pretty fair sample of what a child can be. He has come to have a taste for slapping people’s faces, and his mother, when tired of having her own face slapped, diverts his attention to the e. Well, says the child, here is a n't had such a treat in the Lord knows when. So the curate’s face is roundly slapped. The child does not appear to have been told about the soothing effect of turning the other cheek. Neither has he discovered that patienc and long suffering will abate belligerency. He is the kind of fighter who wants to hear the death rattle. The oftener he is met with the forbearing smile of the curate, the more and the harder he slaps. cu new face. Ih 11 Out in the audience, we began to feel old impatiences stirring. We wondered how much longer we could sit there doing nothing while the unholy brat pounded that smile. Then we begin thinking, to the curate, “Why don’t you do something—kill him, kill him, sie.” The curate’s patience seemed so unending that we began to mis- trust our Chaplin, and wonder if he would really leave us to suffer without help from the sight of this child and the recollection of all other terrible children till we ran berserk out into the street to trample down children innocently looking into shop windows. But of course Charlie did not fail us. (Come upon a moment in whieh the child was launching a new atrocity, just as his elders and saviors had left the room, Chaplin turned on him, planted his foot right in the young stomach and lunged with all his might. The child did a back flip-flop, hurtling out of the picture, and a yawp of satisfaction rose from every throat. Even when the child came back with more bedevilment, nobody felt par- ticularly worried about him. He had got what was coming to him, He was even, in fact, a little welcome, because from being a symbol of pure torture fertilizing the memory of long-borne former tortures, he was now a symbol of vengeance glori- ously and hotly taken. We are willing to wager that all those who see “The Pil- grim” will carry this magnificent protec tion: that when they are housed again for long or short with one of those helli children they will remember that sq planted Chaplin foot. With that rem brance will come echo of that satis- faction, and of that gorgeous healing laugh. Who say how many of the coming generation will not have to s: “Lowe my life to Charlie Chaplin—I w told it repeatedly when young.” This, we think, gi Chaplin his full praise for social service. We had meant to go on and show that these violences of right than the his were inherently more Puritan re un did not painfully raise himself upright from being forward on all fours, merely to have ilization tip him over onto the broad of ressions—tha makes us gabby, and here is the end of the page.