Little Man
Charlie Chaplin. By Theodore Huff. (Cassell. 25s.) MR. CHARLES CHAPLIN is an enigma whose countless variations elude his chroniclers' grasps time and again. Perhaps the greatest clown of all time—it is estimated that 300 million people have seen each of his films—egocentric, rebellious, by turns arrogant and humble, a perfectionist in his art and in his private life a heaven-sent gift to the salacious, a millionaire with a social conscience, certainly a genius, with his capricious temperament he never sets into a recognisable pattern.
Mr. Theodore Huff has made a comprehensive study of his subject, leaving no channel uncharted, no depths undredged. Believing, and rightly, that it is principally through his films that Mr. Chaplin is known to millions, and believing also—how rightly one cannot say—that the " little man " is an extenuation of his true self, the author has written detailed synopses of all of Mr. Chaplin's best- remembered films from the Keystone comedies to Monsieur Verdoux. This attempt to analyse the inexhaustible imagination which his hero brings to the service of his art is not wholly successful. Though the comedian's ideologies, his views on what does or does not consti- tute comedy and his techniques are made plain, for anyone but a specialist these synopses make indifferent reading. Visual humour is not easily translated into words, and funny situations depending so much, for all their symbolism, on slapstick have, whether one has seen the film or not, a curiously depressing effect. Perhaps un- reasonably, it is nicer to believe that Mr. Chaplin's follies are spon- taneous rather than contrived, and their magic is considerably dissi- pated by a view of the wheels going round.
The human side of the story Mr. Huff relates with commendable objectivity as he traces Mr. Chaplin's life from its desperate child- hood to its present apparent felicity along a path strewn with an amalgam of roses and thorns. Never has there been such a meteoric rise to stardom, and never has a star cared less for the social amenities of his firmament. Although he has met hundreds of notable people, crowned heads, intellectuals, artists, political leaders and the elite of the beau monde, he has also failed, through a sudden change of mood, to meet many more. A self-confessed citizen of the world, he dis- dains its rules ; individualistic to a fanatical degree he has made many enemies. For his left-wing sympathies, his matrimonial failures—though these were not more resounding than others in Hollywood—his refusal to become an American and his harsh verdicts on the film-industry he has been violently reviled, bitterly persecuted. Since he has not cared to deny, refute or explain, the legends have grown like weeds about his person.
Mr. Huff draws the outline of a lonely man who, having failed in his human relationships to find understanding, is neither shaken nor influenced , by human opinion. To himself therefore he is always true and has changed little in his lifetime, even his genius, which flowered overnight, neither waxing nor waning with the years. And yet, it seems, no man can know him. His exuberant zest for living is matched by bouts of melancholy ; his moods, artistic; amorous or political, are unpredictable, and neither his friends nor Mr. Huff have been able to unravel the paradox. As Mr. Huff says, " each finds in-Chaplin what he brings to him." He himself has brought every fact and figure, every anecdote and criticism, every scrap of information on which he can lay hands. Aided by over a hundred photographs and an appendix containing- biographical sketches of those professionally connected with Mr. Chaplin, as well as an extra index to his films, he has compiled a history which should keep both students and enquirers happy for years.
Should they, however, wish for a less detailed, less chatty but considerably better written work on the master, there is a reprint of The Little Fellow by Mr. Peter Cotes and Miss Thelma Niklaus. Though it also contains film-synopses, these, as well as the writing which goes before them, are critical rather than descriptive, discur- sive rather than intimate. The genius emerging, his artistic develop- ment, achievements and defeats are studied fully and with becoming reverence, Chaplin's private life being valued more for its influence on his creative work than for its human interest. The thread of his essential loneliness runs through this book as it does through Mr. Huff's, but here there is a more comforting awareness of our appre- ciation for his unique gift to the world. Lonely he may be, ever seeking the unattainable down an endless road, but delight, rapture, love and enough laughter to rend the skies go with him.
VIRGINIA GRAHAM.
Previous page
