The Tramp Grows Up
Note: This is the eighty-first in a series of historical/critical essays examining the best in film from each year. Essentially, I am watching films from the beginning of cinematic history that interest me and/or hold some critical or cultural impact. My personal, living list of favorites is being created at Mubi, showcasing five films per year. All this being explained, what follows is an examination of my favorite 1915 film, THE TRAMP, directed by Charlie Chaplin.
After his quickly growing fame making 35 shorts and one feature at Keystone, Charlie Chaplin left the studio that gave him his start for Essanay, which offered more money. The Chicago-based outfit also had studios in Niles, California, outside of San Francisco. And this was where Chaplin would discover his destiny, the Tramp, and his first leading lady.
Chaplin would find not only more money at Essanay, but also creative freedom and time between pictures. The studio was founded in 1907 by George K. Spoor and Gilbert M. “Broncho Billy” Anderson, the latter the first major star of the Western film genre. Comic actor Ben Turpin was perhaps the studio’s most stalwart personality, beside Anderson, but the studio also gave starts to Wallace Beery, Gloria Swanson, Rod La Rocque, and many more. And of course, it would allow Chaplin to evolve.
Chaplin went to Chicago to make his first film for Essanay, HIS NEW JOB (1915), but disliked the weather and returned to California for the rest of his time with the company. It was for his second film with the studio (A NIGHT OUT [1915]), shot at its Niles’ facilities, that Chaplin was introduced to Edna Purviance by an associate who saw her in a cafe in San Francisco. The pair would go on to make 33 films together, the entirety of Purviance’s filmography save for a sole 1927 French film. Chaplin and Purviance maintained a romantic relationship during the first couple years of their working relationship, from 1915 to 1917, but the dissolution of that romance did not end their collaborations. Purviance would be Chaplin’s leading lady for his short film years, as well as his early features. Unfortunately, after casting her in her first leading role in the drama flop A WOMAN OF PARIS (1923, a rare Chaplin film that did not star himself), Purviance would retire from acting, besides that French film, EDUCATION OF A PRINCE (1927). She married an airplane pilot in 1938. Her husband died in 1945, and she died in 1958 at age 62.
But in the meantime, we’ll be seeing a lot of youthful, energetic Edna Purviance. She was a perfect compliment to Chaplin, essentially acting as a straight man to Chaplin’s looseness and his male counterpoints’ typical aggression. THE TRAMP was their fifth film together, and the sixth of the fourteen Chaplin would make at Essanay from February 1915 to May 1916…besides a 1918 compilation Chaplin listed in his autobiography.
THE TRAMP was not the first film to feature Chaplin’s trademark character the Little Tramp, but it was the beginning of the character archetype that would come to be associated with the comic actor. In hindsight, many of Chaplin’s characters at Keystone were rough, aggressive, and just generally mean-spirited, a far cry from the sympathetic Tramp of his most famous films. But even at the time, Chaplin faced some criticism for how crude his cinematic portrayals were, in spite of the fact that Chaplin’s Keystone comedies are still funnier than basically any other contemporary’s. Even still, Chaplin felt the need to broaden his style and bring another element to his films and every character he played, Little Tramp or not. Starting with his earliest films at Essanay, Chaplin began imbuing that pathos that is so closely associated with his landmark style of film comedy. The way I see it, Buster Keaton and Harold Lloyd’s style of slapstick had physical stunts, and Chaplin’s had emotional stunts.
THE TRAMP is a funny film, but what sets it apart from even the other, more thoughtful Essanay efforts is its ending. Chaplin’s Tramp is, well, a tramp who begins working on a family farm after running into a beautiful girl with whom he becomes enamored. Hijinks ensue while attempting to complete chores, including the defense of the farm from criminals, but another element of THE TRAMP’s high quality is its mise-en-scène. Taking place mostly outside, the scenery of the Niles environment provides the short a totally different look than many other comedy shorts relegated to indoor studios or city/park settings, especially coming from Chaplin’s year at Keystone. In any event, after assisting the family, Chaplin’s Tramp learns that the love of his life is already engaged to another. With this knowledge, he leaves a charmingly misspelled and grammatically incorrect letter…
“i thout your kindness was love but it ain’t cause i seen him.”
…and has a heartbreaking final goodbye to the girl and her beau. The final shot of the film is its most famous, in which the Tramp waddles in sadness before picking his head up, kicking his feet in that iconic Chaplin style, and walking off to new things.
These were radical developments for a comedy short from 1915. Comedy shorts weren’t meant to address serious topics, and here Chaplin was leading his character away from happy ever after in order to respect the life of the woman he fell in love with. It’s an incredible evolution for Chaplin, of course, but also for comedy at large. It helps that THE TRAMP’s comedy itself is better than most anything Chaplin or the studio itself had produced at Keystone. There are some hilarious mistakes with a bag of flour and a lot of funny business on a ladder leading up into the hayloft of a barn.
THE TRAMP is perhaps Chaplin’s first masterwork, a bold step in a new comedic direction and a short with a lot of laughs even 103 years later. It also heralded the beginning of Chaplin’s super-stardom, as the comedian found himself the icon for numerous forms of Chaplin merchandise and the center of a bidding war for his services waged by various studios by the end of the year. It’s an essential part of film canon you should watch now; go ahead, watch the brilliantly restored version above!
