The Tramp In The Tempest

MK2 — THE CHAPLIN COLLECTION, VOLUME ONE — MODERN TIMES 1936 — THE GREAT DICTATOR 1940 — THE GOLD RUSH 1925 — LIMELIGHT 1952 — CHARLIE : THE LIFE AND ART OF CHARLES CHAPLIN 2003

THE TRAMP IN THE TEMPEST

Charlie Chaplin does not need to be introduced to anyone in this world because he is more famous than the north or west winds. He brings the cold and the storm, but he is able to make you laugh at absolutely everything and anything. His humor has no limits.

He was originally a real cinema clown in silent movies that were always short. The films we have here in this collection are four long features but each film is cut up into smaller scenes that have their own humor, one after the others. The unity comes from the locale now and then like in “Modern Times” with several locales that are alternative and contradictional; or from a general social situation like in “Limelight” which follows an ex-clown at the end of his life when what he had done all his life becomes repetitive and déja-vu till his last performance, this time in his honor when he will die on the stage (Molière is obviously not dead); or an allusion to some past situation like in “The Gold Rush” and the absolutely absurd competition among people who only want to grab some gold in nature, or if they can’t do it themselves, steal it from those who had been luckier. It might even come from an allusion to what was the present political and historical situation at the time of the shooting of the film like in “The Great Dictator” shot in 1940 and making us laugh at this Hitler who is turned into a ridiculous puppet who’s finally forgotten his “mission” against the Jews and end up defending or advocating the birth of a just and fair world.

The humor and the art of Charlie Chaplin are in this oxymoronic approach of reality that makes us laugh but in the completely illusionary type of humor: you laugh at what is fundamentally tragic, dramatic, and fakely comic. The Great Dictator is such a film, the acme of such a project: make people laugh at all the dumb…