Chaplin was almost always amusing but it occurred to me while watching this story of a waiter who woos a girl at a skating rink that in his earlier films he was more often the perp than the vic.
This was released in 1916 and Chaplin is a rude waiter who humiliates guests and steals money. If a stranger happens to be bending over and fastening a lady's roller skate, Chaplin can't help giving him a swift kick in the pants when he passes by. There's nothing here about "the little people." If the tramp is little, it's because that's his most comfortable social niche.
Ten years later, in "The Gold Rush," Chaplin had introduced humanity into his character, an innocent who is more sinned against than sinning.
Ten years after "The Gold Rush", he was sending social messages about worker alienation. (That's what happens when your work permits you to take no pride in having done it well. Anyone up for McDonald's Chicken Nuggets?) But in movies like "Modern Times," the milieu is only a peg from which to hang gags that are more hilarious than ever. And movies about poverty in 1936 were hardly uncommon anyway.
The gags here are sometimes spectacular, and always speedy. The tramp could certainly skate well.
This was released in 1916 and Chaplin is a rude waiter who humiliates guests and steals money. If a stranger happens to be bending over and fastening a lady's roller skate, Chaplin can't help giving him a swift kick in the pants when he passes by. There's nothing here about "the little people." If the tramp is little, it's because that's his most comfortable social niche.
Ten years later, in "The Gold Rush," Chaplin had introduced humanity into his character, an innocent who is more sinned against than sinning.
Ten years after "The Gold Rush", he was sending social messages about worker alienation. (That's what happens when your work permits you to take no pride in having done it well. Anyone up for McDonald's Chicken Nuggets?) But in movies like "Modern Times," the milieu is only a peg from which to hang gags that are more hilarious than ever. And movies about poverty in 1936 were hardly uncommon anyway.
The gags here are sometimes spectacular, and always speedy. The tramp could certainly skate well.