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the importance of Chaplin and his art 3
Yet all he intended was to present a typical "Weary Willie." He did not realize that he was creating a mythical world figure any more than did the creators of Pierrot and Punchinello and Mickey Mouse. At the very outset he struck a rich vein of comedy, a vein that led deep into humanity and could therefore be appreciated and understood by all.
This was not entirely accidental. Both his extensive stage training as a pantomimist and his life experiences contributed to it. He himself has said, "Comedy must be real and true to life. My comedy is actual life with the slightest twist or exaggeration to bring out what it might be under certain circumstances. ... I aimed exclusively at pleasing myself. For when I gave the subject thought, I became convinced it was the average man I tried to please. And was I not that average man?"
Chaplin himself is a composite, international type, a mixture of several nationalities. The tramp character he created could be of any country and of any time. In appearance he could be any age from twenty-five to fiftyfive.
Costume and make-up, though mainly drawn from England before the First World War, spells shabby gentility and aspiring dignity in any language. This was Chaplin's own view, according to an interview with George P. West, in 1923, "That costume helps me to express my conception of the average man, of almost any man, of myself. The derby, too small, is a striving for dignity. The mustache is vanity. The tightly buttoned coat and the stick and his whole manner are a gesture toward gallantry and dash and 'front.' He is trying to meet the world bravely, to put up a bluff, and he knows that, too. He knows it so well that he can laugh at himself and pity himself a little." Almost anyone could identifiy himself with this screen character — especially the underdog and the "little man" buffeted by life.