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"A Dog's Life" — first masterpiece
Chaplin's opening First National film, "A Dog's Life," was his best up to that time, his first real masterpiece. The techniques he had been experimenting with and perfecting, these four years, were now applied with complete mastery; and his style was at the ripening point of fullness and flavor. Its special quality of the commingling smile and sigh characterized the picture throughout, instead of in flashes as in the previous "The Tramp," "The Vagabond," and "The Immigrant." Pathos is now emphasized in the three-reel "A Dog's Life." It is a prototype of his great features, "The Gold Rush" and "City Lights."
The treatment is realistic; caricature is sparing. In fact, "A Dog's Life" is conceived and played almost as straight drama. Its story line is firm and logical. It has suspense and clear plot resolutions. Its mixture of pathos and laughter derives from ingenuities and surprises in poignant situations, as Chaplin leads a "dog's life" almost literally, as well as figuratively.
Delluc, the French critic, acclaims "this pieta" as the cinema's "first complete work of art." (The Griffith classics, however, had not yet reached France when this was written.) Profound philosophy and social satire have been seen in "A Dog's Life" by other critics. The general parallel between the vagabond's life and the dog's life is made powerfully specific in the daring juxtaposition of the frantic scene in the employment office and the dog