Charlie Chaplin (1951)

cc 256 Most significant perhaps was the Russian reaction. At its Moscow showing, according to an article in the New York Times, the film was not considered much of an aid to the cause of revolution. The Moscow public greeted the conveyor-belt scene in stony silence (perhaps because of the turn to conveyor-belt production in Soviet industry and the new speed-up order). The incident of the red flag failed to get over and the automatic feeding machine did not appear to them to be a practical idea. Chaplin himself is quoted as saying: "There are those who always attach social significance to my work. It has none. I leave such subjects for the lecture platform. To entertain is my first consideration." When informed of the ban on the picture in Germany and Italy, he said: "Dictators seem to believe the picture is communistic. It's absolutely untrue. In view of recent happenings, I am not surprised at the ban. But our only purpose was to amuse. It was just my old Charlie character in circumstances of 1936. I have no political aims whatever as an actor. . . . "It started from an abstract idea, an impulse to say something about the way life is being standardized and channelized, and men turned into machines — and the way I felt about it. I knew that was what I wanted to do before I thought of any of the details." A social parable perhaps, but in it Chaplin champions individualism against the mechanized life rather than government ownership and the abolition of capitalism. The tramp escapes from the world of machinery and regimentation into the freedom of the open road. Once more the musical score was Chaplin's own composition. As used here it often deftly characterizes action. There is a memorable waltz theme as well as novel machine music. Alfred Newman, hired to do the arrangement and orchestration, found Chaplin too intense, crit