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125 t©^ Man of Many Talents
SO FABULOUS A CREATION AS CHARLIE IMPLIES A CREATOR OUT OF
the ordinary, gifted with extraordinary talents. Chaplin's strength, and therefore Charlie's, lies in the fact that his genius has shown itself in multiple form, so that each of his films is entirely the result of his own creative impetus, and attains therefore an homogeneity denied to all other films.
Chaplin is a superlative mime; words have never been necessary to his work, and he alone of all the pioneers of film made no attempt to reproduce the verbal technique of the stage when he entered films. Mime is among the most ancient of the arts, and Chaplin the present master of it. May Reeves, among others, has instanced his gift, as when he acted for her benefit an unfortunate hunt with the Duke of Westminster. So vividly did he present the horrors of that chase that she saw him clearly in the hunting kit that was too large for him — the hunting pink with its tails trailing on the ground, the cuffs falling over his small hands, his waistcoat flapping over a lean stomach, and head gear that covered his eyes, and folded his ears in two. He could only just ride, and the horse took advantage of him. So wonderfully did he mime the scene that it was as though she were watching one of his films.
His Pierrot mask is more expressive in its immobility than the most frenzied contortions of the ham actor. In his mime and in his acting, Chaplin shows a subtlety, a technique, a sensitiveness that are without parallel.
As a dancer, he enters the highest ranks. No one with knowledge of dancing and choreography who has seen Chaplin move would deny him his place among the great ones; and most people who have met him or worked with him have noted what Martha Raye calls "his exquisite ballet-dancer gait".
Mime, actor, dancer blend into a comedian who ranges from grossest farce to most delicate satire, that is burnished with tears and loaded with grief even while it compels the heartiest laughter. As if they were flickering along through the old Bioscope, visions come crowding fast, and the ghost of past laughter is in the air — Charlie, in MabeVs Strange Predicament (1914), with the backward slant of the very tipsy, trying to conquer a staircase; his epic struggle with a folding wall bed possessed of a daemon in One A.M. (1916); his appearance in animal skin and bowler in His Prehistoric Past (1914), the hilarious prize fight in The Champion (1916), the riotous happenings on the farm in The Tramp (1915). Even the increasing satire and tragedy of his films could not check the ebullience of his comedy. Shoulder Arms