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time when the pioneers of film were applying stage technique to their work, Chaplin began to develop both plot and his own comedy line through movement and mime, to a shape that was rhythmically controlled.
When he transferred to the Essanay Company (1915), Chaplin continued to work along the lines he had discovered during his Keystone year. With his sixth film for that company — The Tramp (1915) — comes a change of major importance. For the first time, there is an undercurrent of pathos in the film. Until now, Charlie had evolved along the lines of urchinhood — vindictive, malicious, rebellious, his hand against everyone, and everyone's hand against his, ready to seize any advantage that would enable him to keep his precarious foothold on the fringes of society. In The Tramp, we see for the first time the pathetic outcast, the wanderer, without friend or shelter, the displaced person of all time.
In this film, Charlie moved definitely from the category of comic type to that of personality, the eternal little fellow filled with a desire to love and be loved, for whom there is nothing but watching the fulfilment of others. Later in the Essanay year, with The Bank (1915) there comes a reiteration of the pathetic element in the little tramp, and a deepening of his personality.
After his first two years in film, Chaplin reaped the full harvest of the years that had preceded them, and then with the twelve films he made for the Mutual Company (1916-17), reached a peak in his creative life. These films were, in a special sense, the prototype of all that was to come from him; and his comedy is increasingly charged with a philosophical significance that lifts it out of farce into satire, and increases its pathos.
In the film world, other comedians — Buster Keaton with his deadpan face and robot-like gesture; Harold Lloyd with his owl-eyed glasses, and passion for suspending himself over space at dizzy heights; Ben Turpin of the crossed eyes, lamp-fringe moustache and romantic soul — made their audiences rock with laughter. Chaplin's greatness lies in the fact that he made his audiences laugh differently, made them "laugh lest they cry".
It was at this time that he embarked upon a patient research into comic effects, the essence of comedy, the reaction of audiences, with a view to discovering a more personal expression of humour. The Mutual films show the development of a subtler comedy, in which the controlled and rhythmic use of gesture is of prime importance.
There is development too in his use of decor. Until now, the background of his films had been largely haphazard, as it was for all American films in those early days. But with the Mutual series,