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nervous panic, when things take on a malignant energy that forces him into terror — the bar that drops suddenly upon his head, the stove that burns him when he tries to avoid the bar; and then, when the feeling of panic is at its height, his companion goes mad, thinks Charlie is a chicken and tries to kill and eat him. It is a parody of the strong, silent man type of drama; it is also a bitter commentary on the hostility of men towards each other.
Having created his peak of tension, Chaplin lets the film down gently into sentimentality and pathos. Charlie is drawn to his fellow men as the moth to the candle flame; and we are given the incomparable shot of him just outside the threshold of the saloon, leaning slightly on his cane, the other hand hanging limp. All his bitter solitude is in that pose, and all his unsatisfied longing in the look he bends on Georgia Hale when he first catches sight of her. All his frustration is in the fact that she smiles at others, but does not see him. Charlie has travelled a long way from the guttersnipe of the Keystone days.
c©^ Moment of Defeat
AS SOON AS "THE GOLD RUSH" WAS FINISHED, CHAPLIN SOUGHT FOR
the inspiration of his next film. A factor of interest in tracing the evolution of his genius lies in the recurrence of certain themes that have been in his mind for years, some eventually being used, others partly used, others never actually touched upon. We have seen how his desire to make a serious film brought about the fragmentary Life in 1915 and A Woman Of Paris in 1923. An unpublished short, The Suicide, of early date, provided a basis for the scenes of the intended suicide in City Lights (1931). Amongst the most significant of ±e recurring motifs are those of Napoleon and Jesus Christ. The former dates back in spirit to the days of his childhood, when he played the Napoleon and led his fellow urchins into battle against their kind. Later, the desire to make a film on Napoleon gained increasing strength. Chaplin wished to present him not as a powerful general, but as "a sickly being, taciturn, almost morose, continually harassed by the members of his family". Here surely is an interesting transposition of self; and it may well be that the uprising and spread of fascism in Europe cured him of his passion for Napoleon; for certainly the nearest approach to the desired film of his hero is to be found in The Great Dictator, under the sign of the Double Cross !
It is a tragedy that the increased hostility, latent and overt, surrounding him and all that he does and is, will probably prevent him from ever accomplishing a film based on the life of Jesus Christ, about whom he writes in these terms — "I believe that the most powerful,
K