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abiding interest he has aroused among all manner of people over the face of the earth. He once said of himself: "Ideally, I am a disciple of Anatole France, rather than one of Bernard Shaw. Where Shaw is an ethical teacher, Anatole France philosophically knows nothing of good or bad, much the same as myself. As for ideals, they are dangerous playthings, barren of results, and for the most part, false." The amoral quality in Chaplin, and through him in Charlie, did not outlast the early years. It is interesting, moreover, that the man who found ideals dangerous and barren has in all his films presented an ideal of human conduct, through satirizing its reverse; and, what is still more important, has endeared himself to millions through his idealist-tramp Charlie.
Chaplin's position in the world has from the beginning been unique. On the one hand he is loved, adored, feted, idolized, publicized, photographed, mobbed by wholehearted admirers all over the world. All the Allied trenches in the 1914-18 war rang to the songs the Tommies sang about him. He rose from poverty to fabulous wealth, from obscure origins to an entree into every social milieu, feted by the distinguished people of his time. On the other hand, Chaplin is featured in every scurrility that could be printed about him, attacked and vilified by all those he seemed to pillory in his astounding work, howled down for his morals, his politics, and above all, his unbreakable individuality.
It would have been small wonder if he had lost his head under the strain of maintaining normal balance on such a monstrous see-saw, and shown in his life and work an increasing deterioration. Yet the reverse has been true; and one of the major interests of any study of Chaplin must be in the integration and full flowering of his personality and genius over the years.
In 1942, seventeen years after it had been voted the best film of 1925, the Gold Rush was reissued. A few scenes were cut, a few previously unused replaced them; and Chaplin composed a musical score and substituted a commentary spoken by himself for the old subtitles.
The reissue proved that Charlie is timeless, ageless, a great clown and a superlative mime. Where normally the release of old films causes laughter at their oddness, the Gold Rush compelled that same tribute of laughter and tears and a choke in the throat that another generation had offered to it seventeen years before. In Paris, where the film was also shown, Chariot became a symbol of the resistance movement, an embodiment of the unconquerable spirit of mankind.
Recently, City Lights has been reissued, with the same result. In a world caught up in a struggle on the one side anarchic — the struggle of the individual to put his ego above society; and on the other side