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home drunk after a convivial evening, trying to get upstairs and into bed; and its virtuosity lies in the fact that Charlie is the sole actor, apart from the taxi driver in the opening shots. Here he gives full rein to his particular and fantastic use of properties. A car door, a tiger-skin rug, a stuffed animal, a staircase, and, above all, a folding bed, become his fellow actors, the source of his misfortunes, the instruments of implacable destiny. Once again, the film is essentially ballet, a solo by a male dancer of the highest order, a Njinski of drunkenness.
His struggle with the unmanageable bed is not only physical, but taken to a mental plane, when every reaction to the monster is reflected on his amazed, shocked, hurt and angry face. The film possesses the curiously poetic element that shines forth from all his work — for while Charlie stumbles, falls, slips, glides, dances and struggles, he conveys, as no one else has ever been able to do, the curious kingdom into which a drunken man enters, his inviolability there, where even those things most hostile to him fail to impinge upon him, where everything has its own, indifferent reality. In this case, the bed wins and will not be slept in! Yet the last victory is with Charlie, who sinks into the innocent and profound sleep of a child, in the bath, crowned with his defiant topper!
September The Count (2 reels)
(contains an original tango by Chaplin)
OCTOBER The Pawnshop (2 reels)
The subtlest of this series, with a perfection of rhythm and shape that are outstanding among all Chaplin's films up to this date. The characters in this film are far more than types; their relations with, and reactions to, Charlie, are an integral part of the comedy. Chaplin's best mime is to be found in this film; and his power to breathe life into inanimate objects has never been more ably demonstrated. This element of magic, of something more than ordinary life lived at ordinary levels, pervades the whole film, reaching its apotheosis in the scene in which Charlie, utterly absorbed, deeply serious, reduces an alarm clock to its smallest component parts. His busy fingers — and how wonderfully expressive they are! — attack the clock, while his face expresses not only the emotions and reactions proper to each separate craftsman but an over-all absorption like that of a child entirely given over to one special miracle in a world of miracles. His final gesture of negation and renunciation as he throws the useles pieces into the hat of his astonished customer, washing his hands literally and metaphorically of the chaos he has wrought,