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laughter. I ask myself, Do we laugh? Yes. Then what must our laughter be like?
What must our laughter be like, and especially what kind of laughter will the screen evoke? This question has been asked repeatedly and many have tried to answer it. Some answers have been too simple. Others, too complicated.
A few years ago I worked on the script of a comedy.
I have a strictly academical approach to all I do. I make use of all available scientific data; I discuss with myself problems of programme and principle; I make calculations and draw inferences. I "dissect music" in the course of its progress, and sometimes anticipating its progress, with the result that its elements are buried in my drawers among heaps of material relating to principle. I stop writing the scenario and instead plunge into research work, filling pages and pages with it. I don't know which is more useful but abandoning creative work for scientific analysis is what I am often guilty of. Very often I settle a particular problem of principle only to lose all interest in its practical application.
That is exactly what happened to my comedy. All I have been able to analyze and determine will go into a book and not on the screen.
Perhaps I should never have produced a Soviet film comedy. One thing, however, is quite clear: I adhere to the tradition of laughing while the lash swishes. Mine is the laughter of destruction.
The lash has already swished in the attempts at comedy made here and there in Old and New. The swishing is heard still more distinctly in the comedy I have left unfinished.
But I have not wasted the time I spent on it: I have proved to myself one point of principle.
What is Chaplin remarkable for? What makes him tower over all other film comedians?
His profound lyricism. His ability to make his spectators shed genuine tears. Chaplin is a lovable crank. A grown-up behaving like a child.
Then an idea came to me: Chaplin and the future of our comedy.
The simplest way (that is, plain plagiarism) would be to dress up characters suitably, think up new situations and preserve Chaplin's important contribution to the film art. This could be called an experiment — just to avoid censure.
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