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Chaplin — And How He Does It
23
Charles-The-Expensive sat iu his dressing room study in a catch-as-catch-can campaign among liis wits trying to elect one of his nominated ideas.
Other distressing manifestations sometimes betoken the battle of the ideas. Tart words, dark frowns, and the ordering of friends and counsellors "oif the set" sometimes accompany the desperate work of deciding what is the most joyous and funny thing to do.
A long motor drive or a half a day in the carpenter shop in the sole company of a violin sometimes suffice to adjust the matter.
Then back on "the. set" with a lot of pep.
"It goes like this — you come in here — "
And they are olf. May be tifty feet of film, may be for a mile.
It is this peculiar quality of mind, this oneness of conception which gives Chaplin comedies their special accuracy of appeal. They present one idea at a time, clear, crystalline, complete and basic.
And basic is a good word in Chaplin comedy discussion. Anatomically speaking, the ancients discovered the heart as the seat of affection but it remained for Chaplin to discover the seat of fun. It is also basic.
The oneness of the Chaplin comedy idea as executed, its completeness of expression and lucidity gives it success. It is anything you want. If you are subtle you will find Chaplin comedies, subtle too, also abstruse, allegorical, symbolical.
If you are a regular everyday, mine-run proletarian, a commonplace guy, a gink, goof or boob, you will find Chaplin going just your speed. This is because he has worked out the great common denominator of fun.
When Mr. Chaplin and his Idea-of-theMoment get into the presence of the motion picture camera with the stage all set there is no telling where they are going or whether they are going to travel together or not.
About the middle period of the present Chaplin era Mr. Chaplin became the parent of a notion about the use of a very big and pretentious street scene in the course of the comedy then torturing its way into being. Almost overnight at a vast labor and expense the street was builded of brick, stone, iron and concrete. Lamp posts were set up and a pavement laid. Mr. Chaplin walked admiringly down his new street the next day — and was then and there in that spot maliciously, feloniously and with in( Continued on page ij8)
FILMING A MIMIC MOTOR ACCIDENT
Mae Murray is supposed to have collided with the gentleman reclining on the mud guard in "At First Sight." We don't know the injured gentleman's name bu,t he's lucky to get into Mae's car — even via
the mud guard.