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Loneliness and wealth remained constants in the troubled private life of Charles Chaplin. Yet his screen self, the Little Fellow, remained unchanged through the twenties; and, when sound came in, Chaplin managed to cling successfully to silence, producing two films, City Lights and Modern Times, which had sound tracks but no spoken dialogue. After that, however, it became impossible to retain the characterization with which by this time he, the actor, was inextricably entwined, both through art and the public's wish. For fifteen years the pictures had been appearing less and less frequently. Now, in the thirties, they ceased altogether as Chaplin turned to preparation for The Great Dictator. The picture, of course, contained scenes involving the Little Fellow, but it was not primarily his picture, and he has not reappeared in the three films Chaplin has since made.
It was society, not Chaplin, who killed off the beloved character. Robert Warshow shrewdly suggests that until the cataclysmic thirties the relationship between the tramp and the rest of the world was an innocent one. That is, they did not totally understand each other and they came into accidental conflict that was hilarious, but which had no serious moral tow. There was no viciousness in these conflicts, and if there was any message in the comedy it was simply, "live and let live."
But as fascism rose in Europe and as depression spread in America, it began to seem that there could no longer be any innocent conflict between the individual and his society. In both Modern Times and The Great Dictator the society through which the Little Fellow moves is actively malevolent; it is no longer attempting to persuade him into conformity, it is bent on destroying him. No longer can he shrug, adjust his pitiful raiment about him and set off down the road. The open dusty road itself is suddenly a superhighway and there is no place on it for The Tramp and his love of freedom. Chaplin seemed to lose faith in him as a symbol just as, coincidentally, the actor operating as an individualist on a slightly different plane entered upon the sea of troubles — legal, political and tax — that led to his embittered exile in Switzerland where he still lives.
Chaplin in two wars : A bove, at the height of his power in Shoulder Arms, the lighthearted satire of World War I.
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