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MATTERS OF CONTENT 281
often superior to ostentatious bigness. Hence the cinematic quality of this motif. It parallels the close-up; or rather, it is a sort of extension of the close-up into the dimension of meaningful issues and values.
The Tramp et al. In The Pilgrim Chaplin's Tramp, posing as a clergyman, delivers willy-nilly a Sunday sermon on David's victory over Goliath in the form of a pantomime in which he enacts both the little man he is and his giant adversary. [Illus. 58] This marvelous solo performance highlights a major theme of the Tramp films by presenting the archetypal Biblical story on which it is patterned. Is not the Tramp wholly a David figure? And is not this figure seen in a way under the microscope? It is as if the screen image of the little fellow were a drawn-out close-up of his fears and daydreams, embarrassments and stratagems, handicaps and successes. Chaplin endows the close-up with human significance. Perhaps the most impressive trait of his Tramp is a truly unquenchable capacity for survival in the face of the Goliaths of this world; the life force which he embodies brings to mind films on plant growth, with their acceleratedmotion shots of tender shoots sprouting forth through the soil. Here is where a link can be established between the old Chaplin comedies and certain neorealistic films: Cabiria and Umberto D. resemble the Tramp in that they are as vulnerable as they are indestructible. * All these characters seem to yield to the powers that be and yet manage to outlast them.
True, the Tramp and Mickey Mouse, his two-dimensional next of kin, have long since passed away, but the motif they embodied continues to assert itself time and again. (This, incidentally, implies that their disappearance cannot be sufficiently explained from sociological reasons, such as the change of the social climate in the 'thirties and the concomitant change of audience tastes. Therefore it makes good sense to look for other, more immediate explanations; both screen personalities may have been abandoned because of the changing aspirations of their creators and certain related developments in the motion picture industry.) A fascinating incarnation of little David is, for example, the typical hero of the Westerns, who is invariably introduced to us as an easy victim. Alan Ladd's Shane in the film of this title cuts a pitiable figure among the toughs in the bar, and James Stewart in Destry Rides Again does not even carry a pistol. Similarly, the odds are that the lone sheriff in High Noon will himself be killed in the suicidal fight he provokes. Yet no sooner do the Westerns reach their climax than the potential victims reveal themselves as the shining righters of wrongs. And the punishment they eventually inflict on the overwhelming forces of evil adds significance
* See p. 270.