From the Tramp on Screen to a Father at Home: Getting to Know Charlie Chaplin

"No film actor has ever captured the world more vividly, or left it more enthralled"

From June 8 to October 7, an exhibition called "Charlie Chaplin: A Vision" runs at the Yuz Museum Shanghai.

Co-produced by the Musée de l'Elysée in Lausanne and the Yuz Museum Shanghai, the show uses photographs and film footage to walk through Chaplin's life and career, and tries to decode his film language and his artistic legacy. Besides more than 300 photographs and documents from the Chaplin archive and nearly two hours of film clips, it also presents original posters, videos, oil paintings, manuscripts and prints from private and public collections, showing how far Chaplin's influence reached among artists around the world.

The exhibition is laid out in seven chronological sections. "The London Streets and Stage" covers Chaplin's early years: born into a poor family, he was offered his way to Hollywood on the strength of his work with Britain's Fred Karno troupe. "Through the Lens" turns to his first Hollywood years and the birth of the Little Tramp. In "Hollywood Genius," already famous, he has his own studio and starts directing. "The Sound of Silence" covers his work with sound and music — he taught himself a range of instruments, and once talkies arrived he went looking for new ways to use sound. "Where the Heart Leads" takes up the 18-month journey he began in 1931, when he met people from every walk of life and felt the mood of a Europe falling under the shadow of the right; the politics in his films grew sharper afterwards. "Life After the Tramp" deals with the controversy around him: he was branded a communist and forced out of the United States, and the storm did not pass until he won recognition again in the 1970s. "A Legacy for Today" gathers the later artists who carried his spirit into their own work, a measure of how long his influence has lasted.

In its obituary for Chaplin, The New York Times wrote: no film actor has ever captured the world more vividly, or left it more enthralled. This poor boy from London became an immortal artist by giving deft, humane shape to the tragic conflicts of human fate.

The Little Tramp — bowler hat, cane and toothbrush mustache — is the clearest example of how Chaplin staged those conflicts. After touring the United States with the Karno troupe, he caught the eye of the Keystone Film Company and signed with it. He shot his first short, Making a Living, then in 1914 made Kid Auto Races at Venice, the Tramp's first appearance on screen. Unusually, it was filmed in front of a live crowd. Chaplin's clowning had the audience laughing without a break, and the character took off overnight.

The Tramp drew in part on Chaplin's hard childhood. Both his parents made a living singing in music halls, so he grew up around music and performance. But his father, a heavy drinker, left him and his mother while Chaplin was still small. His mother, raising Chaplin and his half-brother Sydney on her own, later fell mentally ill. Once, Chaplin had to go on stage in her place to save the show. The two brothers ended up in an orphanage. Life on the street put him among drunks, tramps and other down-and-out figures.

"Between 1914 and 1929, the character changed. At first he was a fairly 'bad' character; later he became the figure we know now, with emotion and dramatic conflict, someone who could have the audience laughing one minute and wanting to cry the next," says Tatyana Franck, the exhibition's curator.

Before he turned 30, Chaplin was Hollywood's hottest star. His weekly pay went from $150 when he joined Keystone in 1914 to $10,000 at Mutual Film Corporation in 1916, plus a $150,000 bonus.

Asked why the character caught on, Chaplin's son Eugene Chaplin said: "I think people found the character funny. He was always trying to hold on to his dignity. His clothes were shabby, but he'd pin a rose to his chest, and if he fell, he'd get up and straighten his clothes. I think the reason people loved him is that they had a bit of the 'Tramp' in them too — they found something of themselves in that character."

The Tramp made his last screen appearance in Modern Times. The dictator in the later The Great Dictator kept some of the Tramp's look, though Chaplin did not consider him the Tramp. Modern Times can be read as the turning point in Chaplin's career. From then on the politics in his films came to the front. The film is no longer about the Tramp's slapstick; it is Chaplin's satire of the greed that industrialization drew out of people.

"The Great Depression hit in 1929, and Chaplin traveled to Europe in 1931," says Tatyana Franck. "He found a world in crisis — populism was rising everywhere, and unemployment in the United States kept climbing. After he got back to America, he made Modern Times in 1936, criticizing industrialization and mocking the way workers of that era were made to work like machines. That came straight out of his trip to Europe, where he met all kinds of politicians and economists. He wanted to use film to look for answers."

But the public's attachment to the Tramp, and the conservatism then running through America, meant Chaplin drew fire whenever he took a political position.

"Audiences loved the Little Tramp, and they loved the happy mood of his films," says Tatyana Franck. "Chaplin was hugely successful right up to The Great Dictator. Then in 1947 he made Monsieur Verdoux — up to that point the only film in which he played nothing resembling the Tramp. He played a killer. The public didn't want to see him change. They loved the Tramp, and they didn't want to watch Chaplin play a man that vile."

The French critic André Bazin wrote of Monsieur Verdoux: "It turns Chaplin's world upside down… it is his very existence that fills society with crime."

In McCarthy-era America, Chaplin was branded a communist. His private life, above all his taste for young actresses, gave his critics a second line of attack. In 1952, after the authorities revoked his re-entry permit, Chaplin left the United States and settled in Switzerland. More than 20 years passed before Hollywood took him back.

Looking at his career now, besides learning what went on in front of and behind the camera with the Tramp, people also get to find the Chaplin beyond the Tramp: the Orwellian scene in Modern Times where the boss spies on a worker smoking in the bathroom, or the ambition behind the dictator's dance with a globe in The Great Dictator.

QDaily interviewed Tatyana Franck, curator of "Charlie Chaplin: A Vision," and Chaplin's son Eugene Chaplin. Between them they offer two ways of understanding him.

Tatyana Franck is the director of the Musée de l'Elysée. For her, Chaplin and Picasso are the two most important artists of the 20th century. She watched all kinds of Chaplin films as a child, and once she became director she had long wanted to mount a Chaplin exhibition. "I love his vision of life. I think we share the same values — that nothing is impossible," she said.

Eugene is the son of Chaplin and his fourth and last wife, Oona. The couple had eight children. Oona's father, Eugene's grandfather, was the playwright Eugene O'Neill, a Nobel laureate in literature. Chaplin died when Eugene was 24. As Eugene remembers him, Chaplin seldom talked about his Hollywood career; he was a loving father, willing to spend the time to learn about his children's daily lives.

Eugene is president of the International Comedy Film Festival in Vevey, Switzerland. He directed the documentary Charlie Chaplin: A Family Tribute, and has also worked as a recording engineer with the Rolling Stones, David Bowie and Queen.

Asked what his father's greatest influence on the children was, Eugene said: "We all work in something to do with art. That's probably his biggest influence — a love of art."

Q = QDaily

T = Tatyana Franck

U = Eugene Chaplin

Chaplin's Work

Q: What made him come up with the Tramp, that classic screen character?

U: I think it may have been pure luck. After Mack Sennett, the head of Keystone, took him on, Chaplin came onto the set one day and felt cold. Sennett told him to go find something to wear, so Chaplin went to the wardrobe room. Of course he remembered his childhood, remembered the tramps and drunks he had seen. He picked out baggy trousers and a tramp's outfit.

Q: If it hadn't been the silent era, would the Little Tramp have hit as hard?

T: Chaplin created the character in the silent era, but he was always interested in music and always had musicians around him. After sound film arrived in 1928 he still made a few silent films, though he later added soundtracks to his earlier work. What he created was a universal character. Even today, if you turn the sound off, you will still laugh at him, because Chaplin knew how to reach people's hearts.

U: That's hard to say. The secret of the Little Tramp was that Chaplin never spoke, and people still understood the character. That made him an international star overnight. When sound came, he realized the Little Tramp could not go on — not really because of sound, but because Chaplin was getting older. He knew that a film about the Tramp growing old would no longer be funny.

Q: When the sound era came, he didn't join the trend right away. He made City Lights and Modern Times first, and only later made talkies. What was his attitude toward sound film?

T: It was certainly a challenge for him. But even in the silent Modern Times you can hear him humming at the end. He had a strong ear and was an accomplished musician; he taught himself piano, violin, cello and other instruments.

Q: Chaplin started as an actor and later had his own film company. What was the same, and what was different, between the director and the actor?

T: He had the same vision either way: the pursuit of perfection. He would shoot one scene 400 times over. He was strict as an actor and as a director. That is also why he built his own studio — he wanted control over everything to do with his films. As an actor he was frustrated by directors telling him what to do. At Keystone, for instance, in roughly 1914 and 1915 he made 36 shorts, a huge number, because the company and its directors demanded that pace. It frustrated him; he wanted the time to work slowly.

U: He worked out what he wanted while he was under Mack Sennett. He thought those directors weren't doing a good job. He then realized he could write good stories himself, not only stories about a silly, lovable character. First he asked to direct, and once he was allowed to and had made a few films, he gradually began writing his own stories. Later he had his own studio, so he could shoot at his own pace and work with the people he liked.

Q: For The Great Dictator he imitated Hitler. Beyond the physical resemblance, how did he work up the impression?

T: Chaplin observed people very sharply. Through observation he got at Hitler's inner world. I think he could have imitated anyone. The physical resemblance strengthened the effect, of course, but Chaplin had a gift for seeing into other people and putting himself in their place. We think he got the idea for the film from the press, which had run articles about how alike the two men looked. The United States was against making such a film at the time. Chaplin shot it in 1939, the year Germany invaded Poland. He paid for it himself, which left him free to say what he wanted.

Q: But America didn't accept or understand his politics right away?

T: The United States was not yet at war with Germany, and far-right, pro-Nazi positions existed in America too. When he made The Great Dictator, the United States was unhappy about it; it didn't want to stir up trouble. The government didn't want the film released. It was released in the end, but not at once — a few years later, by which point the United States was already at war with Germany.

Q: The British press attacked Chaplin for not serving in the First World War?

T: Yes. This exhibition includes some drawings from that time criticizing him for staying out of the war. But there were also reports of his films healing people. Field hospitals projected them onto the ceiling so patients could watch lying down.

Q: From the 1940s his relationship with Hollywood changed. He went from brilliant actor to ideological outsider. How did that sudden shift happen?

T: The shift took some time. He was exiled from the United States in 1952, and for roughly 10 to 15 years before that America had been suspicious of him. Chaplin showed concern for the poor and leaned left. He was a citizen of the world, not a supporter of any government. In The Great Dictator he attacked Hitler and Mussolini, but America felt he had not attacked Stalin, and so counted him a communist. On top of that he was famous enough by then that every detail of his life was in the press, including his relationships with many women. America was conservative at the time, and all of it turned Chaplin into a cautionary example.

Q: Chaplin's relationship with FBI Director J. Edgar Hoover was especially hostile. Beyond the times, was there a personal reason?

T: The closing speech in The Great Dictator is a call for peace shared by everyone. What the FBI could not understand was why the speech wasn't about opposing Hitler. Chaplin certainly opposed Hitler, but he didn't want to use the film to call people to war; he wanted to use it to express a longing for peace. I think that displeased the FBI a great deal.

U: The main reason was that, as Hoover saw it, Hollywood could become a powerful propaganda machine. On that basis he laid down demands about what films should promote and what they should criticize. Chaplin was a man who wanted his freedom and would not take orders from Hoover. The two met at a party once and had a fierce argument. It was the result of a whole string of things.

Q: Chaplin was once forced out of America, and America eventually opened its arms again and gave him an honorary Oscar for lifetime achievement. What brought that about?

T: By then it was a different era; the politics and the people had both changed. People came to understand what Chaplin had given America, and what his films had given humanity. Chaplin never went to war; for him artistic expression mattered more, and using film to speak about being human mattered more. Even now, a doctor in India uses Chaplin's films to treat patients with depression. America finally saw that humor can heal pain.

Q: So how complicated were Chaplin's feelings about America, or about Hollywood? Did he really accept Hollywood's late recognition and honors?

U: When the invitation first arrived, he didn't want to go. My mother encouraged him. Even in the last minute before he went on stage he was still saying he didn't want to go up. In the end it was a wonderful evening, with many celebrities and his friends there. When Chaplin walked out, the audience applauded for a full 20 minutes. He was deeply moved. I think that trip back to America let him make his peace with everything.

Q: What did Chaplin feel about England, his home country?

T: He had a hard childhood in England. He left for America at 20, and that was more or less all the time he ever lived there. Queen Elizabeth knighted him in the 1970s. But his memories of England were bitter, full of struggle.

U: He loved England very much. Switzerland is only an hour's flight away and he went back often. I know many people ask why he didn't live there afterwards. I think he had simply gotten used to the California climate, and England is a different place. So he chose Switzerland, where he could settle in.

Q: Chaplin and his brother Sydney later worked together and made a good team, with Chaplin on the art and Sydney as his manager. What exactly was the chemistry between them?

U: Sydney was a remarkable man, and he found my father his first job — he recommended him to the Karno troupe. Sydney had an acting career of his own and did well in England, though he never became an international star. I think their hard childhood together is why they always backed each other. My father later made him his manager, and Sydney negotiated some of his contracts. Some people say Sydney was jealous of my father, but I don't believe that. He was genuinely glad about my father's success.

Q: What did Chaplin think about tragedy and comedy?

T: For Chaplin, what mattered was giving people hope. Nearly all his films end well. Modern Times is a good example: both leads are unemployed, penniless and homeless, but in the last scene they walk off hand in hand toward the future. Even with nothing, you can still build a future. Chaplin himself was proof of that.

Chaplin at Home

Q: How would you judge Chaplin as a filmmaker and as a father, separately?

U: As a filmmaker he was a genius. He defined the art of film to some degree, and grew up along with it. As a father, what strikes me is that however busy his work was, he still set aside a lot of time for us. Life at home ran smoothly because my mother kept it that way. My father was genuinely interested in our lives — he'd ask how school was, whether your friend was still ill, that sort of thing. On afternoons when he wasn't working we often played together.

Q: Chaplin seems to have been very strict when you were children. What was that like?

U: I don't know how the others felt. For me, there were times he was strict and demanding. If you sat at the table, he expected you to keep to certain manners. But that was about it. To me he was a loving father.

Q: You said he didn't talk to you much about his film career. What did he talk about?

U: He said little about films, though sometimes he'd mention a scene or two and the trouble he'd had shooting it. What he often did was take out the newspaper and read us articles he found interesting, then ask what we thought — whether the article was stupid, or funny.

Q: What is the piece of advice, or the remark, from Chaplin that stayed with you most?

U: When I was young he told me: you can do anything you want, I won't put pressure on you, the choice is yours. But what I ask is that whatever you do, you do it well.

Q: What was going on when he said that?

U: I was lazy at school back then; I didn't much like studying. He couldn't understand it at all. He often told me that being able to go to school was lucky, because he had left school early and had to teach himself everything afterwards. I understand him now, of course. But as a child I thought what he said was strange. (laughs)

Q: Late in his career, was Chaplin influenced by Eugene O'Neill at all?

U: Not at all. Eugene O'Neill and Chaplin never met, never spoke. Eugene O'Neill had a very strong personality, and so did my father. He never forgave Chaplin for marrying his daughter, because she was so much younger.

Q: His marriage to your mother was said to be the happiest stretch of Chaplin's life. What did that happiness mean to a man who had been through so much upheaval?

U: In a way I envy my father's life. He started with nothing and then found fame. In the last 25 years of his life he found happiness. I believe he truly loved the women who came before my mother. But when you're a famous director and your wife is an actress, it gets complicated. She will always want to be in your next film. That's only my guess — there would be a conflict of interest. My mother once wanted to be an actress herself, but after meeting my father she gave up the idea and gave everything she had to him instead.

Q: Could you share some memories of your father, and what saying goodbye to him was like?

U: I have many memories of him. The final goodbye is not a good one — his health had been poor for a long time. In his last few weeks he stayed in bed and slept most of the time. As you know, he died on Christmas Day. When he died I felt some relief, because we all knew the moment was coming and the waiting had been very painful. There was a sense of release once it happened. But at the same time I felt terribly sorry for my mother, because she had given her whole life to him.

Q: You said you have many memories. Is there another one that stands out?

U: Let me think. One funny thing: when television first came to Switzerland, my mother bought a black-and-white set and put it in my father's study. We children were allowed to watch half an hour with him, and when the time was up he'd chase us out because we were too noisy. A few years later, when color sets came out, my mother bought one and put it in his study, and moved the black-and-white one into our room. We were thrilled. About a week later my father took the black-and-white one back and gave us the color one, because he didn't like it.

Q: Because he was more used to black and white, and preferred it?

U: Actually it was because the earliest color televisions had terrible color, everything tinted yellow and orange. To us children a color TV was fancy and exciting, but for him it wouldn't do.

Cover image and photographs in this article courtesy of the Yuz Museum Shanghai.