Category Called Comedy #9

 

CCC: Charlie Calms Down and '72 Roll in Aisles for What's Up, Doc?

CHAPLIN TAKING SLOWER TRAINS --- To play features vs. shorts with Great Comedians may not be a fair contest. Each had to embrace longer form eventually, the marketplace leaving them little choice. Transition from skit to “three-act” undertaking went beyond ken of most, certainly those bred of vaudeville or music halls where on-off quick was necessity understood by all. I looked at Chaplin in The Rink and Easy Street, then Modern Times. In a way it’s like a different guy did them. Near-twenty years separated shorts from the feature, dog years as many experienced and understood then, Charlie having blacked hair gone premature gray after barrel Lita and family rolled him in. The Little Tramp of kicks to rears, shortest term employs, and all etcetera’s for bumming life was no good with narratives taking longer to unfold, Modern Times at 87 minutes a challenge to Charlie as giddyap and get gone reliable. Tempo was slower, as if fleet movement might topple house he's built. Buster Keaton talked about long-form requiring his team to tell “realistic” stories, which meant no more being chased by hundreds of cops, and who really cares why? Seven Chances had similar pursuit by as many would-be brides, a situation set up by reels of exposition, heavy burden Keaton carried for playing real people against real settings. Charlie does a same in Modern Times, job toiling as he never would in Mutual comedies, the Tramp’s independent spirit our assure that he’s for hitting solitary road soon as current crisis clears. We know he’ll not last as a waiter in The Rink, nor does he pretend concern for livelihood, eating from refuse pails or stealing sustenance OK in any pinch. Modern Times loads him up with Paulette Goddard plus eventually her urchin sibs, this to likely follow happy (?) walk into sunset, or is it sunrise?

Regular jobs were bane of funsters making features ---this implying normalcy and dread absorption by convention. We are meant to identify with clowns where they hold us an hour or more, downside their having to knuckle down and deal with frustrations we expect them to relieve us from. I like Charlie loose as a goose and skidding round corners, not being “misunderstood” by authorities (the labor march) and pitched in jail for it. Search for a next job would stink in the nostrils of Mutual-era Chaplin, as would slow-go set-pieces like the Bellows feeding machine and dropping food in Chester Conklin’s mouth while he’s trapped in machinery. Charlie for me was the one trapped. He skates in Modern Times and that harkens to freedom of The Rink, but grace ends there as struggle renews and back we are to victimhood of the Depression. On one hand the Tramp seems ideal for such context, me happier with Charlie a free spirit who’d snatch what could be snatched from a system broke down with rules of conduct suspended like carefree day past. Sound era Charlie however had to be more responsible, earn his bread, never again bite off a baby's frankfurter like in The Circus. A Great Depression seemed ideal opportunity for ultimate will of the wisp Charlie to whom the world owed a living. Prudent ending to any Mutual seems temporary and refreshingly insincere. He’ll wrap Easy Street having quelled villainy, kept his police uniform, and escorting Edna to church, but not to worry for Who Cares Charlie will soon be back on the bum, no chance Easy Street would see a sequel any more than The Immigrant where for a fade he marries Edna. Chaplin features play too much for keeps, length alone requiring solutions for him to be permanent ones. City Lights was best for doubting he’ll keep Virginia now that she has seen him for the derelict he is. I prefer Charlie in such aftermath kicking up a heel and headed back for transient life as he effectively did in The Circus, such ending what we expect and prefer for a character that must never be tied down. Suppose Paulette will go a day, let alone night, without pressuring Charlie to go back and locate her orphaned relations, feeding of which will put him right back on assembly lines? Some happy ending.

WHAT’S UP DOC? (1972) --- You just had to be there. Our College Park Cinema of past celebration opened with What’s Up Doc? in 1972. Laughs were uproarious. Peter Bogdanovich’s screwball plus slapstick plus smart was bracingly new to a public not so inclined as Peter to sit up nights watching same tropes played against 30’s backdrop. “Somehow it doesn’t seem as funny” was what Ann said when last we sampled What’s Up Doc?, shorthand for Turn It Off, which I dutifully did. What comedies survive after half a century gone? … yet there are silent ones 100 years old to sustain aplenty, or is that my lone opinion? What’s Up Doc? I remember in terms of crowd reaction, a thing not had from old films short of see/hear first-hand with seat-neighbors for whom it’s fresh and new. Doc today is for fast-forward to scenes roof-raising in yore and again when Doc campus-ran at alma mater two years later. Most contempo-humor dates, but here is closest to one you’d play to moderns and possibly get by. I applied brakes for moments that “killed” then-audiences to guess whether still they might. First to loose howls was when “Howard Bannister” (Ryan O’ Neal) realizes madcap Judy (a sometimes too much Barbra Streisand) will be valuable toward his getting a research grant (you know the story so I won’t belabor). Mirth built while characters at a luncheon all stooped under a table as “Eunice Burns” (Madaleine Kahn) enters to demand she be seated with them. Moment when camera moves close on Howard and he says “I never saw her before in my life,” followed by Eunice dragged bodily out and leaving heel marks all the way to the exit got as huge a response as I ever saw at a movie, but the topper was still to come.

This was finish where Howard and Judy clinch as expected, him telling her he’s sorry for conduct before, to which she replies, “Love means never having to say you’re sorry,” her eyes blinking as Bacall’s did in a similar moment from To Have and Have Not. Cascade of laughter that began here drowned out Howard’s “That’s the dumbest thing I ever heard,” O’Neal’s gag at the expense of previous Love Story, embraced by many now embarrassed to have done so and ready two years later to ridicule that film’s most quoted line. Porky Pig bursting from the Looney Tunes drum to say That’s All Folks is the perfect coda. In fact, crowds I saw What’s Up Doc? with were still laughing, and loud, when final cast credits came up. Good will attached to What’s Up Doc? with fond memory to carry for years to come. My college had a year’s contract with Warners Brothers Film Gallery, features to fill both semesters of which many were clucks, but not What’s Up Doc? Taking the package meant paying less per title, this a one and only that would fill every seat in our notably large auditorium. It seemed at the time that What’s Up Doc? would always please, forever more fill rooms with laughter, though like others before and since, it would retreat into recall increasingly distant and as with Ann, seem “less funny” where seen through eyes many years older. I hear tell of similar aftereffect Forrest Gump (1994) now has. Many who laughed and cried with that wonder now what made them do so. Best of movies are presumed to stay so, but how many do? We’ll none of us be here long enough to test the “forever” part, but when we see what we thought were perfect flowers wilt upon vines, it is safe to say that even those titles held most precious are fragile as are people who created them and those who’d embrace them. “As good as it ever was” is declared often with certainty, but who can begin to say for certain what will truly last among entertainments we cherish, assume never to part from, but ultimately do. My list is long … what of yours?