The tantalizing tramp

CHARLIE CHAPLIN'S POPULARITY was so great in the first quarter of the 20th century that theater owners only had to display a cardboard image of him with the short statement, "I am here today" to draw a large audience. His popularity touched off marketing schemes that remain with us to this day. There were Charlie Chaplin lapel pins, hats, socks, ties, costumes, spoons, Christmas decorations, statuettes, buttons, paper dolls, games, playing cards, squirt rings, comics, dolls, and everything else on which his likeness could be reproduced. In his memoir, Chaplin notes having been approached about such diverse products as Charlie toothpaste and Charlie cigarettes. The world certainly had started to take on a certain "Tramp-ish" look. The Chaplin mustache became the fad. Adults grew them, and children pasted them on or smudged charcoal on their upper lips. Vaudeville and film suddenly had an overflow of Tramp imitators, including Chaplin's one-time understudy Stan Laurel, long before his teaming with Oliver Hardy.

Chaplin, always the connoisseur of beautiful women, later would express bemused regret that even Ziegfeld Follies gifts marred their loveliness with Charlie mustaches and baggy pants. Moreover, theaters everywhere were capitalizing on the craze by having Charlie Chaplin look-alike contests. The winner of one such Cleveland competition was a youngster named Leslie T. Hope; later known as Bob Hope. Chaplin himself is said to have entered one of these contests as a lark--while finishing third.

Chaplin's greatest and most enduring impact, however, has been on screen comedy. Even today, he is the standard by which all film comedies are measured. His balancing of an effective comedy persona with moments of equally successful pathos has been difficult for other comedians to master. Movie biographer Bob Thomas goes so far as to call the urge to accomplish this feat the "Chaplin disease" since so many have failed. A list of these would include Harry Langdon, Lou Costello, Bob Hope, Jerry Lewis, and Eddie Murphy.

Chaplin's influence on foreign cinema is equally immense. Nowhere is it more effectively shown than in French film, the most significant national cinema after the U.S. This Chaplin-French connection is best demonstrated by the comedian's impact on that country's greatest director, Jean Renoir--the son of French Impressionist painter Pierre-Auguste Renoir. Jean Renoir pays constant tribute to Chaplin, whether it is the story of an iconoclastic tramp in "Boudu Saved from Drowning" (1932), or the "Modem Times"-ish conclusion of "The Lower Depths" (1936). Renoir's inspired "Grand Illusion" (1937) effectively utilizes Chaplin's metaphorical use of a flower motif to symbolize human fragility when a grief-stricken Erich von Stroheim cuts a blossom after the loss of a friend.

Renoir's most renowned film, "The Rules of the Game" (1939), makes direct reference to Chaplin's "The Count" (1916) by the manner in which it replicates that short subject's high society chase and confusion of identities. The French director even credits Chaplin with being the catalyst for the theme of nonviolence in a film seemingly far removed from the world of Charlie: "The River" (1950), which focuses on a crippled war veteran of India. Therefore, it is not surprising that Renoir writes in his autobiography: "The master of masters, the film-maker of film-makers, for me is still Charlie Chaplin."

After American and French film, the national cinema with the greatest breadth of significance is that of Italy. Arguably the greatest Italian filmmaker is Federico Fellini. One only has to view "The Road" ("La Strada," 1954) and the bewitching performance of Giuletta Masina (Fellini's wife) as Gelsomina, the clown-like servant to Anthony Quinn's strongman, to appreciate the depth of Chaplin's influence. The film's mixing of comedy and pathos, Masina's delightful mimicry, even the title--"The Road"--suggest the world of Charlie the Tramp.

More specifically, one could define the character of Gelsomina, the lighthearted and loyal but ill-used servant, as a somber variation on the equally lighthearted but loyal Charlie of "City Lights" (1931). Though Charlie never is so mentally simple as Gelsomina, nor so defeated (Gelsomina's eventual hurt destroys her will to live), both beautifully portray first the humor of complete devotion, and then the pain of rejection when that love is not returned. Appropriately, Fellini "singles out 'City Lights' as a masterpiece among the silents." The fact that Fellini has made the fate of Gelsomina even darker than that of Charlie might be explained by the director's favorite film--Chaplin's black comedy "Monsieur Verdoux" (1947). Coming just a few years before "The Road," Fellini considers this comedy of murders to be "the most beautiful film" he ever has seen.