moive assignment

WHAT IS CINEMA? essays selected and translated by HUGH GRAY VOLU ME I WHAT IS CINEMA? WHAT IS CINEMA? by ANDRE BAZIN

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Charlie Chaplin grim we see him dressed only as a convict and as a cl ergyman and in a lot of films he wears a tuxedo or the elegant cutaway coat of a millionaire. These physical "markings" would be of less tha n no importance if one did not perceive, more importantly, the interio r constants that are the true constituents of the character. These are however less easy to define or describe. One way would be to examine his reaction to a particular event, for example his complete absence of obstinacy when the world offers too strong an opposi- tion. In such cases he tries to get round the problem rather than solve it. A tempo rary way out is enough for him, just as if for him there was no such t hing as the future. For example in The Pilgrim he props a rolling-pin on a shelf with a bottle of milk that he is going to need in a minute or two. Of course the rolling-pin falls onto his head. While a provisi onal solution always seems to satisfy him he shows a fabulous ingenuit y in the immediate circumstance. He is never at a loss in any situatio n. There is a solution for every- thing even though the world (and esp ecially things in it rather than the people) is not made for him. Charlie and Things The utilitarian function of things relates to a hu man order of things itself utilitarian and which in turn has an eye to the future. In our world, things are tools, some more some less effic ient, but all di- rected towards a specific purpose. However, they do not serve Charlie as they serve us. Just as human society never accept s him even provisionally except as a result of a misunderstanding, eve ry time that Charlie wants to use something for the purpose for which it was made, that is to say, within the framework of our society, eit her he goes about it in an extremely awkward fashion (especially at ta ble) or the things themselves refuse to be used, almost it would seem deliberately. In A Day's Pleasure the engine of the old Ford 145 What Is Cinema? stops every time he opens the door. In One AM. his bed moves around unpredictably so that he cannot lie down, In The Pawn shop the works of the alarm clock that he had just taken to pieces sta rt moving around on their own like worms. But, conversely, things whi ch refuse to serve him the way they serve us are in fact used by him t o much better purpose because he puts them to multifarious uses accord ing to his need at the moment. The street lamp in Easy Street serves the function of an anaesthetist's mask to asphyxiate the terror of the neighborhood. A little later a cast-iron stove is used to knock the m an flat, whereas the "functional" truncheon only gives him a slight si nging in the ears. In The Adventurer a blind transforms him into a lam pstand, invisible to the police. In Sunnyside a shirt serves as a tabl

ecloth, as sleeves, as a towel, and so on. It looks as if things are o nly willing to be of use to him in ways that are purely marginal to th e uses assigned by society. The most beautiful example of these strang e uses is the famous dance of the rolls which contribute to a sudden outburst of highly unusual choreography. Let us look at another chara cteristic gag. In The Adventurer Charlie thinks he has disposed of the warders pursuing him, by pelting them with stones from the top of a c liff. The warders are actually lying on the ground more or less uncons cious. Instead of seizing the opportunity to put daylight between hims elf and them, he amuses himself by throwing more stones, pebbles this time, by way of refining on the operation. While he is doing this he f ails to notice that another warder has arrived behind him and is watch ing him. As he reaches for another stone his hand touches the warden's shoe. His reaction is something to marvel at. Instead of trying to r un away, which would in any case be useless, or having sized up his de sperate plight, handing himself over to the officer, Charlie covers th e ill-met shoe with a handful of dust. You laugh and your neighbor lau ghs too. At first it is all the same laughter. But I have "listened in " to this gag twenty times in different theaters. When the audience, o r at least part of it, was made up of intellectuals, students for exam ple, there was a second wave of laughter of a 146 Charlie Chapl in different kind. At that moment the hall was no longer filled with the original laughter but with a series of echoes, a second wave of l aughter, reflected off the minds of the spectators as if from the invi sible walls of an abyss. These echoed effects are not always audible; first of all they depend on the audience but most of all because Charl ie's gags are often of such short duration that they allow just enough time for you to "get it," nor are they followed by a time lag that gi ves you a chance to think about them. It is the opposite of the techni que called for in the theater by the laughter from the house. Although he was brought up in the school of the music hall, Charlie has refine d down its comedy, refusing in any way to pander to the public. This n eed for simplicity and effective- ness requires of the gag the greates t elliptical clarity, and once he has achieved this he refuses to elab orate on it. The technique of Charlie's gags naturally calls for a st udy to itself, which we cannot undertake here. Sufficient perhaps that we have made it clear that they have attained a kind of final perfec- tion, the highest degree of style. It is stupid to treat Charlie as a clown of genius. If there had never been a cinema he would un- doubt edly have been a clown of genius, but the cinema has allowed him to ra ise the comedy of circus and music hall to the highest aesthetic level . Chaplin needed the medium of the cinema to free comedy completely fr om the limits of space and time imposed by the stage or the circus are na. Thanks to the camera, the evolution of the comic effect which is being presented, all the while with the greatest clarity, not only do es not need boosting so that a whole audience can enjoy it, on the con trary it can now be refined down to the utmost degree; thus the machin ery is kept to a minimum, so that it becomes a high- precision mechani

sm capable of responding instantly to the most delicate of springs. It is significant, furthermore, that the best Chaplin films can be see n over and over again with no loss of pleasure — indeed the very oppos ite is the case. It is doubtless a fact that the satisfaction de- rive d from certain gap is inexhaustible, so deep does it lie, but it is 147 What Is Cinema? furthermore supremely true that comic form a nd aesthetic value owe nothing to surprise. The latter is exhausted th e first time around and is replaced by a much more subtle pleasure, na mely the delight of anticipating and recognizing perfection. Charl ie and Time Whatever the facts, one can clearly see that the gag refe rred to above opens up under the initial comic shock a spiritual abyss which induces in the spectator, without giving him a chance to analy ze it, that delicious vertigo that quickly modifies the tone of the la ughter it provokes. The reason is that Charlie carries to ab- surd len gths his basic principle of never going beyond the actual moment. Havi ng got rid of his two wardens, thanks to his capacity to exploit the t errain and whatever objects are to hand, once the danger is past he im mediately stops thinking about building up a reserve store of suppleme ntary prudence. The consequence is not long delayed. But this time it is so serious that Charlie is not able to find an immediate solution — rest assured that he soon will — he can- not go beyond a reflex actio n and the pretence at improvisation. One second, just time enough for a gesture of dismissal and the threat, in illusion, will have been eff aced by the derisory stroke of an eraser. Let no one, however, stupidl y confuse Charlie's gesture with that of an ostrich burying its head i n the sand. The whole bearing of Charlie refutes this; it is sheer imp rovisation, unlimited imagination in the face of danger. The swiftness of the threat, however, and above all its brutal nature in contrast t o the euphori- ous condition of the mind in which it takes conscious s hape, does not allow him, this time, to escape immediately. Besides wh o can tell — because of the surprise it gives to the warden who was ex pect- ing a gesture of fear — if his action will not in the end allow him that fraction of a second that he needs to make his escape? Instea d 148 Charlie Chaplin of solving the problem Charlie has no r ecourse other than to pre- tend things are not what they seem. As a matter of fact this gesture of brushing aside danger is one of a numbe r of gags peculiar to Charlie. Among these should be included the cele brated occasion when he camouflages himself as a tree in Shoulder Arms . "Camouflage" is not really the right term. It is more properly a for m of mimicry. One might go so far as to say that the defense reflexes of Charlie end in a reabsorption of time by space. Driven into a corne r by a terrible and unavoidable danger, Charlie hides behind appearanc es like a crab burying itself in the sand. And this is no mere metapho r. At the opening of The Adven- turer we see the convict emerging from the sand in which he was hiding, and burying himself again when dange r returns. The painted canvas tree in which Charlie is hiding blends in with the trees of the forest in a way that is quite "hallucinating. " One is reminded of those little stick-like insects that are indiscer

ni- ble in a clump of twigs or those little Indian insects that can ta ke on the appearance of leaves, even leaves that caterpillars have nib bled. The sudden vegetable-like immobility of Charlie-the-tree is like an insect playing dead, as is his other gag in The Adventurer when he pretends to have been killed by a shot from a warden's gun. But what distinguishes Charlie from the insect is the speed with which he retu rns from his condition of spatial dissolution into the cosmos, to a st ate of instant readiness for action. Thus, motionless inside his tree he flattens out, one after the other, with swift precise move- ments o f his "branches," a file of German soldiers as they come within range. The Swift Kick Characterizes the Man It is with a simple and yet sublime gesture that Charlie expresses his supreme detachment from th at biographical and social world in 149 which we are plunged an d which, for us, is a cause for regret and uneasiness, namely that rem arkable backward kick which he em- ploys to dispose alike of a banana peel, the head of Goliath and, more ideally still, of every bothersome thought. It is significant that Charlie never kicks straight ahead. E ven when he kicks his partners in the pants he manages to do it while looking the other way. A cobbler would explain that this was because o f the points of his outsize shoes. However, perhaps I may be allowed t o ignore this piece of superficial realism and to see in the style and frequent and very personal use of this backward kick the reflection o f a very vital approach to things. On the other hand, Charlie never li ked, if I may dare to say so, to approach a problem head on. He prefer s to take it by surprise with his back turned. On the other hand, espe cially when it seems to have no precise purpose, a simple gesture of revenge for example, this back-kick is a perfect expression of his con stant determination not to be attached to the past, not to drag anythi ng along behind him. This admirable gesture is furthermore capable of a thousand nuances ranging all the way from peevish revenge to a gay " I'm free at last," except, that is to say, when he is not shaking off an invisible thread attached to his leg. The Sin of Repetition Hi s use of the mechanical is the price he is forced to pay for his nonad herence to the normal sequence of events and to the function of things . Since for him things have no future in the sense of being planned to serve an end, when Charlie is involved with an object for some time h e quickly contracts a sort of mechanical cramp, a surface condition in which the original reason for what he is doing is forgotten. This unf ortunate inclination always serves him well. It is the basis for the f amous gag in Modern Times when Charlie, working on the assembly line, continues spasmodically to tighten 150 Charlie Chaplin imagin ary bolts; in Easy Street, we observe it in a more subtle form. When t he big tough is chasing him round the room Charlie shoves the bed betw een them. There then follows a series of feints in the course of which each moves up and down his side of the bed. After a while, in spite o f the continued danger, Charlie becomes used to this temporary defense tactic, and instead of continuing to direct his movements by the move ments of his adversary, ends by running up and down on his own side as

if the gesture were sufficient of itself to ward off all danger forev er. Naturally, no matter how stu- pid the other man might be, all he h as to do is to switch rhythm, to have Charlie run right into his arms. I am confident that in all Charlie's pictures there is not one where this mechanical movement does not end badly for him. In other words, m echanization of movement is in a sense Charlie's original sin, the cea seless tempta- tion. His independence of things and events can only be projected in time in the shape of something mechanical, like a force of inertia which continues under its initial impetus. The activity of a social being, such as you or I, is planned with foresight and as it develops, its direction is checked by constant reference to the realit y that it is concerned to shape. It adheres throughout to the evolutio n of the event of which it is becoming part. Charlie's activity on the con- trary is composed of a succession of separate instants sufficien t to each of which is the evil thereof. Then laziness supervenes and Charlie continues thereafter to offer the solution proper to a previ- ous and specific moment. The capital sin of Charlie, and he does not h esitate to make us laugh about it at his own expense, is to project in to time a mode of being that is suited to one instant, and that is wha t is meant by "repetition." I think we should also include in this si n of repetition the cate- gory of well-known gags in which we see a jo yous Charlie brought to order by reality, for example the famous gag i n Modern Times when he wants to bathe and dives into a river that is l ittle more than a foot deep or again, at the beginning of Easy Street when, converted by love, he walks out of a room and falls on his face on 151 What Is Cinema? the stairway. Subject to a more prec ise check, I would be willing to suggest that every time Charlie makes us laugh at his own expense and not at that of other people, it is wh en he has been imprudent enough, one way or another, to presume that t he future will resemble the past or to join naively in the game as pla yed by society and to have faith in its elaborate machinery for buildn g the future ... its moral, religious, social and political machinery. A Man beyond the Realm of the Sacred One of the most characteris tic aspects of Charlie's freedom in re- spect to the demands of societ y is his total indifference to the category of things held sacred. Nat urally by sacred I here mean, first of all, the various social aspects of the religious life. Charlie's old films add up to the most formida ble anticlerical indictment imaginable of provincial puritan society i n the United States. One has only to recall The Pilgrim and the incred ible faces of those deacons, sacristans, and sharp-featured, toothy, b igoted females, the solemn and angular Quakers. The world of Dubout is a world of child's play alongside this social caricature worthy of Da umier. But the principal strength of this portrait derives from the fa ct that the acid which has etched this engraving is in no sense anticl erical- ism. It is rather what ought to be called a radical a-clericis m, and this keeps the film within the bounds of what is acceptable. Th ere is no sacrilegious intent. No clergyman could take offense at Char lie's outfit. But there is something worse here, namely a sort of null

ify- ing of whatever justification there is for such people, their bel iefs and their behavior. Charlie has absolutely nothing against them. He can even pretend to go through the Sunday ritual, to pantomime the sermon for their pleasure or to remove the suspicions of the police. It is almost as if he had introduced a Negro dance into the ritual. In one blow, ritual and faithful are relegated to a world of 152 Charlie Chaplin the absurd, reduced to the condition of ridiculous, e ven of obscene objects, by being deprived of all meaning. By way of a derisory paradox the only actions throughout the ceremony that make an y sense are in fact Charlie's gestures when he tests the weight of the collection-bag, rewarding the generous with a smile and the mean wit h a frown. Another example is the way he returns several times after h is sermon to bow to his audience like a contented vaudeville actor. No r is it a matter of chance that the one spectator who enters into the game and applauds is a snotty-nosed urchin who has spent the entire se rvice, in spite of his mother's remonstrances, fly- watching. Howeve r, there are other rituals besides the religious. Society approves a t housand forms of acceptable behavior which are a sort of permanent lit urgy that it performs in its own honor. This is particularly true of t able manners. Charlie never really manages to master the use of his kn ife and fork. He regularly gets his elbow among the plates, spills his soup on his pants and so on. The high spot surely is when he is himse lf a waiter, as in The Rink. Religious or not, the sacred is everywher e present in the life of society and not only in the magistrate, the p oliceman, the priest, but in the ritual associated with eating, with p rofessional relations, and public transportation. It is the way that s ociety retains its cohesion as if within a magnetic field. Unknowingly , every minute of our time we adjust to this framework. But Charlie is of another metal. Not only does he elude its grasp, but the very cate gory of the sacred does not exist for him. Such a thing is, to him, as inconceivable as the color of a pink geranium is to someone born blin d. To put it more precisely, a good part of Charlie's comedy is born of the efforts he makes (to fit the needs of a temporary situa- tion) to imitate us, as for example when he forces himself to eat politely, even with delicacy, or when he adds a touch of derisive coquetry to h is dress. 153 CINEMA AND EXPLORATION in his little book Le Cinema au long cows (Filming in Far-Off Lands), Jean Thevenot has trac ed the development of the film of exploration from its successful begi nnings, around 1928, through the period of its decline, between 1930 a nd 1940, to its rebirth following World War II. The implications of th is evolution are worth studying. It was after World War I, that is t o say in 1920, some ten years after it was filmed by Ponting during th e heroic expedition of Scott to the South Pole, that With Scott to the South Pole revealed to the film-going public those polar landscapes w hich were to constitute the major success of a series of films of whic h Flaherty's Nanook (1922) is still the outstanding example. Not long afterwards, very likely because of the success of the Arctic films, a type of produc- tion appeared which we might categorize as "tropical a

nd equa- torial," The best known are those filmed in Africa, and in pa rticular La Croisiere Noire by Leon Poirier, Cimbo, and Congorilla — t he first dating from 1926, and the last two filmed between 1923 and 1 927, but only shown publicly in 1928. In these first travel-films-in- the-grand-manner we already see what are the chief values of this cate gory: an authentically poetic quality which does not age and is admira bly exemplified in Nanook. But this poetry, especially in 154