Binge-Watching Directors: Charlie Chaplin - Keystone Studios

A while ago I decided to watch all of Charlie Chaplin's films from the beginning to the end of his career.

I had watched and loved many Chaplin films as a kid. My family owned The Gold Rush and later The Great Dictator on VHS, and I remember renting Modern Times and other titles on several occasions from the local video store. These are the famous films made during his time with United Artists, where his true talent as an auteur and the results of his extreme creative control are most perfectly showcased.

But I didn't know until I looked up his filmography that Chaplin was actually involved in at least 90 films, either as actor, writer, director, producer, composer, or a combination of these roles, throughout his more than half-century film career.

A Year at Keystone Studios

Chaplin started his movie career at Keystone Studios. He appeared in 36 films there, all within the year 1914. He began as an actor, but soon his roles expanded to writing and directing as well.

It took me a while to watch my way through them, but I really enjoyed the experience and thought I'd share a little bit of it with you before moving on to the next section.

Making Movies in 1914

Filmmaking as a storytelling medium was in its infancy at the time. Not just Chaplin, but humanity, was learning how to make movies. And they did it the way film students still do it today: by making lots of short films! (But seriously, 36 films in one year is insanely impressive.)

Film language was still relatively simple. W. D. Griffith had invented the match cut, but the camera still remained stationary and usually displayed a wide angle to allow the spectator to view the scene as they would a stage play. There is very little use of close-ups, and cuts are usually just used between locations. (Interestingly, Charlie Chaplin never really got into using moving camera techniques, even later in his career; he believed the camera's job was simply to record what the actors were doing.)

Many scenes were filmed outdoors, and characters wore ordinary contemporary clothing (the one exception being the last title in the list, His Prehistoric Past). To audiences at the time, this must have been an exciting level of realism compared to theater productions. For me, it was astonishing to see ladies walking around in their bona fide nineteen-tensy drapey dresses and Gibsonesque hair-dos on a movie screen!

The Films

Most of Chaplin's Keystone films were just one reel long--about 16 minutes maximum when run at 16 frames per second, which was more or less standard at the time. This may have seemed a natural transition from vaudeville's one-act plays and comedy acts. A few films experimented with the two-reel format, but even so generally still had very loose story structure, consisting of following characters around from one mishap to another.

Most of the plots revolve around scenes of romantic infidelity and misunderstanding--basically, the conflict is "who gets the girl." Some gags, such as the two-legs-in-the-air fall, the pie in the face, and the straight-arm face slap, happen so often that they can get a little tiresome after a while if you watch all the films in a row.

However, the artistry of the comedic timing, the extreme long-takes with so much going on in them, and the lengths that the actors were willing to go to (including extremely dangerous falls) remain impressive even by today's standards.

And the films are just funny. And they always will be. And that's the magic of them.

The Portrayal of Women

The rape culture is somewhat appalling. A common motif is a man forcing a kiss upon a girl he has just happened to meet on a park bench, and in Mabel's Strange Predicament it seems to be a given that if a man sees a woman in her pajamas, he won't be able to stop himself from having his way with her.

The women fight back by scolding, walking off in an offended manner, finding the protection of another man, or sometimes slapping the offender across the face. I found myself wondering whether all this was considered normal behavior at the time, or whether it was considered funny because it was abnormal.

However, some of the female characters are more fleshed-out than might be expected, possibly because Mabel Normand, who stars in many of them across from Chaplin, was also instrumental in writing and directing, and indeed is generally believed to have saved Chaplin's career by persuading producer Mack Sennett to give him a second chance when he was having difficulty adjusting between his vaudeville past and the new film medium.

Watch Them!

All of these films, except those of them that have been lost, are available to watch for free on Wikipedia and YouTube. I hope you'll do yourself a favor and watch a few, because no matter how old they are, they will still make you laugh. They are timeless because Charlie Chaplin was a true artist.

Here is my personal favorite, Dough and Dynamite for your viewing pleasure: