[Lee Jong-gil's Film Reading] Comic Acting, the Strength to Overcome a Painful Era

Charlie Chaplin 'The Kid' 100th Anniversary Special Exhibition

Charlie Chaplin (1889?1977)'s humor stems from ridiculous suffering. He believed that laughter was the power to overcome a painful life. With unique ideas, he tried to sublimate realistic sadness and pain?even hunger and death. The film The Kid (1921), currently showing at CGV to commemorate its 100th anniversary until the 7th, is a representative work. At the heart of this tragicomedy is Charlie, Chaplin's alter ego, the Tramp. A tiny toothbrush mustache, a chimney pot hat, baggy pants, worn-out shoes, and a cane. He is a wanderer and a gentleman, a poet and a dreamer, cheerful yet lonely.

One day, he passes through an alley and finds a newborn baby. The mother, struggling with poverty, had left the baby in a limousine to meet wealthy parents, but thieves who stole the car abandoned the baby next to a trash bin and fled. Charlie decides to raise the child himself. The clumsy parenting process evokes laughter. The newborn lies in a hammock made from an old army blanket. The baby drinks milk by sucking on a rubber nipple attached to a teapot spout. Watching with a pleased expression, Charlie makes a baby potty by cutting a hole in an old rattan chair.

In the 1920s, films mixing comedy and tragedy were rare. Chaplin originally intended The Kid to be a slapstick comedy combined with drama. His friend and screenwriter, Geubner Morris, opposed this. "That's absurd. Form must be pure. If it's comedy, then comedy; if drama, then drama. Mixing the two is unthinkable. One side will inevitably fail." Chaplin recalled the time in his autobiography.

"I told him that moving from slapstick comedy to emotionally stirring drama was not a matter of form but a judgment about emotions and scene arrangement. Form does not arise spontaneously. Someone creates it. If an artist envisions a world and truly believes in it, no matter how much of a mixture it is, it can work. (...) The Kid was basically a new form combining slapstick and emotional drama."

His laughter also pointed to rebellion. Humans are powerless before the forces of nature and history. Poverty, hunger, disaster, war, epidemics... In tragic and extreme situations, Chaplin provoked laughter to avoid being more miserable. It was a kind of struggle to preserve human dignity. He believed that showing a smile even in futility was necessary to endure and survive the tragedy of life.

This strong will is well represented in The Gold Rush (1925), also screening at CGV. Lost in a blizzard, Charlie accidentally finds a cabin. Though chased out by the owner, he repeatedly returns like a paper doll pushed by the snowstorm. Then Jim, who discovers a gold mine, comes in, and the owner goes out searching for food. The two left in the cabin become delirious from hunger. Charlie cooks one of his shoes. He gives the soft upper part to Jim and eats the sole himself. Unable to satisfy his hunger, Jim mistakes Charlie for a roast chicken. He runs around wielding a knife, desperately trying to catch him.

The tragic moments portrayed in comedy are based on real events. The story of George Donner, who led over 160 people through the snow-covered Sierra Nevada mountains to settle in California, is one such example. Only eighteen survived. Unable to endure hunger, they survived by eating the bodies of their dead companions and their shoes. Chaplin imagined funny scenes even in such circumstances. It was not a simple satire of the era. It was a desperate appeal to individuals and the times. The eyes soaked in loneliness and melancholy reveal it. The conscience of the era melted into his comic performance...

This content was produced with the assistance of AI translation services.