Charles Chaplin

*

DIRECTING
MY
FIRST
FILM

I MADE ABOUT five pictures* and in some of them I had managed to put over one or two bits of comedy business of my own, in spite of the butchers in the cutting room. Familiar with their method of cutting films, I would contrive business and gags just for entering and exiting from a scene, knowing that they would have difficulty in cutting them out. I took every opportunity I could to learn the business. I was in and out of the developing plant and cutting room, watching the cutter piece the films together.

Now I was anxious to write and direct my own comedies, so I talked to Sennett about it. But he would not hear of it; instead he assigned me to Mabel Normand, who had just started directing her own pictures. This nettled me, for, charming as Mabel was, I doubted her competence as a director; so the first day there came the inevitable blowup. We were on location in the suburbs of Los Angeles, and in one scene Mabel wanted me to stand with a hose and water down the road so that the villain’s car would skid over it. I suggested standing on the hose so that the water can’t come out, and when I look down the nozzle I unconsciously step off the hose and the water squirts in my face. But she shut me up quickly: “We have no time! We have no time! Do what you’re told.”

That was enough, I could not take it—and from such a pretty girl. “I’m sorry, Miss Normand, I will not do what I’m told. I don’t think you are competent to tell me what to do.”

The scene was in the center of the road, and I left it and sat down on the curb. Sweet Mabel—at that time she was only twenty, pretty and charming, everybody’s favorite; everybody loved her. Now she sat by the camera bewildered; nobody had ever spoken to her so directly before. I also was susceptible to her charm and beauty and secretly had a soft spot in my heart for her, but this was my work. Immediately the staff and the cast surrounded Mabel and went into conference. One or two extras, Mabel told me afterwards, wanted to slug me, but she stopped them from doing so. Then she sent the assistant over to find out if I was going to continue working. I crossed the road to where she was sitting. “I’m sorry,” I said apologetically, “I just don’t think it’s funny or amusing. But if you’ll allow me to offer a few comedy suggestions. . . .”

She did not argue. “Very well,” she said. “If you won’t do what you’re told, we’ll go back to the studio.” Although the situation was desperate, I was resigned, so I shrugged. We had not lost much of the day’s work, for we had been shooting since nine in the morning. It was now past five in the afternoon and the sun was sinking fast.

At the studio, while I was taking off my grease paint, Sennett came bursting into the dressing room. “What the hell’s the idea?” he said.

I tried to explain. “The story needs gagging up,” I said, “but Miss Normand will not listen to any suggestions.”

“You’ll do what you’re told or get out, contract or no contract,” he said.

I was very calm. “Mr. Sennett,” I answered, “I earned my bread and cheese before I came here, and if I’m fired—well, I’m fired. But I’m conscientious and just as keen to make a good picture as you are.”

Without saying anything further he slammed the door.

That night, going home on the streetcar with my friend, I told him what had happened.

“Too bad. You were going great there for a while” he said.

“Do you think they’ll fire me?” I said cheerfully, in order to hide my anxiety.

“I wouldn’t be at all surprised. When I saw him leaving your dressing room he looked pretty mad.”

“Well, it’s O.K. with me. I’ve got fifteen hundred dollars in my belt and that will more than pay my fare back to England. However, I’ll show up tomorrow and if they don’t want me—c’est la vie.”

There was an eight o’clock call the following morning and I was not sure what to do, so I sat in the dressing room without making up. About ten minutes to eight Sennett poked his head in the door. “Charlie, I want to talk to you. Let’s go into Mabel’s dressing room.” His tone was surprisingly friendly.

“Yes, Mr. Sennett,” I said, following him.

Mabel was not there. She was in the projection room looking at rushes.

“Listen,” said Mack, “Mabel’s very fond of you, we all are fond of you and think you’re a fine artist.”

I was surprised at this sudden change and I immediately began to melt. “I certainly have the greatest respect and admiration for Miss Normand,” I said, “but I don’t think she is competent to direct—after all, she’s very young.”

“Whatever you think, just swallow your pride and help out,” said Sennett, patting me on the shoulder.

“That’s precisely what I’ve been trying to do.”

“Well, do your best to get along with her.”

“Listen, if you’ll let me direct myself, you’ll have no trouble,” I said.

Mack paused a moment. “Who’s going to pay for the film if we can’t release it?”

“I will,” I answered. “I’ll deposit fifteen hundred dollars in any bank and if you can’t release the picture you can keep the money.”

Mack thought a moment. “Have you a story?”

“Of course, as many as you want.”

“All right,” said Mack. “Finish the picture with Mabel, then I’ll see.” We shook hands in a most friendly manner. Later I went to see Mabel and apologized, and that evening Sennett took us both out to dinner. The next day Mabel could not have been sweeter. She even came to me for suggestions and ideas. Thus, to the bewilderment of the camera crew and the rest of the cast, we happily completed the picture. Sennett’s sudden change of attitude baffled me. It was months later, however, that I found out the reason: it appears that Sennett intended firing me at the end of the week, but the morning after I had quarreled with Mabel, Mack received a telegram from the New York office telling him to hurry up with more Chaplin pictures as there was a terrific demand for them.

The average number of prints for a Keystone Comedy release was twenty. Thirty was considered quite successful. The last picture, which was the fourth one, reached forty-five copies, and demands for further copies were increasing. Hence Mack’s friendliness after the telegram.

The mechanics of directing were simple in those days. I had only to know my left from my right for entrances and exits. If one exited right from a scene, one came in left in the next scene; if one exited towards the camera, one entered with one’s back to the camera in the next scene. These, of course, were primary rules.

But with more experience I found that the placing of a camera was not only psychological but articulated a scene; in fact, it was the basis of cinematic style. If the camera is a little too near, or too far, it can enhance or spoil an effect. Because economy of movement is important, you don’t want an actor to walk any unnecessary distance unless there is a special reason, for walking is not dramatic. Therefore, placement of camera should effect composition and a graceful entrance for the actor. Placement of camera is cinematic inflection. There is no set rule that a close-up gives more emphasis than a long shot. A close-up is a question of feeling; in some instances a long shot can effect a greater emphasis.

An example of this is in one of my early comedies, Skating.* The tramp enters the rink and skates with one foot up, gliding and twirling, tripping and bumping into people and getting into all sorts of mischief, eventually leaving everyone piled up on their backs in the foreground of the camera, while he skates to the rear of the rink, becoming a very small figure in the background, and sits among the spectators innocently reviewing the havoc he has just created. Yet the small figure of the tramp in the distance was funnier than he would have been in a close-up.

When I started directing my first picture, I was not as confident as I thought I would be; in fact, I had a slight attack of panic. But after Sennett saw the first day’s work, I was reassured. The picture was called Caught in the Rain. It was not a world-beater, but it was funny and quite a success. When I finished it, I was anxious to know Sennett’s reaction. I waited for him as he came out of the projection room.

“Well, are you ready to start another?” he said. From then on I wrote and directed all my own comedies. As an inducement, Sennett gave me a twenty-five-dollar bonus for each picture.

He now practically adopted me, and took me to dinner every night. He would discuss stories for the other companies with me and I would suggest crazy ideas which I felt were too personal to be understood by the public. But Sennett would laugh and accept them.

Now, when I saw my films with an audience, their reaction was different. The stir and excitement at the announcement of a Keystone Comedy, those joyful little screams that my first appearance evoked even before I had done anything, were most gratifying. I was a great favorite with the audience : if I could just continue this way of life, I could be satisfied. With my bonus I was making two hundred dollars a week.

Since I was engrossed in work, I had little time for the Alexandria Bar or my sarcastic friend, Elmer Ellsworth. I met him, however, weeks later, on the street. “Say, listen,” said he, “I’ve been seeing your pictures lately, and, by God, you’re good! You have a quality entirely different from all the rest. And I’m not kidding. You’re funny! Why the hell didn’t you say so in the first place?” Of course, we became very good friends after that.

There was a lot Keystone taught me and a lot I taught Keystone. In those days they knew little about technique, stagecraft or movement, which I brought to them from the theatre. They also knew little about natural pantomime. In blocking a scene, a director would have three or four actors blatantly standing in a straight line facing the camera, and, with the broadest gestures, one would pantomime “I-want-to-marry-your-daughter” by pointing to himself, then to his ring finger, then to the girl. Their mimeing dealt little with subtlety or effectiveness, so I stood out in contrast. In those early movies, I knew I had many advantages, and that, like a geologist, I was entering a rich, unexplored field. I suppose that was the most exciting period of my career, for I was on the threshold of something wonderful.

Success makes one endearing and I became the familiar friend of everyone in the studio. I was “Charlie” to the extras, to the stagehands, the wardrobe department, and the cameramen. Although I am not a fraternizer, this pleased me indeed, for I knew that this familiarity meant I was a success.

Now I had confidence in my ideas, and I can thank Sennett for that, for although unlettered like myself, he had belief in his own taste, and such belief he instilled in me. His manner of working had given me confidence; it seemed right. His remark that first day at the studio: “We have no scenario—we get an idea then follow the natural sequence of events . . .” had stimulated my imagination.

Creating this way made films exciting. In the theatre I had been confined to a rigid, nondeviating routine of repeating the same thing night after night; once stage business had been tried out and set, one rarely attempted to invent new business. The only motivating thing about acting in the theatre was a good performance or a bad one. But films were freer. They gave me a sense of adventure. “What do you think of this for an idea?” Sennett would say, or “There’s a flood downtown on Main Street.” Such remarks launched a Keystone Comedy. It was this charming alfresco spirit that was a delight—a challenge to one’s creativeness. It was so free and easy—no literature, no writers—we just had a notion around which we built gags, then made up the story as we went along.

For instance, in His Prehistoric Past I started with one gag, which was my first entrance. I appeared dressed as a prehistoric man wearing a bearskin, and, as I scanned the landscape, I began pulling the hair from the bearskin to fill my pipe. This was enough of an idea to stimulate a prehistoric story, introducing love, rivalry, combat, and chase. This was the method by which we all worked at Keystone.

I can trace the first prompting of desire to add another dimension to my films besides that of comedy. I was playing in a picture called The New Janitor, in a scene in which the manager of the office fires me. In pleading with him to take pity on me and let me retain my job, I started to pantomime appealingly that I had a large family of little children. While I was enacting mock sentiment, Dorothy Davenport, an old actress, was on the sidelines watching the scene, and during rehearsal I looked up and to my surprise found her in tears. “I know it’s supposed to be funny,” she said, “but you just make me weep.” She confirmed something I already felt: I had the ability to evoke tears as well as laughter....

This discursive autobiography should not preclude essaying a few remarks about film-making. Although many worthwhile books have been written on the subject, the trouble is that most of them impose the cinematic taste of the author. Such a book should be nothing more than a technical primer which teaches one to know the tools of the trade. Beyond that, the imaginative student should use his own art sense about dramatic effects. If the amateur is creative, he needs only the barest technical essentials. To an artist complete freedom to do the unorthodox is usually most exciting, and that is why many a director’s first picture has freshness and originality.

The intellectualizing of line and space, composition, tempo, etc., is all very well, but it has little to do with acting, and is liable to fall into arid dogma. Simplicity of approach is always best.

Personally, I loathe tricky effects, photographing through the fireplace from the viewpoint of a piece of coal, or traveling with an actor through a hotel lobby as though escorting him on a bicycle; to me they are facile and obvious. As long as an audience is famliar with the set, it does not want the tedium of a traveling smear across the screen to see an actor move from one place to another. Such pompous effects slow up action, are boring and unpleasant, and have been mistaken for that tiresome word “art.”

My own camera setup is based on facilitating choreography for the actor’s movements. When a camera is placed on the floor or moves about the player’s nostrils, it is the camera that is giving the performance and not the actor. The camera should not obtrude.

Time-saving in films is still the basic virtue. Both Eisenstein and Griffith knew it. Quick cutting and dissolving from one scene to another are the dynamics of film technique.

I am surprised that some critics say that my camera technique is old-fashioned, that I have not kept up with the times. What times? My technique is the outcome of thinking for myself, of my own logic and approach; it is not borrowed from what others are doing. If in art one must keep up with the times, then Rembrandt would be a back number compared to Van Gogh.

While on the subject of films, a few brief words may be profitable for those contemplating making a super-duper special—which, as a matter of fact, is the easiest picture to make. It requires little imagination or talent in acting or directing. All one needs is ten million dollars, multitudinous crowds, costumes, elaborate sets and scenery. With a glorification of glue and canvas one can float the languorous Cleopatra down the Nile, march twenty thousand extras into the Red Sea, or blow down the walls of Jericho—all of which is nothing but the virtuosity of building contractors. And while the field marshal sits in his directorial chair with script and table chart, his drill sergeants sweat and grunt over the landscape, bawling out order to the divisions: one whistle meaning “ten thousand from the left,” two whistles “ten thousand from the right,” and three, “all on and go to it.”

The theme of most of these spectacles is Superman. The hero can outjump, outclimb, outshoot, outfight, and outlove anyone in the picture. In fact, every human problem is solved by these methods—except thinking.

Also a brief word about directing. In handling actors in a scene, psychology is most helpful. For instance, a member of the cast may join the company in the middle of a production. Although an excellent actor, he may be nervous in his new surroundings. This is where a directors humility can be very helpful, as I have often found under these circumstances. Although knowing what I wanted, I would take the new member aside and confide in him that I was tired, worried, and at a loss to know what to do with the scene. Very soon he would forget his own nervousness and try to help me and I would get a good performance out of him. . . .

From Charles Chaplin, My Autobiography (The Bodley Head, Ltd., 1964).

* Chaplin’s first films-for the Keystone Company-made during 1914.

* There is no Chaplin film with this title. Chaplin is presumably referring to The Rink (1916), which he made for Mutual.