About The Little Tramp

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“For me, the funniest thing in the world is the ridicule of impostors and self-important people in high places” 

(Charlie Chaplin)

 

Charlie Chaplin has left the world a cinematic legacy of excellence with incomparable civic and humanitarian qualities. His work, which is sculpted from human clay, is the echo of a thousand injustices that must be overcome, and sometimes even fought against, and which concern the weakest and the most vulnerable in this world.

 

Included in his many works, the artist and filmmaker drew inspiration for his most accomplished films from major historical events that have shaped society over an entire century;

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- Shoulder Arms      The absurdity of the First World War

- The Immigrant      The migrant waves through Ellis Island

- Modern Times      The hardships of the Great Depression

- The Great Dictator      The rise of authoritarianism in Europe 

- A King in New York      inspired by the campaign of fear during the McCarthy years while the Cold War wraps the entire world in dread under a Nuclear shadow.

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"I do not want to send messages to humanity, I only show certain conditions of present existence and I show it in a symbolic and practical way. But the truth is that an artist cannot ignore what is happening around him, he cannot forget the environment in which he lives.” 

(Charlie Chaplin)

Chaplin the humanitarian, values people more than their social status, their quest for happiness more than their thirst for power. He was revolted by the miserable fate of those left on the sidelines of society and the disadvantaged. The crisis of 1929 shocked him. Unemployment, mechanization and speculation worried him. The inexorable proliferation of fascist ideology between the wars, fuelled by the inaction of the world's most powerful, appalled him. 

 

His iconographic character, the Tramp, offers a message of dignity to those who have been left behind, putting into perspective the human condition of the thousand vagabonds of a world of which he is not only the most irreverent defender, but also the most noble, committed and sympathetic of representatives. 

 

Chaplin the scriptwriter pummels dignitaries, snobbish ladies, paunchy gentlemen in top hats, policemen, judges, hypocritical pastors, cowardly bosses, and military officers. The filmmaker renders apart all forms of propriety; his Tramp pinches the asses of statues, and launches pies at emperors, stars and archbishops.

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At the same time, he demands dignity for the common people, housekeepers, the unemployed, emigrants, tailors, convicts, workers and soldiers, all of whose costumes he changes into. The antics he unleashes against the powerful have a cynical quality that appeals to the masses.

 

The filmmaker knows an essential truth: his art is for the masses, his audience is made up overwhelmingly of workers and ordinary people, of whom the character Charlie the Tramp is, in more than one respect, the most eloquent representation of their solidarity. His heart, his origins, his opinions understandably place him on the side of the underprivileged given his own history as a child of the streets.