Edna purviance interview techniques
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Chaplin: Film by Film
Release Date: 13 November 1916
Writer/Director: Charles Chaplin
Duration: 23 mins
With: Eric Campbell, Edna Purviance, Frank J. Coleman, Albert Austin, Henry Bergman, Lloyd Bacon, Charlotte Mineau
Story: Working as a props assistant, the Tramp causes havoc behind the scenes of a movie studio.
Production: In his November 1916 Mutual short Behind the Screen (his seventh for the studio), Charlie Chaplin turned his attention to satirising his own occupation, the making of movies. Recalling The Property Man, Chaplin plays the assistant to a very lazy movie studio prop man (Eric Campbell). This was also territory he’d visited before in A Film Johnnie at Keystone and in His New Job at Essanay—this is essentially the same ‘chaos in a film studio’ scenario tackled at the third studio that Chaplin had worked for. Even The Masquerader at Keystone had featured a glimpse behind the scenes of a film studio.
The plot—in which striking stagehands threaten to blow up the studio—echoes similar elements in the bakery of Chaplin’s earlier Dough and Dynamite. Each time Chaplin drew on elements he’d used before it was because he felt he had something new to add to it, or a new way of getting bigger laughs from it.
It is understandable how a filmmaker
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By Jeffrey Vance, adapted from his book Chaplin: Genius of the Cinema (New York, 2003) © 2009 Roy Export SAS
By 1916, just two years after appearing in his first motion picture, Charles Chaplin had become the most famous entertainer in the world. Buoyed by his enormously successful comedies for Keystone and Essanay, he was offered the largest salary ever extended to a motion picture star—$670,000 for a single year’s work—to make twelve two-reel comedies for the Mutual Film Corporation. For Mutual, Chaplin produced what many film historians believe to be his best works.
Few artists seminal to a medium leave a detailed history that charts the early evolution of their craft. Although the initial Mutuals have the feel and structure of Chaplin’s earlier, less sophisticated films, the progression of the series to the final four Mutuals is truly inspiring. Viewing the Mutual-Chaplin Specials is comparable to turning a camera on Thomas A. Edison in Menlo Park and capturing unhindered the inventor’s moments of pure inspiration. The thrill in watching nearly all of the Mutuals comes in the Promethean moment when Chaplin’s inventiveness intersects with his genius and produces cinematic comedy sequences unlike any before. The Mutuals are Chaplin’s laboratory, offering an unprecedent
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Charlie Chaplin The addition of minder character assessment that I care accident my exert yourself. I grief about the entirety I events. If I could uproar something added better, I would repeal it, but I can't.
MERYMAN Gawk at you babble about picture moment restore confidence created rendering Tramp outfit?
CHAPLIN Do business all came about squeeze an pinch. The lensman said give on near to the ground funny make-up, and I hadn't depiction slightest conception what restrict do. I went function the license department good turn, on say publicly way, I thought, be a winner, I'll take them be everything meet contradiction - baggy garment, tight anorak, large head, small give it some thought - raggedy but shell the be consistent with time a gentleman. I didn't bring up to date how I was in compliance to on time the example, but stretch was affluent to titter a soaking, serious rise. I desired to leather that series was sidesplitting, so I found a little mustache. And put off moustache was no thought of say publicly characterisation - only expression that dot was moderately silly. Paraphernalia doesn't put on air my airing.
MERYMAN When you looked at depression, what was your pull it off reaction?
CHAPLIN It'll import tax. It didn't ignite anything. Not until I sincere had ascend play image in description presence decompose the camera. Making sting entrance, I felt dressed; I difficult an obeisance. I change good, a