Monday, 9 April 2012

Easy Street (Chaplin 1917)

One more chance then.
And I'm glad I watched 'Easy Street', because this is great. I think the first thing to say is that it's got a structure, a satisfying structure- beginning, middle, end. And the humour has a resonance because of that.
Charlie, the tramp, is inspired by religion (and Edna)- he becomes a cop on the unruly Easy Street, lorded over by bully Eric Campbell. Taming the bully, he transforms Easy Street and brings hope (and religion) (and Edna) to the community. Yeah, so stripped bare like that it sounds a bit corny, but it works just fine. The heart of the film is the encounter with Campbell, and this is so well done. The initial scene between them is one long take- the cop patrolling his new beat, becoming aware of this huge bruiser of a man prowling around, and then the cop's attempts to act nonchalant as his movements are aggressively mirrored- it isn't hilarious, but it's so beautifully done, really precise and powerful. Each situation in the film develops from the last- structure again. The final scene is a ludicrously rose-tinted glasses view of the world of course, but that's okay- it's charming, and by this point in the film you're ready to embrace it.
There's something genuine too in the transformation of Charlie's character here- on the simplest level he gets his redemption when he returns the collection box to the church, but there is genuine development in his worldview too. At the onset, he is is his own universe- his hunger and his poverty: there is nothing beyond that. He grows from exisiting for himself to his moment of misguided 'charity' with the bully's wife, and from here to his attainment of 'power', a power he uses over the community as a unifying force. That's what the love of a good woman can do. I think the film's implying that that's what religion can do as well, but I'm not sold on the sincerity of this implication.  

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