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Sadly Over-hyped

Absolutely the worst movie.

When a movie has you begging for it to end not even half way through it's pure crap. We've all seen this movie and this characters millions of times, nothing new in it. Don't waste your time.

Although I seem to have had higher expectations than I thought, the movie is super entertaining.

Charles Chaplin came up with the Tramp character one hundred years ago, in 1914.In 1916 the world had known him for two years.And that was the year he made this film, The Vagabond.This time he's a saloon violinist, who saves a girl, played by Edna Purviance from a gypsy caravan led by Eric Campbell.Then a painter finds the girl and paints her portrait.But does the painter get the girl? Or is it our beloved little tramp who gets her? Charles Chaplin has come up with a great story, once again.The funniest scene is where he performs for the girl.And he keeps falling into a bucket of water.This all reminds a bit of his latter film Limelight (1952), where he also played the violin.Chaplin was also an amateur violin player.He was really an artist, not just a regular movie maker.

By the time he made the Vagabond, Charlie Chaplin was not just the most popular comic on the screen, he was a fully fledged hero of cinema. It seemed that, so long as he continued to be funny, he could do no wrong, and people would always want to watch him.And just the opening shot of the Vagabond shows Chaplin's confidence in his own familiarity and popularity. He appears here as just a pair of feet below a saloon door, his gait alone being enough for audiences to recognise him. He then walks to the back of the set, to a point squeezed between the wall and the edge of the frame, while some other musicians set up in the foreground. The framing provided by the wall, plus the fact that the little tramp is inherently interesting to us as an audience, mean that our focus is upon him. These are not just good approaches for comedy, they are professional cinematic techniques that any director could put to use.Then, as usually happens, a plot begins to emerge from this situation, but the Vagabond's is a plot with an important difference. Not because the story is extremely poignant (so were those in The Tramp and The Bank) or neatly structured (as was that of Police), but because Chaplin treats the dramatic scenes purely as drama. He backs up the subplot with a few completely straight scenes, with naturalistic acting and camera moves that would have been distracting in a comedy scene but give added impact here. The slow dolly back from Purviance's portrait, beginning with just the picture then gradually revealing its setting and the growing crowd of admirers, really demonstrates Chaplin's competence and understanding as a director.But what is amazing here is the ease with which Chaplin and his cast are able to slip so freely between comedy and drama. Charlotte Mineau gives what must be her best performance, and Edna Purviance shows a greater expanse of her range than we have hitherto seen. Most incredible of all is the acting of Charlie himself, his face a little hard to read under the toothbrush moustache, but doing some carefully nuanced work with gesture and body language. Lastly an honourable mention goes to Leo White, one of my all-time favourite Chaplin co-stars, in his last ever appearance with Charlie. He's not easy to recognise here (he's the gypsy harridan!), but doing a nice and very funny job as always. This wasn't the end for White though; he had various supporting roles through the rest of the silent era, and has a blink-and-miss-it bit part in virtually every Warner Brothers picture of the 30s and 40s.The only flaw in the Vagabond is the final twenty seconds, a vulgar and forced happy ending, although it is done smoothly enough so as not to ruin the overall feel of the picture. Even with this coda in place, we are left with a sense of satisfaction, of a story well told. And while Chaplin had done several strong and emotionally involving shorts before this, the Vagabond is perhaps the first one in which you could take out all the comedy and still be left with a decent drama. It was at this point that the little tramp really gained the stature to become a leading man.

Chaplin starts out The Vagabond playing in a bar, basically as a street performer, but soon finds himself run out by the more fully developed band who is unhappy that he's stealing their customers. Soon he wanders out into the woods and almost aimlessly stumbles across a group of backwards country people. There is a hunch-backed hag of a woman that looks like a witch but is probably the wife of a mountain of a man who likes to beat the women around him and carries a huge whip wherever he goes. This guy is ripe for a slapstick smack down. There's an amusing scene where a young girl is beaten by the man and then Charlie shows up and tries to cheer her up by going nuts on the violin, succeeding only in getting too excited and falling into a tub of water behind him. After a series of unfortunate events, he trades his trademark cane in for a bigger stick and proceeds to knock out all the men in sight, finally making off with the young girl and the family's house, which is really just a horse-drawn wagon. I am curious about one of the first things that happens after he "liberates" her from her family. He takes a tub of water and roughly scrubs her face, sticking his fingers into her ears and nose while he washes her. The fact that he washes her face rather than allowing her to do it herself is obviously a physical comedy ploy, but it also gave me the feeling that he is sort of washing the country off of her, turning her into a respectable woman. At any rate, soon she stumbles upon an artist who finds her so beautiful that he wants to paint her, and the result is so wonderful that she gains a following in the uppity art world. Soon some rich art fans show up to take save her from a life in rags and bring her, presumably, to the big city. Charlie refuses a reward (or payment for selling the girl, as it were) and simply hugs the girl and probably wishes her good luck as she sets off in the big car. But the girl decides she doesn't want to leave without him, so they turn around and go back for him.This story is fraught with problems, of course, like if she would ever start to miss her family or if her upbringing in the big city would conflict with her background as a country girl, and the ending is also a little too cute and neat, but for Chaplin's early silent comedies, this is a very complex story with a definable beginning, middle and end. I felt a little uncomfortable during the face-washing scene, but overall this is definitely a higher quality example of Chaplin's early work.

Monday September 10, 7:00 pm, The Paramount Theater, Seattle A clear departure from his work with Keystone and Essanany, Charles Chaplin's third production for Mutual Film Corporation, The Vagabond (1916) demonstrates a turn toward the more complex story development and balanced content found in early features such as, A Dog's Life (1918) and The Kid (1921).A saloon violinist (Chaplin) plays outside a small establishment, then solicits the patrons who mistake him for a member of the band also playing. He flees the ensuing altercation and discovers a waif, The Gypsy Drudge (Edna Purviance), held captive by cruel gypsies on a country road. He plays for her until the Chief (Eric Campbell) appears and beats them both. Charlie rescues the girl who is later discovered by a traveling artist. When her portrait is seen my her mother in a gallery the girl is rescued. Charlie is left alone, but the girl realizes her true love and returns for him.