City Lights: Chaplin Asserts the Art of Silence

The San Francisco Symphony is taking a lighter turn for the Thanksgiving holiday, presenting guest conductor David Robertson leading the orchestra in a performance of Charlie Chaplin’s score to his 1931 film City Lights.

Robertson has a reputation for eclecticism, bringing a diverse range of interests to his position as conductor of the St. Louis Symphony. His talent and varied interests have been credited for the revitalization of the orchestra after a troubled few years that featured a brush with bankruptcy and dissolution, the untimely death of conductor Hans Von and a labor dispute that resulted in a work stoppage in 2005.

Robertson, a relatively young conductor at the age of 47, is proving to be something of a hot commodity, a much sought-after guest conductor who has brought his expansive repertoire—from the great international masters to the lowly slapstick comedians of early Hollywood—to a series of concerts around the country.

Charlie Chaplin is not often thought of as a music man, but Robertson has long been a champion of the comedian’s musical talents, conducting the St. Louis Symphony in presentations of several of Chaplin’s scores, including The Idle Class, City Lights and The Kid. As in the case of the San Francisco concerts, the scores are usually performed as accompaniment to the films themselves. In St. Louis, they’ve even sold popcorn in the lobby.

City Lights is perhaps Chaplin’s best feature film, with one of the most moving and poignant closing shots ever filmed. But what gets lost in the haze of hagiography is that City Lights was a daring and controversial project. The movies had begun to talk, quickly banishing the silent filmmakers to the ash heap of cultural irrelevance. Many filmmakers made the shift to sound willingly, eager to explore the possibilities of what was essentially a new art form. Others, like Chaplin, went begrudgingly.

But his was a unique case. As an independent producer, he had no studio bosses to force the change upon him. And as one of the most successful and beloved of screen icons, he had the clout and the means to stand his ground and produce whatever sort of picture he wanted. So he opted to remain silent.

This was not simply a case of stubbornness however, nor of vanity, though Chaplin possessed no shortage of either. Rather, this was a case of retaining the integrity of the character he had nurtured for more than 15 years, the beloved Tramp who had made him famous the world over. For the Tramp was an inherently silent character, and one that had international appeal; to give him a voice—and, perhaps most damaging, a particular language—would limit his archetypal quality.

“A good silent picture had universal appeal both to the intellectual and the rank and file,” Chaplin wrote in his autobiography. “Now it was all to be lost.”

So Chaplin set out to prove that silence was an art form rather than an outdated commodity, and he succeeded beyond all expectations. But still there is more to the story, more to the range and depth of Chaplin’s accomplishment. The advent of sound meant that for the first time Chaplin could have absolute control over the scoring of his film. In the silent era, films were often sent to theaters along with complete scores, or at least cue sheets so that each theater’s house musicians could accompany the film with appropriate music. Chaplin had always been involved in compiling these cue sheets, but the nature of the operation limited his influence. The new technology allowed Chaplin to compose his own score and oversee its recording, thus filling the only remaining gap in his auteurist resume.

The music, however, may not be quite what you’d expect from silent comedy. It has none of the clichéd bumps and whistles that pedestrian musicians so often use to accompany visual comedy. Again from Chaplin’s autobiography:

I tried to compose elegant and romantic music to frame my comedies in contrast to the tramp character, for elegant music gave my comedies an emotional dimension. Musical arrangers rarely understood this. They wanted the music to be funny. But I would explain that I wanted no competition, I wanted the music to be a counterpoint of grace and charm, to express sentiment, without which, as Hazlitt says, a work of art is incomplete.

Chaplin scored all of his future films as well, and even went back and composed and recorded scores for many of his earlier films. And, as per his estate, the films must be screened with those scores. Thus modern audiences who wish to see Chaplin on the big screen are often cheated of one of the essential pleasures of silent film: live musical accompaniment.

David Robertson and the San Francisco Symphony however are correcting that flaw and providing just such an opportunity.

City Lights

Guest conductor David Robertson will lead the San Francisco Symphony in a performance of Charlie Chaplin’s score for his 1931 classic City Lights at 8 p.m. Nov. 22, 24 and 25. The performance will accompany a screening of the film. The concert will be preceded by an onstage conversation between Robertson and San Francisco Silent Film Festival Artistic Director Stephen Salmons at 7 p.m. Davies Symphony Hall, 201 Van Ness Ave., San Francisco. (415) 864-6000. www.sfsymphony.org.

The Great Chase: Buster Keaton's The General

In 1998, amid an orgy of end-of-the-millenium top 100 lists, the American Film Institute released its list of the 100 best American films, a list that included three Charlie Chaplin movies but inexplicably no Buster Keaton films, despite the fact that several of his works, most notably The General (1926), rank among the silent era’s best and frequently hover near the top of many critics’ lists of the best films ever made.

But this has been Keaton’s lot in life, both during his career and since his death: to toil away in the shadow of the most famous comedian who ever lived. Though a late-career rediscovery of his work saw Keaton hailed as a cinematic genius, even Chaplin’s superior as a director, Keaton still retains his underdog status.

Pacific Film Archive will show The General and One Week (1921), Keaton’s first independent film, as the first installments in a new series: “Movie Matinees For All Ages.” The series debuts at 2 p.m. Saturday with Keaton and will be followed over the next couple of Saturdays with the Marx Brothers’ Horse Feathers (1932) and Victor Fleming’s The Wizard of Oz (1939).

The General is essentially one big chase sequence, brilliantly constructed and expanded to feature length. The story, based on a true incident from the Civil War, concerns a Southern train stolen by Northern soldiers, who spirit the engine back into Northern territory, burning bridges and destroying telegraph wires as they go. Buster, as Johnnie Grey, is the General’s engineer, and sets out to recapture his beloved locomotive. Along the way, Keaton stages a series of beautifully choreographed and increasingly dangerous stunts until he arrives in enemy territory, rescues his train—and, almost by accident, his girl—and then heads back to Southern territory while hounded by Northern soldiers. Thus the chase folds back on itself, like an arc that delivers Keaton back where he began—the “Keaton Curve,” as critic Walter Kerr put it—with gags and stunts from the first half now expanded upon in the second.

The General and Chaplin’s The Gold Rush (1925) are unique among screen comedies in that they combine two seemingly incongruous genres: the comedy and the epic. Such a pairing had never been attempted before, as the grand scale of the epic seemed at odds with the smaller, more personal nature of character-based comedy. But whereas Chaplin’s film only contained a few outdoor shots in the early scenes before retreating to the comfort of studio sets, Keaton preferred to shoot on location; few of his comedies take place in studio sets. And though location shooting and period costumes were nothing new in Keaton’s work, The General dwarfs his previous efforts in scale and detail. Many critics consider it the most convincing celluloid recreation of the Civil War, the imagery recalling Matthew Brady’s photographs from the period.

Keaton instructed his crew to make it “so authentic it hurts” and carefully replicated the trains, uniforms, styles and terrain of the era. There were no special effects; Keaton’s desire for authenticity extended to every shot, culminating in the dramatic scene in which a train crashes through a burning bridge as scores of Northern soldiers pour over the hillside to converge on the Southern army’s front lines.

Critical reception was mixed. Some thought it a solid picture while others considered it Keaton’s weakest effort, taking offense at the notion of making light of the Civil War. Ultimately the considerable expense of the production caused Joseph Schenk, Keaton’s producer, to intervene with the usually autonomous director-star, requiring that his next feature be decidedly less extravagant. Keaton dutifully followed up with College (1927), one of his most restrained efforts, before embarking on the more elaborate Steamboat Bill, Jr (1928). It was while making Steamboat that Keaton learned that Schenk had sold his contract to MGM, bringing an end to Keaton’s independent career.

Under MGM, Keaton struggled to keep control over his work but quickly became subsumed by the studio system after his first feature, The Cameraman (1928). Thus Keaton, like Erich von Stroheim before him and Orson Welles after him, became something of a victim of his own success as the expense of and lack of contemporary public appreciation for his greatest achievement ultimately undermined his career.

PFA’s screening of The General will be preceded by One Week, the first two-reeler Keaton released as an independent artist after his apprenticeship with Roscoe “Fatty” Arbuckle. One Week was hailed as the year’s best comedy upon its release, establishing Keaton as one of cinema’s most innovative artists. The film is an excellent introduction to Keaton’s work as it features many of the characteristics that would become his hallmarks: a fascination with machinery, a semi-surrealist perspective, trains, and of course, the Keaton Curve, as the efforts of Buster and his bride to construct a pre-fabricated house eventually leave them homeless once again.