City Lights 1930 1931 1932 next previous
City Lights Clippings 90/387
Rob Wagner, Screenland, New York, December 1929
„That will be the great novelty of City Lights“
Editorial content. „CHARLIE CHAPLIN
All About Charlie‘s New Picture and What he Really
Thinks of the Talkies
The Best Interview ever Written about the Comic
Genius of the Screen
By Rob Wagner
SINCE starting my own little magazine – Rob Wagner‘s
Beverly Hills Script (adv!) – I haven‘t had much time
to barge around Movieland, and in consequence have seen
little of my old playmates. But as I had promised
SCREENLAND a story about Charlie Chaplin and his new
picture, I just grabbed an hour off from my cosmic
editorial duties and beat it down to his studio. I expected to get
my stuff in about fifteen minutes and then
be back on the job. I was with him for eight hours!
It was my good – or bad! – luck to find
him not working and when Charlie is not working he doesn‘t
want anybody else to work, and when two non-workers
like us get together there are no end of colossal problems that
have to be solved – religion, politics, love, and of course,
Art with a capital R.
Despite the Gethsemane he has passed through in the
last two years, Charlie is looking wonderfully well.
His back hair has erased ten years from his age. he had to dye
it for his picture. A daily smearing of mascara was
too messy and irksome. He was wearing white tennis trousers
and a white sweat-shirt.
All afternoon we sat in his little ,conference cottage‘
and talked our heads off. One of Charlie‘s insistent
quirks it that he is utterly and completely selfish and is
interested in nobody‘s work but his own. That‘s
what he says. But if there is any angle to my business
or domestic affairs that he doesn‘t know about, it
could be written on a postage stamp. Whenever I discuss
a story or article I am writing, he will grow as excited
as a school-boy and the chances are he will call me up the
next day with a corking suggestion. He has been
thinking about it all night.
As to his selfishness and inconsideration of others –
well, his own organization is an utter contradiction
of his egoistic pose. His whole crew has been with him
for years and if any of them drift away during his
interminable troubles they always drift back. Charlie‘s loyalty
to his old friends is one of the most charming
things in his character.
Well, after pumping me dry about my new journalistic
adventure, advising me on its finances, suggesting
schemes to get subscriptions and even offering to write
for it, we finally got around to his work. Naturally,
the big question was: how is Charlie to meet the new idiom –
talking pictures?
,I must admit, Rob, that they fascinate me, anger me and
frighten me. Of course, they are here to stay, but not,
I think, in their present expression. It‘s so new that few people
know what it‘s all about, and so far most of the results
are artistic bastardies. In drama they are trying to marry the
conventions of the theater with the realism of the
screen, and the result is an illegitimate child.‘
I have not the space to tell of his generalizations
regarding the problem as a whole, so I‘ll get down to his own
immediate problem.
,By far the finest marriage is that of pantomime
and music. It always has been, but heretofore
all we could do was to have some one score a picture
to well-known themes and then hope that the
organist would play them. You know what happened in the
small towns – the high-school girl played anything
she wished and usually out of all harmony with the action.
,Now, however, we can absolutely determine
the music and as it is part of the mechanical projection,
nobody can change it and the smallest theater
will hear it just as completely as the Roxy.
,This is a wonderful thing for me, and even though
I‘m using no dialogue in my picture I think you‘ll
that the musical accompaniment will satisfy all expectations
for ,sound.‘
,Furthermore, I am using no popular airs; my music
will be just as original as the picture, for I am
writing every bit of it myself! I am having it scored and
orchestrated as I go along and every movement
and gesture is accompanied by its own musical theme.
,Yes, I have a ,theme song,‘ but it is not
registered in the usual way. No principal sings. I, in my
character of Charlie, first hear it as a phonograph
record. You get the title from the disc itself – Wondrous Eyes,
by Charles Chaplin. The song is strongly impressed
upon me so that later, when I fall in love with the little blind
girl, whenever Wondrous Eyes is played by street
musicians or in saloons it has a very dramatic significance.
In fact, all through the picture music and song become
a background for the action almost important as the pantomime
itself.‘
Charlie then went on to tell me of some particular
musical stunts that he doesn‘t wish to make
public as yet, but which will be a new and sensational
development of this perfect marriage of the arts.
,I think I‘ve got some of the funniest business I have ever
done,‘ he went on, ,and I feel sure the picture will
have all the novelty in the sound accompaniments that the
public craves. My only fear is that I have been cursed
by too much high-brow publicity. My purpose is to entertain
and amuse. I am not trying to be subtle. I am trying
to be funny. The high-brows are looking for and expecting
subtleties. I must avoid that if I am to hold my own.
,Don‘t think I am avoiding dialog because of personal
fear. I was on the legitimate stage for years, but
I don‘t wish to give up the eloquence and beauty of pantomime
for a spoken title. The printed title is still a legitimate
tool. It is optical, the same as the picture, but it has its proper
mental effect I shall still use it when necessary.
,But it is the music that now for the first time I can
absolutely control, that will be the great novelty of City Lights.‘
Then for an hour of tennis on Charlie‘s new court.
He has only lately taken up the game under a professional
instructor and leave it to the little devil to excel in it
right off the bat. I have been playing for years and beat him
the first set 6-4, and then he turned in and beat me –
me, mind you – 6-3!
His court has been hewn out of the hillside and as you
play you look over the lower hills to the Pacific Ocean
lying in the west like an alluring dream of vast adventure.
As the sun set we turned on the side lights and
finished our game.“ (...)
Three photos.
Redaktioneller Inhalt
City Lights 1930 1931 1932 next previous
