The Chaplin Museum pays tribute to the film that opened social cinema a century ago

Alejandro Macias Corsier sur Vevey (Switzerland), 19 Mar The museum in honour of Charles Chaplin, in the Swiss farmhouse where the artist spent the last 25 years of his life in exile, commemorates with an exhibition the centenary of “El Chico”, his first feature film, a work in favor of social outcasts that once caused scandal. The exhibition at the Universo Chaplin Museum recreates the stages where this social and autobiographical work of the actor, released in 1921, was recorded, in which comedy and melodrama converge to launch an acid social critique of the puritanism of the time and a revolutionary message in favor of single mothers and vagabonds. PURSUED BY THE FBI “The film opposed good people in American society at the time. Just beginning the 1920s, Chaplin raised two totally marginalized figures, which lifted the most conservative sectors against them,” the museum's promoter and designer, Yves Durand, told Efe. Chaplin was always on the side of the most disadvantaged. At a time when the specter of communism terrified the American high echelons, the comedian dared to denounce capitalism, the exploitation of workers and confronted with his unmistakable satirical style of power. This caused the US government to persecute him for virtually his entire career: the FBI was constantly looking for reasons to imprison him or expel him from the country, said Durand, who clarified that Chaplin never defined himself as a communist but as a “humanist.” “El Chico” was the starting point of a filmography dedicated to denouncing social injustices, as later showed by “Modern Times” (1936) and “The Great Dictator” (1940), the latter film in which he demonstrated that humor could be made by such sinister characters as Hitler or Musolini. “I think if Chaplin were alive today he would do with Vladimir Putin something similar to what he did in The Great Dictator. Through humor, I would find a way to represent it ridiculously. He was always against those who attack the weak,” Durand said. HIS MOST AUTOBIOGRAPHICAL FILM Chaplin represents in “El Chico” his almost Dickensian childhood in the London district of Lambeth. The film, which lives in a strange balance between the greatest of abysses and happiness, reconstructs the streets, visible in the exhibition, where this difficult stage of his life took place, marked by his mother's mental illness and the early death of his father. “To understand Chaplin's work well, one must know his childhood, because everything comes from there, all his work is influenced by that stage of his life,” says Durand. “The protagonist child plays little Chaplin, who from a very young age had to order food on the street and take care of his mother, since his father, of whom little is known is that he was an alcoholic, used to be absent,” says the museum's promoter. The exhibition also collects memories of some iconic scenes, such as the broken glass in the window that appears in the opening scenes, and some personal objects from the actor and director's childhood, such as handmade toys or his first projectors. JACKIE COOGAN, A BLESSING FOR CHAPLIN Chaplin's first feature film began to be produced just three weeks after the tragic death of his first child with actress Mildred Harris, a baby who died less than three days old due to a malformation. This episode left Chaplin “very touched”, although the appearance of Jackie Coogan, the five-year-old actor who represented the boy in the film, was a blessing for him, Durand said. “The charm and vitality of the boy revitalized Chaplin, who lived with him for a year of recording in the studio, entering into a parent-child relationship,” he added. Coogan rose to stardom after “El Chico” and quickly became one of the most popular child actors of the moment. He continued to make films, always playing that role of charming boy at that time, and between 1924 and 1925 he managed to earn nearly $25,000 a week, Durand points out. However, the end of his career was unfortunate, as when he came of age he discovered that all his money had been squandered by his parents and after that, his only popular role was, 40 years later, that of Uncle Fétid in the television series of the Adams Family original, broadcast between 1964 and 1966. CHIEF AMS/ABC/ICN (video)