And sometimes this blog will just be a straight swipe from David Cairns'...
Mabel's Strange Predicament is not, as it sounds, the sequel to Lucy's Complex Dilemma (although lip-reader Cairns notes our heroine is also saying the plot out loud), but in fact the début of Charlie Chaplin's iconic "Little Tramp" costume. No "park" nor "policeman" in this film though, and the "pretty girl" is director and star Mabel Normand - dressing for work in her pyjamas, a woman after my own heart - and unambigiously menaced by Chaplin's vagrant. Aided by distrurbingly haggard make-up, he gives is an astonishingly observed performance, employing little more than what a villain on the brink of passing out might do, teetering between slapstick and threat therefore, building genuine suspense. Chaplin's drunk act was infamous, but it's still a revelation to see his first appearance in this get-up not as a protagonist, but as a nightmare, repelling sympathy. And it feels a bit like the missing piece of a puzzle. That costume's nasty. Thanks, Shadowplay, for drawing this to my attention.
Yes. What a strange predicament.
What excellently clear pantomime! (says the animation teacher ...) I know people were generally smaller then, but gosh, the general head-to-body-size ratio in the cast is just astonishing. I've just gone through and shrunk a bunch of heads in my 1910 comic and I'm starting to wonder if maybe I shouldn't have done!
ReplyDeleteI had not clocked that. but I am not surprised you did. Briliant.
ReplyDeleteIn animation school we learn that, on average, humans tend to be 7-8 heads tall, for the purposes of getting proportions right in life drawing. However, when designing characters, even a realistic adult human tends to look better at 6 heads tall. I had thought (perhaps it was explained to me?) that this was to make the face more readable in a wide shot. Having now lived more in history, I really have to wonder if we as a species have spent most of our past in those proportions, so there's something about a 6-head human that feels more intuitively 'right' even if, with modern nutrition, it's no longer the average.
DeleteOo. I've just watched another eaarly Chaplin on David Cairn's blog, he looks abot 4 heads tall in that.
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