Charles Chaplin | A Woman / 1915

sunday in the park

by Douglas Messerli

 

Charles Chaplin (screenwriter and director) A Woman / 1915

 

The last of Chaplin’s three drag films is perhaps the most intricate in terms of plot and possible interpretations. In this 26-minute mini-feature we get a preview of sorts into Chaplin’s great films of the 1920s and 30s, bringing up issues of class, sexual abuse, spousal violence, and even possible hints of homosexuality.

       A Woman might even have been titled The Women in its crystal ball-like vision of some of the issues brought up in the 1939 George Cukor film version of Clare Boothe Luce’s play. Chaplin’s film begins, in fact, with two women, mother (Marta Golden) and daughter (Edna Purviance), accompanied on a Sunday outing to what appears to be Los Angeles’ Echo Park by the husband and father (Charles Inslee). The three of them, well-dressed, sit on a bench, the father and mother lulled by the summer breezes into sleep, while the young girl is so bored that she too soon finds herself dozing off. 

     Out of nowhere appears a true flirt (Margie Reiger) passes in front of them, catching the half-closed eye of the suddenly awakening womanizing father. Before his distaff side can release another snore he slips from the bench to join the flirt a bit further along the wooded path. They quickly get to know one another, and he suggests he might procure them a drink from a nearby refreshment stand.

       While the would-be homewrecker waits in her web along tramps a wandering spider, our always cheerful Charlie finding her to be such a lovely being he asks if he might sit down. The flirt is clearly fickle and before the father can even return she has struck up a friendship with her new courtier. He returns to find someone else in his would-be bed and furiously commands our hero to cease and desist. A fight naturally follows which, despite some nice rear-end passes, ends in the Tramp’s defeat.

       Now sitting alone on the bench along come a couple of males (Billy Armstrong and Leo White, the latter described in the credits as “the Loafer”) determining, without explanation, to sit extremely close to the Tramp who has already situated himself at the far end of the bench. They talk, gesticulating actively, eventually turning toward him. But when they look up, apparently for some noise overhead, he steals a sip from the straw of the nearest man’s drink, much like his attempt to take a swig of Fatty Arbuckle’s soda in the previous movie. Outraged by his behavior the two reprimand him, the far one poking him with his cane.

        The Tramp, cornered as he literally is, pushes back on the cane, dislodging the man on the outside before taking up the bottle of the man next to him and hitting him over the head, both being temporarily put out of commission.

        Meanwhile, in a nearby glen the young flirt has suggested to the womanizer that they might play “Hide and Seek.” He loves the idea, and she blindfolds him so that she might disappear, the Tramp appearing just at that moment and taking up the game in her place.  As the man feyly waves his hand in search of his young companion, the Tramp relieves him of his bottle of soda, pauses, and hooks the crook of his cane around the elder’s neck leading him carefully to the edge of the lake. Searching for exactly the right spot he turns the man around to face him, the womanizer finally reaching out to feel the face of what he presumes might be his love in delight. But when he reaches the moustache, the mask falls, and he is appalled to see the Tramp meeting his gaze. Chaplin’s character takes up the bottle, hits him over the head, and deposits him into the lake, similarly pulling the policeman who comes up behind, having observed the incident, into the deep waters.

      Discovering the just awakening mother and daughter still on their bench, the Tramp asks if he might sit beside them and strikes up a conversation in which, it is apparent, they truly enjoy his company. Both invite him home, delighted by having such a good-looking young man in their midst, the daughter having evidently fallen immediately in love with him and her mother perceiving that she finally found the right man for her child.

      Her husband, meanwhile, finally struggles up to the bank to return to the urban paradise only to discover he is now alone. Fortunately, he quickly discerns his friend, the man the Tramp has previously hit over the head, on a nearby bench and they share their stories of their terrible woes. He invites the friend home, hardly able to resist without the help of his friend, other women he encounters along the way.

      Now sharing a snack of donuts, the Tramp has become quite popular with the two women. And when her father returns, his daughter is delighted to be able to introduce him to his new boyfriend. Obviously, the two immediate recognize one another as their foe, the father almost immediately attacking the young man with the Tramp pushing, pulling. and slapping back. Hearing the fracas, the father’s friend enters the room only to discover their mutual enemy in their midst and proceeds also to enter into the fray. At one point, holding onto the front of the Tramp’s pants, he twirls him around room until he has yanked off the young man’s drawers, the Tramp rushing outside in his underwear to scandalize an entire posse of neighbors, all women, who seem to be just passing by.

       With nowhere else to go, our young hero reenters the house and runs up the stairs locking himself away in a room where, suddenly, he sees a mannikin outfitted in woman’s attire. Somewhat like the later comedian Lucille Ball playing her famed role of Lucy Ricardo, we see that a crazy idea has just entered his consciousness: he will dress up as a woman!

       The result is mixed, particularly since his upper lip still sports his unforgettable bristle.  Fortunately, at this very moment his new lover arrives to witness his get-up. Realizing what he plans, she breaks into laughter, delighted at the idea that he might be able to fool her father. Ordering him to shave off his moustache, she offers him a pair of her shoes, and voilá, he has magically become her best friend from school, Miss Nora Nettlerash, a real knockout.

         Downstairs, the father of the house discerns that his friend has now spent some time in the kitchen getting to know his wife. We all know people who act entirely out of self-interest imagine that everyone behaves precisely as they do. He suspects the worst, stirring up another brouhaha about his friend’s untoward attentions to his wife. The two battle it out with the wife, shocked by his suspicions entering the room to say her piece. At the very moment when her husband swings his open hand toward the face of his former friend, the target ducks, and the slap comes hard against the cheek of his wife. 

          The abuse of both foe and friend has now wormed his way into his family life, and he retires to his living room to contemplate the fact. Fortunately, at that very moment his daughter enters to introduce her lovely classmate, Nora. How can such a man resist such a lovely face and shapely body? Within moments he’s chasing her around the house, and when his friend finally feels it’s safe to escape the safety of the kitchen where the wife of the house stands ready with a rolling pin to protect life and limb, he too witnesses the beauty of the new guest. Before our very eyes they are suddenly bartering for the beauty.

       By this time Chaplin is playing it as pure camp, swaying his hips, leading on her two suitors with every feminine gesture in his repertoire. The girl definitely knows how to lead a man on and at the very moment he leans in for the kiss butt-knocking them away at the very last instant.

      At one moment the men stand on either side of her demanding a kiss. She finally gives in, asking them, out of shyness, to wait for the count of three. “1-2-3”—she ducks—and in what may be the very first American on-screen male-to-male meeting of the lips, the two kiss.

       Finally, in total frustration the man of the house tosses his equally greedy friend out. Ready now to beg for her love, he finds Nora in the living room and kneeling on the floor while he strokes her buttocks and hips pleading for her love, in the process pulling down her dress to reveal the same stripped shorts that his friend had discovered under the Tramp’s pants.

       War is declared, but at that very moment his wife arrives with rolling pin in hand, his daughter pleading for her cause. The Tramp begs them all to put down their weapons suggesting an armistice of sorts: permission to marry his daughter if he keeps quiet about the gentleman’s philandering. “Come shake—and your wife will never know what I know.” Begrudgingly, the elder takes the younger man’s hand and, for a moment or so, all seems all his quiet on the western front—but a moment or two later as the younger pair kiss, he cannot contain himself and out goes the Tramp into the streets once again.

        A Woman plays almost like an athletic balletic version of a Feydeau farce, where instead of retiring into closets and hiding under beds, the desirous couples put their bodies into action to get what they want. But what they want is not always made so evident. Obviously the old man wants the love of every young woman he encounters, and the Tramp desires his daughter and she him. What to make with the Loafer’s phallic poke of the cane? And the friend is equally ambiguous in his desires. He clearly wants love, but there’s something queer in his approaches to it, sitting so extraordinarily close to two passersby, pulling the pants off a young man, holding the hand of a kitchen-bound wife, and kissing his friend—all unintentionally and accidental of course, but there it is nonetheless caught by the camera.   

       And the wife? What does she get out of all the chaos going on around her? One sort of wishes that she, following her husband’s lead, might throw the lot of them out. Perhaps then she’d at least some peace so that she might not have to take to that park bench to sleep.

      It’s hardly a surprise that Chaplin retired his drag act after this brilliant performance.

 

Los Angeles, February 15, 2021

Reprinted from My Queer Cinema blog and World Cinema Review (February 2021).