Charles Chaplin | The Cure / 1917

curing waters

by Douglas Messerli

 

Vincent Bryan, Charles Chaplin, and Maverick Terrell (screenwriters), Charles Chaplin (director) The Cure / 1917

 

Somewhat like the figure played by Harpo Marx in the 1930s, Chaplin’s The Little Tramp of the teens occasionally displays significant bisexual interest, particularly when he mistakenly believes another male is flirting with him or when he believes women are asking him to engage with another man in physical manner.

 

    In The Cure, for example, Chaplin’s character has checked into hydropathic hotel in order to “dry out,” and after a series of drunken maneuvers such as his inability to enter the center through its revolving door and other pratfall actions which results in the immediate enmity of a gout-stricken sanitarium guest (Eric Campbell) whose bandaged foot he not only steps on by catches up his revolving door frenzy, he his taken by a sanitarium attendant (Albert Austin) to enjoy the natural waters.

     Seated between a children’s nurse and the attendant, Charlie is offered time and again a cup of the water which he accidentally spills out, seemingly by purpose, like the later comedian W. C. Fields, refusing to let water touch his lips.

     Finally, the attendant attempts, with the encouragement of the nurse, to make clear that the water provides health and strength, offering his biceps to Chaplin as an example of the wonders it has done for him. Chaplin, with the nurse’s approval, somewhat nervously puts his hand around the attendant’s bicep, and when the nurse indicates her pleasure, takes it one step further by groping the man’s leg, which the attendant seems to enjoy, Charlie giggling like a fellow sissy over the results and even slapping the attendant in the face as if to scold his flirtatiousness.

      Later, joining the other patients in the lobby, Chaplin once more encounters the man with gout, who in the meantime has come close to physically “mashing” a girl (Edna Purviance) on her way to her room. The girl has finally escaped to the lobby and there meets up with Chaplin whose more gracious behavior attracts her. He sits near her on a settee, joining the man with gout sitting in a nearby chair.

       As the bearded man attempts to openly flirt with the girl, the tramp, thinking his attentions are meant for him, reacts in kind, flirting back at him and finally throwing up a leg in girlish delight which of course comes down on the man’s bandaged foot once again.

        Outraged, the man rises, attempting to sit on the other side of the woven cane settee at the very same moment when Chaplin stands and turns it around, sending the large, bearded man to the ground, an act that almost gets our friend thrown out of the hotel.

        Such willingness to please whoever might be demonstrating any pleasure in him—a rare situation for the Tramp—is displayed at several moments in his short films, generally getting him, through his momentarily sexual confusion, into even further trouble much like Harpo’s more physical attraction to both female and male legs is a source of constant rejection and disdain. Even before the Tramp, in George Nichols 1914 short The Film Johnnie, Chaplin’s display of such sexual pliability causes further problems for his character who, just for a moment mistakes the gestures of another male movie-goer as being meant as a come-on.

       If nothing else the sexual shifts of Chaplin in these instances, suggests not only an attempt to please but a naive confusion of his own proper gender behavior.

       As for the rest of The Cure, Chaplin, as expected, brings chaos to the place by carrying along a huge portmanteau filled with enough bottles of liquor that when they are later discovered by the sanitarium manager, who orders them to be thrown away, they change the magic waters of the small hotel drinking pool into a festive punch bowl for the patrons who regularly come there to drink. By the time the Tramp returns to the lobby, he discovers that he is the only sober person in a mass of drunken dancers and revelers. The normally dour sanitarium folk have all been turned into rowdy celebrants, one man seen chasing after another for no other purpose, it appears, but to capture him and reward him a kiss, hug, or perhaps even more. Having been ordered to drink of the pool’s healing waters, who can blame the Tramp for joining in the fun?

      Clearly the girl can and does. But when she discovers that the pool has been polluted by alcohol, she forgives him and he, having once more fallen into normative heterosexual love, abstains from further drinking—at least temporarily. 

 

Los Angeles, September 4, 2022

Reprinted from World Cinema Review (September 2022).