Charlot na Rua da Paz
O nome deste site foi-me inspirado pelo filme
"Charlot na Rua da Paz" - "Easy Street",
na versão original -, um dos poucos de Chaplin enquanto
Charlot que me fez rir; todos os outros me fizeram chorar...
Neste filme, Charlot Vagabundo é obrigado, para se
redimir de um pequeno crime e fazer vista aos olhos de Edna,
a sua doce e caridosa amada, a vestir a farda de polícia
de bairro. É enviado para a rua mais difícil da cidade, a
Rua da Paz, dominada por um gang de criminosos cujo chefe,
Eric, um hisurto brutamontes, aterorriza constantemente todo
o bairro. Charlot, como sempre desajeitado mas espertalhão,
tenta a todo o custo manter a ordem e a paz, interpelando,
dando e levando, provocando e fugindo, passado rasteiras e
nelas caindo e, por fim, ganhando. Este enredo retrata na
perfeição a minha vida e a luta pela paz na
minha própria alma caótica. O filme acaba "bem".
O grandalhão leva com um engenho de ferro na cabeça
e passa-se, transformando-se no anjo da guarda de todo o bairro
o qual, por sua vez, de anárquico e marginal, se transforma
em pacífico e exemplar. Para a minha alma, espero uma
alternativa...
"Easy Street is an exquisite short
comedy, humor encapsulated in the regular rhythms of light
verse. Its patterns of movement are as candidly stylized as
a pas de deux, detailing the narrative while begging leave
to doubt its reality except as pure form. The film, incidentally,
is the single Mutual comedy in which Chaplin first appears
as a true "tramp," penniless, hungry, but not wanting
a job. He would rather steal the collection box at a neighborhood
mission house than work. Edna [Purviance], the missionary's
daughter, nonetheless inspires him to reform, and he accepts
the role of policeman, rapping his captain's knuckles with
his nightstick when the captain cordially slaps him on the
back. He moves into a Hogarthian slum street, where Eric [Campbell]
is already at work balletically beating up the entire populace.
Having kissed Eric's hand by war of supplication, having temporarily
gassed him and taken his pulse, the two men engage, inevitably,
in a chase.
[...]
The rhythmic exercise is brought to
an end when Charlie drops an iron stove onto Eric's head from
the tipper room. Charlie is king of the street now, for a
while, and he does what Eric has done before him: he saunters
down its coarsely paved center while denizens of the area
creep from their cellar lodgings to stare at him in awe, making
undulating waves at the edge of the gutter; then he spins,
his coattails flying, and all vanish like blown leaves.
His command of the weaving pattern is
temporary, however. Edna has been kidnapped and is locked
in a basement room with a rape-minded dope addict. Charlie
arrives through the ceiling, accidentally sits on the addict's
needle, and immediately flings himself into a precisely conceived
and articulated battle mecanique that sees him delivering
his final blow to the addict in a rhythm that will directly
turn him into Edna's arms. The fight and the embrace are all
one, beats in a completed tune. What is left that is real?
Only the visual syncopation". (Kerr, Walter. The Silent
Clowns. New York: Knopf, 1975. pp.95-96)."
em StummFilmMusikTage
Erlangen
Nota: Chaplin e eu nascemos no mesmo dia,
16 de Abril.
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