5 - The Ending of City Lights

Summary

Charlie Chaplin and Buster Keaton, the two greatest creators of silent-film comedy, arrived at diametrically opposed strategies for discovering comedy in the conditions of film. What a sublime accident of fate!

As an actor, Chaplin is perfectly expressive, whereas Keaton is famous for his inexpressiveness (more accurately, for the rigorous limits he places on the expressions he allows himself). Chaplin seems always to be performing for an audience whose love he craves, whereas Keaton characteristically seems unconscious of having an audience. Keaton incarnates a comical character who is naturally earnest, guileless, innocent, like a Kafka protagonist. In particular, he never smiles; that is, he finds nothing funny. Chaplin on screen, by contrast, laughs often, and his laughter frequently is addressed openly to the camera. Keaton almost never declares, or even expresses, desire, whereas Chaplin's passions are always manifest, although Chaplin, unlike Keaton, is also a master of deception, a seducer. Filmically, their styles are opposed as well. The way the world appears is essential to Keaton's films, but not Chaplin's. Chaplin the performer is at the center of his world, whereas Keaton is on the outside looking in. Keaton makes his gags with the camera, Chaplin with his performance on camera.

Keaton's comedy, as I understand it, turns on one joke, at one level a joke on the medium of film. We might say that the Keaton character wishes for a viewer's relationship with the world. That role he finds natural, as we do.