Films with a Chaplin influence

[stuart.uk]

Charlie Chaplin was IMO the first to invent the dramatic/romantic comedy, therfore influencing Frank Capra and Howard Hawks with their screwball comedies of the 30s like Mr. Deeds Comes To Town and Bringing Up Baby.

However, I was thinking about films using plots that originated in a Chaplin movie.

Dudley Moore played rich drunk Arthur in the film of the same name and Arthur on The Rocks. Chaplin didn't think he could make a comedy with the tramp as an alcholic, so he made him rich in The Cure.

Dustin Hoftman dressed in drag inorder to find work as an actor, sorry actress. In 1915 Chaplin, such a great actor that he was, was apparently very convincing dressed up as The Woman. I think I'm right in saying that Chaplin, on the run with the film of The Kid, dressed as a woman to avade the police, while visting a friend in a hotel.

Scent Of A Woman, was clearly inspired by City Lights. The blind theme was used with Al Pacino in SOAW, as it was with Virginia Cherrill in CLs. I think I'm right in saying that SOAW was made by City Light Productions and the sountrack from CLs was often heard in the film as background music.

[charliechaplinfan]

I didn't know that about Scent of a Woman. It's not a film I enjoyed very much at the time, pehaps it deserves another viewing. I thought Pacino overplayed the blind man. Times and my tastes change though. It's entirely possible I'd like it these days.

[MissGoddess]

I think Jacques Tati's films show a remarkable Chaplin influence. Mon Oncle put immediately in mind of Chaplin, and it was my first look at anything by Tati. Many sequences in Tati are silent and his character has qualities in common with the little Tramp (he's an outsider, but a gentle one, not preoccupied by the materialistic concerns of everyone around him; he unwittingly creates chaos in the worlds of those around him, etc.)

[MichiganJ]

I absolutely agree with Miss Goddess about Chaplin’s influence on Jacques Tati, even down to his cane (in Tati’s case, an umbrella).

Stuart.uk

Hard to see that Scent of a Woman was inspired by City Lights The only thing they seem to share is a character that is blind. Been a long time since I’ve seen Scent of a Woman, though. (Love Al Pacino, but hated the film, and his “Academy Award winning” performance in particular).

You mention The Cure, one of my favorite Chaplin films (I think his Mutual films are his best). But as I’m sure you know, he didn’t always play “the little fellow”, at least in his shorts, and I’m not really seeing the link between The Cure and Arthur either, but again, it’s been a long time since seeing Arthur. (By the way, I’d recommend checking out Kevin Brownlow’s documentary Unseen Chaplin, if you haven’t already. There are some spectacular outtakes from The Cure, showing how Chaplin “wrote” with film. Amazing how many inspired and hilarious bits he simply tossed away, for the better of the film, no doubt, but it just shows the guy had more genius than any one person should have.)

If I remember correctly, Chaplin may have dressed in drag in Tillie’s Punctured Romance. There’s at least one film I remember him in women’s clothes. (CCF may know.) But dressing in drag has a long history, before film, but especially in film. Fatty Arbuckle cross-dresses in many of his films, Harry Langdon, too. Just to name a couple.

I can tell you one comedian/actor who was directly influenced by Chaplin was Lou Costello of Abbott & Costello fame. He loved the pathos Chaplin gave his “little fellow” and Costello tried to inject some pathos into his screen characters, most notably in the Abbott & Costello film Little Giant (which is one of my favorites, although not really a comedy but more a “dramady”, and certainly unlike most Abbott and Costello films.) I remember reading somewhere that Costello was very interested in remaking Chaplin’s The Kid, and, as I recall, he and Chaplin were talking about it. This would have been in the 40’s, right in the middle of Chaplin’s “troubles”, which may be why the film was never made.