The Tramp

Chaplin's favorite character and one of the world's most indelible images is introduced in this movie, The tramp. Chaplin also sets up the theme that recurs in all of his best movies, the thing that man will do for love, whether real or imagined. It is a well known fact, that man is essentially a slave to woman, to her whims, fantasies, and urgings. It is what creates the love that is often opaque in the brusqueness and machoism that beguiles the maturity of man. Chaplin knew this and studied and exacerbated it in his movies, id est to ask the question; What is a man? What is a man without a woman? The yin and yang of the two creates humanity, so to speak. In this movie, he rescues a farmer's daughter from a bunch of thugs, and is brought by the woman home to the farm where he gets a job from her father. He stays because he loves the woman but does she love him? The melancholy of this movie eschews the laughs for the audience and the ordeals that Chaplin endures for her approval. A funny and touching movie.