The Vagabond

A pathetic fiddler tries to scrape a living together playing on the street and in bars. He chances upon a gypsy camp where he plays for a pretty young girl. However her father beats her savagely and the tramp helps her escape. When the pair happen upon a painter, events are set in motion to reveal the girl's true parentage.

One of Chaplin's Mutual short films this shows him still developing the kindly tramp personae on film. As a result the humour is not yet fully developed although we do get one funny scene of people being hit over the head etc. The plot is as basic as above and is typical of the day - audiences wanted to see the poor people suddenly being elevated to better things, no matter what the device. However from modern views I wanted Chaplin to be funnier and the message to be toned down or at least be more realistic.

Overall this will please fans of Chaplin and I think it is one of the first films he directed himself. The cast are good and it's always nice to see the little tramp act done well. However more routines and less aspiration would have been better.

Am a big fan of Charlie Chaplin, have been for over a decade now. Many films and shorts of his are very good to masterpiece, and like many others consider him a comedy genius and one of film's most important and influential directors.

From his post-Essanay period when he was working for Mutual, 'The Vagabond' is not one of his very best or even among the best of this particular period. It and his Essanay period shows a noticeable step up in quality though from his Keystone period, where he was still evolving and in the infancy of his long career, from 1914, The Essanay and Mutual periods were something of Chaplin's adolescence periods where his style had been found and starting to settle. 'The Vagabond' is among the best of his early work and for me it is the first great Chaplin short under Mutual.

Certainly other efforts of his have more pathos and a balance of that and the comedy than 'The Vagabond'.

On the other hand, 'The Vagabond' looks pretty good, not incredible but it was obvious that Chaplin was taking more time with his work and not churning out countless shorts in the same year of very variable success like he did with Keystone. Appreciate the importance of his Keystone period and there is some good stuff he did there, but the more mature and careful quality seen here and later on is obvious here and preferred.

'The Vagabond' is one of his funniest from this period and does it without being over-reliant on slapstick. It moves quickly and there is a more discernible and busier story to usual, even if at times it could have had more variety.

Chaplin directs more than competently, if not quite cinematic genius standard yet. He also, as usual, gives an amusing and expressive performance and at clear ease with the physicality of the role. The supporting cast acquit themselves well, with a charming Edna Purviance and the chemistry between her and Chaplin.

Summing up, very well done. 9/10 Bethany Cox

"The Vagabond" represents quite an evolution for Chaplin. He had already proved himself the funniest comedian on screen and was already in the process of distancing himself from the crude and frantic slapstick of Keystone. With this film, more than any afore, he recreated the tramp as a character worthy of pity. Here begins the pathetic hero whom audiences could invest their emotions in. At Mutual, adding this drama to his refinements in his comedy, he created in the tramp, cinema's most endearing and recognizable icon.

In the film, the vagabond violinist saves the girl (Edna Purviance, as usual) from a terrible gypsy chieftain who whips her. Although Charlie saves her by hitting the gypsies over the heads with a log, there isn't much that's funny about this sequence; it's as purely dramatic as Chaplin's films ever get. And, it perfectly sets Chaplin up as the hero for the sentimental denouement. Additionally, rather than an equally rough and comic clown or a heavy as the tramp's competition for the girl, here, it's a handsome gentleman artist--leaving the tramp feeling inadequate--and to us, more sympathetic than ever.

Chaplin starts out The Vagabond playing in a bar, basically as a street performer, but soon finds himself run out by the more fully developed band who is unhappy that he's stealing their customers. Soon he wanders out into the woods and almost aimlessly stumbles across a group of backwards country people. There is a hunch-backed hag of a woman that looks like a witch but is probably the wife of a mountain of a man who likes to beat the women around him and carries a huge whip wherever he goes. This guy is ripe for a slapstick smack down.

There's an amusing scene where a young girl is beaten by the man and then Charlie shows up and tries to cheer her up by going nuts on the violin, succeeding only in getting too excited and falling into a tub of water behind him. After a series of unfortunate events, he trades his trademark cane in for a bigger stick and proceeds to knock out all the men in sight, finally making off with the young girl and the family's house, which is really just a horse-drawn wagon.

I am curious about one of the first things that happens after he "liberates" her from her family. He takes a tub of water and roughly scrubs her face, sticking his fingers into her ears and nose while he washes her. The fact that he washes her face rather than allowing her to do it herself is obviously a physical comedy ploy, but it also gave me the feeling that he is sort of washing the country off of her, turning her into a respectable woman.

At any rate, soon she stumbles upon an artist who finds her so beautiful that he wants to paint her, and the result is so wonderful that she gains a following in the uppity art world. Soon some rich art fans show up to take save her from a life in rags and bring her, presumably, to the big city. Charlie refuses a reward (or payment for selling the girl, as it were) and simply hugs the girl and probably wishes her good luck as she sets off in the big car. But the girl decides she doesn't want to leave without him, so they turn around and go back for him.

This story is fraught with problems, of course, like if she would ever start to miss her family or if her upbringing in the big city would conflict with her background as a country girl, and the ending is also a little too cute and neat, but for Chaplin's early silent comedies, this is a very complex story with a definable beginning, middle and end. I felt a little uncomfortable during the face-washing scene, but overall this is definitely a higher quality example of Chaplin's early work.

The first trait that called my attention in this short film is that it brings sequences of situations considerably independent to each other, although presented linearly. Besides that, forgive me if I am wrong, but I had the impression that this film is somewhat different from most of the Tramp's movies. Slapstick is Chaplin's trademark, off course, but in this movie, perhaps more than usual, he performs strongly cartoon-like scenes, with movements which really look like the ones shown in animated TV shows. Another interesting possible novelty is that Edna Purviance has a quite funny scene together with Charlie. She uses to be portrayed in Chaplin's movies as an unassailable beauty diva, but here she gets down the pedestal and makes we laugh at her bath. That is something very nice to see. The end is also somewhat unusual, although related to an issue that is present in almost all Chaplin's movies. These are the novelties, but, on the other hand, prejudice against gypsies is a serious drawback in my opinion. The violent kidnappers could have been non gypsies at no expense to the story. Anyway, the little tramp tried everything to make a living: even as a street musician he tried to get some coins!