It seemed more than a little ironic that the front door of the Jeu de Paume, the venue of Sam Stourdz's "Chaplin et les Images" (Chaplin in Pictures) exhibit looks out on Place de la Concorde,
just a few short steps from the façade of the Hotel Crillon where Charlie Chaplin looked down from his position on the first floor balcony at the hoards of adoring Parisians creating a traffic quagmire there in March 1931.
Paris and Parisians have been and continue to be kind to Charlie, to hold him in their hearts as well as their minds. This summer in Paris, Chaplin films were on television every Sunday night, Monsieur Verdoux
and The Great Dictator were being shown on the big screen at select MK2 theaters around town and,
if you were paying attention, you might have seen him both pictured and quoted in a special exhibit at the Cité des Sciences et de l'Industrie celebrating the 100th anniversary of Einstein's theory of relativity and in
an exhibit at the Bibliothèque Nationale de France commemorating Jean-Paul Sartre's 100th birthday, cited as being one of the motivations for Sartre's visit to America in the 1940s.
But the "main event" was and is "Chaplin in Pictures"
at the Jeu de Paume until September 18th and then moving on to the Kunsthal in Rotterdam, the Deichtorhallen in Hamburg, and hopefully elsewhere.
Although the exhibit is loosely arranged according to Charlie's creative chronology, it's best experienced randomly. What struck me first was how
multi-textual Charlie's images are: they're two-dimensional, three-dimensional, photographic, filmic, verbal and visual-to name a few. And while
Stourdzé expertly traces the development and evolution of the Chaplin image, his exhibit suggests that this particular goal is almost beside the point.
The Little Tramp is not an evolving product that, like a snake, sheds his skin never to pick it up again. The Tramp of Mabel's Busy Day is as
important to an understanding of the Tramp in Modern Times or of the character of Verdoux as he is to himself or to the Tramp of the Keystone
films alone. These Chaplin images overlap; they engage in dialogue with each other; they infect each other. As you face the wall, for instance,
and begin to look at a traditionally framed photo-one you've only seen in books before and so are a little more than excited to see the real thing-you
notice that even this image is not "pure." The glass covering the photo reflects the film loop playing just behind you, so as you try to look at Chaplin
on the stage in Repairs, the Tramp from Kid Auto Races at Venice walks into the frame, sauntering tenuously up to Lehrman's movie camera.
This montage-creating ability of the exhibit design is reinforced by strategically placed display cases that juxtapose magazine covers, postcards and Charlie's
own "official" pressbooks from the archives in a simple and effective collage and by a striking display of modernist artistic representations of the Trampby Fernand Leger,
Erwin Blumenfeld and others which show Chaplin's character either exploded into familiar parts and re-assembled or placed newly envisioned in unfamiliar contexts.
Another part of the exhibit continues in this mode. At a station containing three small screens, clips from the Mutuals and a few Keystones
are creatively blended to highlight similar movements, strategies and bits of business-all while being infected and effected by one of the few
sounds of the exhibit, the soundtrack from City Lights accompanying the boxing scene, being screened just a few feet away. A similar
effect is created and expanded upon later in the exhibit, in a large space-both open and enclosed-in which three films are projected on one wall,
with first the ending of The Great Dictator and the ending of... well, hopefully, you'll see for yourself.
Not to be forgotten or dismissed in this account is the audience. I think Chaplin himself was always keenly attuned to his audience and so you could say that the audience of this exhibit-you
and I and the gaggle of folks crowding around that particular film still from Sunnyside you're just dying to see-are as much a part of the experience as the artifacts themselves. Young
and old, male and female, they were all here. Some shuffled around alone or in family groups, others had obviously taken the time to arrange a private guide-led tour. Very few were completely
silent and so, this was the true and perhaps intended soundtrack of the exhibit-shuffling feet, voices making themselves heard at all decibels in both conversation and laughter, and the light
swish-swish of clothed bodies in motion.
One of the great things about Charlie is that he belongs to everybody and everybody seems to want to possess some part of him, or connect to him in some
way. One young boy figured out that he could "collaborate" with Charlie in a way when he accidentally discovered that his hand had slipped over the lens
of a film projector. Soon he began trying new positions, effecting lighter and darker shadowing on the Charlie image-making the films and Charlie his own.
This is just one of the freedoms this exhibit allows-a kind of personal connection to Charlie Chaplin that is long overdue.
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