Sadakichi Hartmann and The Last Thirty Days of Christ
Every so often I find myself remarking that
Charlie seemed to be part of an interesting
coincidence—ideas he had or things he was
thinking about were echoed in the thoughts
and minds of others or, in the case I’ll
be outlining today, Charlie and some individual
crossed paths and a sort of mutual influence
took place because of that brief encounter.
To start out this several-part series, I
wanted to highlight a truly unique individual,
poet and playwright Sadakichi Hartmann.
Discussing Hartmann in his relation to Charlie
is also timely here, because this year is
one of those rare years when Charlie’s birthday
falls on Easter (another such year, for
all you trivia buffs, was the year of Abraham
Lincoln’s assassination, 1865). So April
seems to be the perfect month to investigate
a confluence of Hartmann, Chaplin and the
Easter story.
Interestingly, Hartmann has been in
the news again lately. The New York
Sun just published an article on
April 14th entitled "King of the Bohemians:
Past & Present." Hartmann was born
in Japan of a German father and Japanese
mother in 1867 and then unceremoniously
disowned "and shipped to a Philadelphia
great-uncle" in 1881. Self-educated,
he began writing news articles as a
teenager, one of which followed a lunch
with poet Walt Whitman. His first play,
entitled Christ was banned and burned
publicly after Hartmann was arrested
for obscenity. So, in 1916, he decided
to move to California and try his luck
there, even landing a small role in
Douglas Fairbanks's The Thief of
Baghdad as the Court Magician.
But Hartmann became known mostly for
his poetry and criticism-of art, of
photography, and even of film, for it
turns out that he wrote an extensive
review of Charlie's City Lights,
just as Charlie himself was writing
about Hartmann in "A Comedian Sees the World." Published in the March 1931
issue of The Curtain, Hartmann begins
by writing
"Does this effort
come as a final test whether the silent
cinema can compete with the Talkie?
I hardly think so. The unprofessional
outside is not aware of such a problem.
It seems that there will always be room
and patronage for the silent, when it
is well done. The average bulk of the
public will tire just as quickly of
the Talkie, and
in a few years, look around for something else."
This review only gives a slight
impression of the sort of persona Hartmann
projected to the world. Probably John
Barrymore's characterization of Hartmann
gives the most apt impression
of his eccentricity. Barrymore described
Hartmann as "a living freak [...] sired
by Mephistopheles out of Madame Butterfly."
Hartmann's 1920 play The Last Thirty Days
of Christ, however, offers a bit more
self-generated evidence of this, with
passages such as a recounting of Jesus
and the disciples crossing the river Jordan:
" 'Onward,' commanded short-legged
Peter, just at the moment when he made
a misstep that enveloped his stalwart
form to the neck. With only his nose
and shining eyes and raised arms above
the foam he looked so ridiculous that
Mattheus could not resist the temptation
of squirting water at him.
This infuriated the son of Mary so,
that unmindful of getting his clothes
wet he threw himself on his stomach
and began with one arm and legs to beat
and kick the water, producing such an
uproar in the wet element that the former
custom officer lost his bearing and
disappeared in the churn, to rise again
with his hair dripping, and spitting
and blowing like the veritable embodiment
of a river god" (51).
It was this work that caught Charlie's
attention, although it seems certain
that their paths had crossed on many
other occasions. Charlie mentions Hartmann
by name in "A Comedian Sees the World."
In a discussion on Jesus and his various
authorial interpretations with biographer
Emil Ludwig in Nice, Charlie writes
" 'The one that was the
most beautiful to me," I replied, "was
The Last Thirty Days of Christ
written by Sadakichi Hartmann. In his
conception, Christ was both the mystic
and philosopher, a lone figure, misunderstood
even by his disciples" (Part III). |
