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If You Like ‘Ice Age’ Why Not Try ‘One A.M.’

The first chapter of this book works slightly differently to those that follow it in that rather than comparing two complete films it is comparing one complete (but short) film with a section of another. Basically it would be a shame to ignore pre 1920’s cinema altogether but the further back you go the harder it becomes to find useful comparisons. Therefore the earliest film in the this book is from 1916 (halfway through the silent era) and, partly because the film is a short, I’m only comparing it with certain elements of a modern film (hence the entirely inaccurate synopsis of ‘Ice Age)’.

In choosing an opening chapter for this book there are certainly worse things to do than to refer to the single best known figure in silent cinema, Charlie Chaplin is still stunningly recognisable the world over and is for many people the essence of the silent era. At least I say he’s recognisable, but the fact is that it’s really the character, the little Tramp, who’s well known. Which is why it’s a bit of fun to pick one of the rare films in which Chaplin plays a different character, a drunk rich man to be exact. The stage routine that made Chaplin’s name and got him into cinema in the first place was a drunk routine and this film is as close as we have to a record of it.

As for the film itself, Chaplin’s early career is replete with films (seriously; he made 15 films in his first five months in the industry, they didn’t muck about back then) but not all of them represent the qualities we might expect from the single most successful comedian of the twentieth century. Things looked up distinctly after Chaplin left the Keystone Studios where he had started and began to exercise some control over his career. ‘One A.M.’ is a film he made with Mutual, during a transitional period in his career, still making shorts (in this case two reelers; 20-25 minutes long) but laying the groundwork for his feature career. ‘One A.M.’ is not the most successful, well known or even the best of this period but it is still a good film and is almost a distillation of silent comedy technique. Plus it makes me laugh and is unique in that it is a solo performance (well, practically; Albert Austin appears as a chauffeur at the start but he does nothing, it’s all Chaplin really).

It’s tough to find modern comedies that compare in structure or execution to silent ones, even once you get into features, and the best comparisons tend to be animated. For some reason silent comedy has never left animation, from Tom and Jerry to Gromit by way of many others, silent animated characters are tremendously popular, (a popularity that would almost definitely be duplicated in live action film if anyone ever had the nerve to try, but that’s another book). ‘Ice Age’ is of course predominantly all talking, but it has one character who continues this tradition; Scrat. Scrat (voiced, if the term can be used for his squeaks and squeals, by director Chris Wedge) is a small squirrel like mammal who’s only aim in life is to store acorns for the coming ice age and in the process manages to steal the film despite being onscreen a grand total of seven and a half minutes. This is often the way with silent characters, they make a huge impact with surprising speed and ease. So it’s Scrat’s random bits and pieces in the film that I am comparing to ‘One A.M.’

It’s the single mindedness I mentioned that is the first link between these two films, and also the first example of ‘One A.M.’ being something of an archetype of silent comedy. When everything has to be expressed either by titles or visually then simplicity is often the order of the day, especially in short films, and more often than not silent comedies are based around a character trying to achieve one single thing and the comedy is derived from everything that can go wrong in doing so. This is assuredly the case in ‘One A.M.’ and for Scrat in ‘Ice Age’ too. The only way in which such films can work is by making the obstacles the characters face constantly original. Chaplin of course has the larger task here, his film is longer than the Scrat section of ‘Ice Age’, he is onscreen constantly and he has to keep things interesting without the bonus of anything else to cut away to. Also, he’s a human being, silent comic characters always have a touch of the cartoon to them but in the end there is only so much the human body can take (though you wouldn’t always think it to look at Buster Keaton). It has been suggested that the reason that silent comedy did not last was because the beginning of the talkies also coincided with the rise of Disney, and cartoon characters are more resilient when it comes to extreme slapstick. So Chaplin can fall down, and can do it with a comic elegance that is very funny (because it’s him getting hurt and not us) but what happens to Scrat is in another league entirely! A lesser comic would simply stick with tried and tested slapstick, inflicting more and more pain as the film progresses, but Chaplin knew that self harm could only go so far and there is a genuine originality to the procession of events that prevent him from getting to bed.

So those are the situations, a squirrel storing nuts, a drunk trying to get to bed, easily and quickly established. What about the characters? Both are introduced with similar speed and skill. Just the appearance of Scrat, and his tentative, fearful squeaks tell us all we need to know; he is one of life’s losers, one of a fine comic line of characters for whom everything goes wrong starting with Chaplin, Keaton and Laurel and Hardy and following all the way through to TV characters such as Dr. Zoidberg in ‘Futurama’ and Ted in ‘Scrubs’. Chaplin’s long practice at playing a rich drunk gives him an immediate edge in character introduction and the theme is also quickly established; Chaplin versus inanimate objects, just opening the door of his cab is a near impossible task. But he doesn’t give up and neither does Scrat, no matter how bad things get and in the face of all previous experience both characters just keep plugging away, which gives us sympathy with them, and yet also makes it all the more amusing when they fail.

These early scenes give us one more common factor; both characters are responsible for their own situations, they bring it on themselves. Scrat is not really to blame, but when he shoves his acorn into a crack in the ice it splits and pretty soon an entire glacier is sliding after him. His obsession with each single acorn does not help, he will risk his life to get one. Chaplin is of course completely responsible for his situation, he has little genuine bad luck, it’s all simply drunken confusion and lack of coordination. The only time that his situation becomes exacerbated by something other than his inebriation, a malevolent bed which seems to have a mind of it’s own, is also where the film goes a little astray, it needs to be his own fault to be funny.

It’s the body of the films from where the bulk of the comedy comes; the aforementioned variety of ways in which our heroes can be prevented from reaching their respective goals. It’s a tall order for the writers (and Chaplin was of course his own writer), if the situations cease to convince or to interest then the films fail. There ought to be only so many ways in which Scrat can be thwarted by the climate, other animals and life in general and yet each new device seems original and inventive (particularly him running smack into a cave wall on which a caveman has drawn an acorn). It’s hard to believe they could come up with enough new material for ‘Ice Age 2’. Chaplin of course has a wider mandate, he first has to get in the door, fix himself a drink, light a cigarette, get up the stairs etc, but he has longer to fill and he gets the absolute maximum from even the simplest activity. One example of this which is particularly easy to compare to ‘Ice Age is when Chaplin tries to fix himself a drink; his circular table swivels and, because his coat has become hooked to it, when he tries to walk around to the bottle, the table swivels and the bottle remains always just out of his reach. It could so easily be Scrat pursuing his acorn. The simple act of getting a drink takes Chaplin through a whole series of accidents and gags too numerous to go into in detail.

This is another staple technique of silent comedy, to take one prop and see just how much humour can be extracted from it. Picking up a handkerchief or walking across a room should not be fertile ground for comedy routines and yet Chaplin finds the funny, largely because of the tremendous control he has over his body (a testament to his music hall background) which enables him to make a simple fall look real and yet also hilarious. The two best examples of getting the maximum from a simple act are getting upstairs and getting into bed. As I mentioned earlier the getting into bed section does fall flat as the bed takes on a mind of it’s own but this may be partly because of the length of the sequence. Try coming up with comical ways of failing to get into bed (a good game to play at home), if you can come up with a minute’s material I’d be impressed, Chaplin struggles for over five minutes and there is nothing else going on, the camera angle barely even changes, just occasional close ups. It’s a tour de force, but a tad overstretched. The more impressive section is definitely getting up the stairs, this takes him another four and a half minutes but the originality never flags and all that happens to him is a consequence of his drunken state; he falls down, is terrified by a stuffed bear on his landing, knocked out by the pendulum of his clock (it’s a surreally massive clock pendulum) and finally gets up by climbing his hat stand. It’s a phenomenal sequence.

The ending of these films have something in common too, they are presented with the same problem and come to similar conclusions. The problem is that a happy ending in which the characters achieve their objects would be somewhat muted and not funny, a sad ending, given what they’ve been through, would be unbearable. Both films have what we could call ‘moderated happy endings’. Chaplin does not get to bed, he in fact trashes his bed completely, but heads into the bathroom and, after getting drenched in his shower, settles down to sleep in the bath with a towel over him; moderated success. Similarly Scrat does not get his acorn, he is in fact frozen for several thousand years in mid pursuit and is forced to watch his prize float away as it defrosts moments before him. Happily, fate then presents him with a coconut, which he tries to bury and sets off a volcanic eruption, neatly fitting in with the opening and giving him his own moderated success; he is in shit again, but he does have a coconut.

VERDICT

In future chapters at this point I will judge between the two films as to which is my favourite and which is most palatable to a modern audience but that would be a damn fool thing to do when looking at one and a half films. They’re both very funny. That said, Chaplin was scathing about ‘One A.M.’ saying ‘one more like that and it’s goodbye Charlie,’ and it does have it’s faults. The titles are positively awful, they are unnecessary and unfunny. In the outdoor scenes early on it is clearly not 1am, it’s nice and light (despite the blue tinting) and there are a huge number of other people on the road considering the hour. Of course this is because the sensitivity of the film stock at the time made night shooting impossible (or near as). A more experienced director could have made it more convincing but it’s a nitpick really. In the end there are improvements that could be made, it loses focus every now and then, but as a showcase of gags, it’s tough to beat.

It’s worth taking a quick look at ‘Ice Age’ as a whole if only because it’s central plot, the extinct animals looking after a human baby, clearly owes a debt to Chaplin’s first, groundbreaking feature, ‘The Kid’ (1921). That may seem like a leap but the main criticism levelled at ‘Ice Age’ (which is a very funny film) was targeted at the sentimental bits, the exact same criticism which is these days levelled at every feature Chaplin ever made (sometimes with good reason). ‘One A.M.’ is entirely free from sentiment and from asking for the audiences sympathy, which is the other criticism aimed at Chaplin’s later work. These days Chaplin’s features are far more commonly seen than his shorts which is shame because, to my mind, the shorts are better; Chaplin was a remarkable film maker and an artist in his own right, but when it comes down to it what he was best at was getting a laugh, and his Mutual films, ‘One A.M.’ included, are as good at this as any films ever made.

If you have feedback, you can e-mail Robin here.

Copyright © 2008 Robin Bailes