Using the Body - Stop Motion: Passion, Process and Performance - page 235

Chaplin
Keaton using his body against the wind in Steamboat Bill Jnr is one of the most basic animation
exercises in action. His tumbles are as good as physical comedy gets. I warm to his melancholy,
which is generally free of Chaplin's sentimentality. I used to think Chaplin was all facial ticks,
splayed feet and overemphatic saunter, but a recent screening of The Gold Rush changed my
opinion. What soured me against Chaplin are the millions of Chaplin impersonators who, like
Chinese whispers, have built and built on the original until there is only the most tenuous link
to Chaplin's performance. The mistake impersonators make is to play every character trait all at
the same time, and relating that to stop frame is useful. A character seldom displays everything
in his make-up at once. If you animate like that, there is no light or shade, and the character
ends up as pantomime of the worst sort. I walked in to The Gold Rush dreading a barrage of
twirling canes, twitching moustaches and constant hiking up of his baggy trousers. Chaplin's
performance was more subtle, and the whole i lm full of great humour and warmth, with
brilliant gags that make me want to revisit other i lms.
In contrast to Chaplin's dishevelled persona and Keaton's more presentable image was the
Frenchman Max Linder. Altogether more sophisticated and dapper, with a very rei ned
physicality, although I have only managed to see a few of the existing i lms, I remember some
startling surreal moments in his comedy. Sadly, for all his high wit, Linder had a truly tragic life.
Personally, and I apologise for this, I never enjoyed Laurel and Hardy, mainly because their
personae were so irritating. To me they lack the emotional centre that Keaton had. Keaton
had an emotionally motivated way of moving, stopping and falling over that communicates
so much as well as being funny. I'm sad that we will never see those comedians as they were.
Their trademark movement owes much to hand-cranked technology as well as to their brilliant
performances. I wonder, if they had been i lmed with today's cameras, whether the loss of the
erratic movement would have changed anything. Probably, quirky movement dei nes silent
comedy as it does stop motion.
Falls
What is so inherently funny about a fall that it is such a staple element? Is it because the
character seems to be cheating gravity, physics and anatomy? Would it be funny if a prat-fall
was accompanied by sick crunching sounds and blood? Possibly not. To be funny the character
must survive, even if we see them wearing comedy plaster and bandages. My favourite falls is
Ethel Merman's at the end of It's a Mad Mad Mad Mad World , when this gorgon of indestructibly
strides into a ward full of the injured cast. She does a fall that lifts her up before spectacularly
crashing horizontally to the l oor. A great piece of physical comedy made better by the
comeuppance and public humiliation the cast and the audience have been waiting for.
Applying the same fall in the same situation in a stop motion i lm would, I fear,
not be as funny. We know these characters are puppets that cheat physics without
getting hurt (although the character gets hurt), and for the gag to work it has to be
about the comedy of the movement. We cannot copy a live-action fall. We need to
emphasise the choreographic elements that will make us laugh; the l ailing of the
limbs, the attempts to stay upright, the suspension before the heavy landing.