A Dog's Life (EOTWS)

End Of The Week Shorts #10 extract: A Dog's Life (1918)



A fun Chaplin picture. Though it is not as emotionally charged as The Kid or City Lights, nor is it as action-packed as something such as Easy Street or The Great Dictator, this contains many of Chaplin's signature narrative elements - all of which are applied well. 
Time then flies by as The Tramp stumbles haphazardly through a romantic tale of serendipity, one that is focused on the divide between material worth and a human worth. We see this in the key scene in which Purviance's character is introduced; though she can reduce a full bar to tears with her song, she only manages to keep her job through a promise of prostitution. This paradigm is reversed in the relationship between the dog and The Tramp - it is a simple friendship based off of camaraderie with no ulterior motive or plans. Because there is this pure sense of friendship, one founded on inner substance, they save each other's lives and so, with the bar singer (who The Tramp sees the human side of), are seemingly granted a happy, humble life by the forgiving world of Chaplin's romantic universe. 
It is then the "dog's life" that is a simple one, one that is not guided by self-serving motives and so seemingly deserves, at the least, that happy, humble living.

Popular Posts