Structural Features of Film Narrative in Chaplin’s Early Comedies

Abstract

The article studies the original way of an action developing, building a narrative in the early films of Charlie Chaplin. Compared to traditional models of film narration in which there is a trajectory of the main character moving through the spatial boundaries of the worlds with a series of trials, losses / gains, and the final return of the renewed hero, the great comedian develops and implements a structure based on the character’s ability to annihilate when he enters an unusual world for him meanings and rules on which the familiar world of other characters, ordinary people, is based. Almost from the first independent works, Chaplin uses the theatrical technique of the quirky quo, the confusion that arose as a result of erroneous recognition, both to achieve a comic effect and for the tasks of film narration, in order to show the main feature of his hero — this is a person who always finds himself out of place, not having an identity. He either pretends to be someone else, or he is not taken for who he really is, and thus penetrates into a strange space for him, the laws of organization of which he undermines with ridiculous behavior, gags, bringing the norms to the point of absurdity, hoatizing the established order.

Keywords

• charlie chaplin’s early comedies
• the structure of the hero’s journey
• the quirks quo method
• the estrangement effect