The Vagabond
1916 · 26m · USA
Directed by Charlie Chaplin
Genres: comedy, drama, romance
Tones: humorous, melancholic, tender, theatrical
Charlie Chaplin plays a wandering violinist who rescues a young woman from an abusive gypsy camp, only to face heartbreak when her wealthy mother reclaims her. A pioneering blend of slapstick comedy and genuine pathos.
Picked by Margot
The scouts
The Kid in embryo — gypsies, violins, melodrama, slapstick. The early-Chaplin pathos was still a little raw and I'd rather watch the later refinement of it.
The film where Chaplin first allows pathos to enter the Tramp without dispelling it through gag—the seed of The Kid and City Lights. A pivot point in his artistic development.
Chaplin starts weaving pathos into slapstick here — the violin work is doing double duty as character revelation and tonal modulation. 25:48 YouTube confirms the runtime; the longer Mutual format gives the melodrama room to land.
Reviews
Almost a comedy-drama, in which heart interest mixes well with broad farce.
With The Vagabond, Chaplin proved that characters in a comedy could move an audience as compellingly as characters in a drama. Depth of feeling, foreign to slapstick comedy generally, was rare even in Chaplin's early work.