A DOG'S LIFE (1918) **1/2 Charlie Chaplin (in tramp mode) plays all of the great plot-lines in one roll: he taunts and assaults petty policemen, loves dogs, gets hit on by very strange women in bars, battles goons trying to rip him off...in fact the entire thing presages the Led Zeppelin saga, it's almost eerie. Edna Purviance's performance, her efforts at getting a free drink, deserve at least Honourable Mention in any litany of strange mating rituals. The slow-motion/sped-up scene where Charlie dances with dogs is poetry in motion-not for what it's depicting, but for what it is. The abruptly romantic happy ending is wonderful, but for me not quite so gloriously cataclysmic as a similar card played against a simpler palate by Jim Jarmusch in Down By Law. Social commentaries abound, presented forcefully and artistically, but obviously not without humour. Chaplin's early work can, and perhaps should, be seen as a blueprint for the brilliant Front Populaire directors in the succeeding decades. Funny how political and social movements wax and wane, sometimes simultaneously: the "When Dreams Come True" segment depicts hard work, a simple farmhouse, and a family. This may suggest that global socialists have received setbacks in accordance with their willingness to be distracted, and to cede their most compelling raisons d'etre, to the likes of the fundamentalists and Republicans, who haven't delivered on them either.
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