CHAPLIN’S POPULARITY

Wanganui Chronicle, Volume 74, Issue 192, 15 August 1931, Page 18 (Supplement)

CHAPLIN’S POPULARITY

ALL WORLD LOVES HIM. Henri Bidou, French critic, essayist, and biographer—he is writing now a life of Sante-Beuvc—has been analysing Charlie Chaplin, whom tho French call Chariot, and whom rhe French recently honoured by making him a member of the Legion of Honour. “Maurice Chevalier sings ‘Paris, I Love You,’ but it is Chariot who is loved,” Bidou says in “Les Annalcs,” one of the principal Paris reviews. ‘ ‘ All the journalistic thinkers have given their opinions on the reasons for this extraordinary attachment. But who can disentangle the reasons of iovef “The truth is the whole world loves Chariot. Wo have witnessed triumphs as striking, but they were not so universal, nor so tender. Tho boxer, tho carnival player, can be tho idol of a. city. Chariot is the delight of tho world. “It is true that he created a figure so individual that it. at once bccamo popular. The Derby hat, the little coat, the immense trousers, the projecting feet, the little cane, the comma-liks moustaches, are known to the universe. “Truthfulness is his talisman. Wary and hair-brained simultaneously, at times self-seeking, at others tender and amusing. Snubbed, he excites the laughter of the gods and the pity of men, just because he is all that is left of man when you subtract whatever is special to countries and characters, and nothing remains but the primordial, indestructible instincts: Love, fear, hunger, curiosity. “Only being an Anglo-Saxon, he is sentimental and as full of honour as his situation permits. In the shadow of Chariot on the screen men recognise their own phantom. Thinking they love him they merely love themselves.”