Sing, Never Mind the Words

The intertitle we saw, sing, never mind the words, is very significant. Whereas the spoken word in the rest of the film seems hostile to human life, Chaplin's nonsensical singing, is based on a number of word sounds more than anything else. You hear some French, some Spanish, and some Italian, which may indicate that this is Chaplin's view of the Esperanto quality of cinema.

All this brings forth a moment of utopian community and possibility. Yet, it's very risky as well. The other utterances in the films are all indirect, mediated by way of the phonograph, the loudspeaker, the TV, or the radio. Here his utterances are direct and provoke an intimate response. The song is a mix of different languages, including some that are comprehensible in English. Yet the meaning of the song, about a rich old man and a tart, seems clear to the audience. It’s the language of action, of expressive visual and corporeal signification that is universally comprehensible.

Chaplin, as he did in City Lights, seems to be arguing that significant communication can occur without the spoken word. Of course, this is only momentary happiness and acceptance into society, because immediately after this, the law serves a warrant for the arrest of the gamine, which you see in this intertitle. What we have seen up to this point, is that the film is both satirizing and parodying many elements of modern life, and seems to be saying that modern life, with its enslavement to mechanization, its foreshortening of time, and its foreclosing of imagination, is incompatible with the Tramp, who represents something very supremely human.