The Birth of Charlot

Abstract In March 1915, the first Charlie Chaplin ( “Charlot”) films arrived in war-torn France and quickly proved enormously successful with French audiences. There was some criticism of his failure to fight in the war and his increasingly stellar salary in Hollywood, but most French writers were enthusiastic about Charlot, and he rapidly developed a mass audience. In explaining his appeal to working-class audiences in particular, Hans Robert Jauss’s notion of a “horizon of expectations” is used to suggest that the Charlot films appealed so deeply because they echoed existing forms of French popular culture. Moreover, most cinemas in France were in cities and Chaplin’s movies often showed everyday urban recreational activities (a source of nostalgia since many had closed down during wartime). Another section of the population drawn to Chaplin’s films was the literary and artistic avant-garde, whose members regarded Charlot as a break with older traditions of entertainment.