Le Giornate del Cinema Muto 2006 Sommario / Contents

Orbes, nato a Saragozza nel 1873. Preso come apprendista da un sarto,
fuggì per unirsi ad un circo, e nel corso delle sue tournée approdò in
Inghilterra nei tardi anni Novanta dell’Ottocento. Ingaggiato come
clown, si esibì nei panni del faceto “Marceline the Droll” in occasione
dell’apertura a Londra, nel gennaio del 1900, dell’Hippodrome, dove
riscosse un immediato successo.“Londra impazziva per lui,” ricorderà
Chaplin. Marceline rimase all’Hippodrome finché non passò al nuovo
Hippodrome di New York, inaugurato nell’aprile del 1905. Qui lavorò
per dodici stagioni, rinnovando il successo registrato a Londra. Ma
quando l’Hippodrome si trovò in difficoltà, il genio comico di
Marceline, lontano dalla grande arena, venne meno (come quello di
Calvero in Luci della ribalta). Chaplin lo incontrò alcuni anni dopo,
depresso ed amareggiato: non era che uno dei tanti pagliacci del circo
a tre piste dei Ringling Brothers. Il 5 novembre 1927, Marceline si
suicidò in un misero alberghetto per artisti.
Purtroppo, il piccolo ritratto animato conservato alla Library of
Congress non può darci un’idea delle doti comiche che, agli albori del
XX secolo, entusiasmarono Londra e New York ed ispirarono il
giovane Chaplin; ora però possiamo almeno dire, parafrasando
Heinrich Schliemann, di aver guardato in volto Marceline.
Le Giornate esprimono la loro più viva gratitudine a Madeline Matz,
che ha contribuito a rintracciare “il frammento Marceline”e che ha
svolto in proposito ulteriori ricerche, fornendo le informazioni qui di
seguito riportate:
“Nel 1907 il film, sotto forma di ‘paper print’, un piccolo rullo di carta
fotografica, venne depositato alla Library of Congress, dove rimase
per decenni. A metà anni Cinquanta iniziarono le operazioni di
duplicazione dei “paper prints” e Marceline… venne trasferito su
celluloide. Per la proiezione a Sacile, la Library ha gonfiato a 35mm una
copia 16mm. Poiché il materiale originale è così breve, il soggetto è
stato stampato cinque volte, 145 fotogrammi alla volta. La lunghezza
complessiva, incluso il nero fra una ripetizione e l’altra del soggetto,è
di 78 piedi (1’18” a 16 fps).
Si conoscono – grazie ai depositi fatti alla Library of Congress nel
1907 – solo 5 altre produzioni della Winthrop Moving Picture
Company e purtroppo, come per Marceline, anche in tutti questi casi
le immagini sono state depositate con grande parsimonia. Tre di
queste produzioni (per due sole sopravvivono i frammenti di carta)
riguardano la celebre coppia del vaudeville Montgomery and Stone,
un’altra ci mostra Christy Mathewson, famoso lanciatore di baseball, e
l’ultima la tomba di Grant.” – DAVID ROBINSON
It may seem odd to regard as a special event the screening of a 6-second
fragment of a hazy image, transferred half a century ago by the Renovare
process from a Library of Congress Paper Print to 16mm, and now recopied
to 35mm.Yet this is the first chance for 99 years to see the living
image of a man who, in a small way, may have influenced all our lives –
for Marceline seems to have been Charles Chaplin’s inspiration and first
mentor in the art of comedy.
Chaplin had been working on the music hall stage since before his tenth
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birthday, but he was only called upon to dance, as one of William Jackson’s
“Eight Lancashire Lads”. At Christmas 1900, however, the Lads were
engaged to play cats and dogs in the kitchen scene of Cinderella at the
spectacular new London Hippodrome.As a comical cat, Chaplin had the first
heady experience of stirring an audience to laughter; and moreover he was
called upon to play a momentary scene with Marceline, the comedy star of
the Hippodrome. Sixty years later, Chaplin wrote his memoirs, and like any
seasoned professional wasted few words in acknowledging other artists.
With Marceline, however, he made an exception, devoting a long passage to
describing the clown’s speechless comedy and individual gags which have a
distinctly “Chaplinesque” character. The length and tone of these pages
leave little doubt that the 11-year-old Chaplin was profoundly affected by
this first encounter with comedy and an evidently exceptional comedian.
Yet today even the name of Marceline is forgotten. The infant Chaplin
believed that he was French, but in fact he was Spanish, born Marcelino
Orbes in Saragossa in 1873. He was apprenticed to a tailor but ran away
to join the circus, and in the course of his tours landed in Britain in the late
1890s. He was engaged as a clown, billed as “Marceline the Droll” for the
opening of the London Hippodrome in January 1900, and was an overnight
success. “London went wild over him,” Chaplin recalled. He stayed at the
Hippodrome until he was lured away to the new New York Hippodrome,
which opened in April 1905. He remained there for 12 seasons, enjoying
the same success as in London; but the Hippodrome hit difficult times, and
Marceline’s own comic genius (like Calvero’s in Limelight) failed him, away
from the great arena. Some years later Chaplin saw him, broken and
embittered, working in the ordinary clown troupe of the Ringling Brothers’
three-ring circus. On 5 November 1927 Marceline shot himself in a shabby
theatrical hotel.
Sadly, this little animated portrait can give us no idea of the comic gifts that
thrilled early-20th century London and New York, and inspired the boy
Chaplin; but we can at least now say, paraphrasing Heinrich Schliemann,
that we have looked upon the face of Marceline.
The Giornate is especially grateful for her help in sourcing and researching
this fragment to Madeline Matz, who provides this additional information:
“In 1907, the film, in the form of a tiny photographic paper roll – a ‘paper
print’ – was deposited at the Library of Congress, where it remained for
decades. In the mid-1950s, the paper print duplication project was begun,
and Marceline… was transferred to celluloid. In preparation for the
Giornate screening, the Library made a 35mm blow-up of a 16mm print.
Because the original material is so brief, 5 repetitions were printed, each of
145 frames – 87 (5.5”) of title and 58 (4”) of Marceline’s image.The total
length, including black spacer between the repetitions, is 78 feet (1’18” at
16 fps).
“Only five other productions by the Winthrop Moving Picture Company are
known from paper print deposits made in 1907 at the Library of Congress
– though unfortunately the company parsimoniously deposited only brief
samples from each, as in the case of Marceline. Of the others, three (only
two with surviving paper fragments) are of the prominent vaudeville duo
Montgomery and Stone, and the others of the star baseball pitcher Christy
Mathewson and of Grant’s Tomb.” – DAVID ROBINSON
INCUNABULA