Summary
The Tramp gets out of prison and goes to a boatyard to apply for work. The yardmaster reads the letter of recommendation from the sheriff, which describes the Tramp as a trustworthy and honest man. He is hired and told to take off his coat and hat. His supervisor tells him to find a specific type of wedge, and he unsuccessfully searches through some scrapwood. He then finds a wedge that looks right, but it is being used to hold up a post that holds an unfinished boat in place just out of the water. Without realizing that the wedge is involved in an important task, he hammers it out of place and picks it up, and then turns and watches in shock as the boat slides down its ramp and into the harbor. The other workers all watch the boat float away, in shock, and then turn to look at the Tramp. He puts on his coat and jacket and walks away quickly, and an intertitle explains that he has decided to try to go back to jail.
Meanwhile, the Gamin walks through the city alone and hungry. She stares into the window of a bakery longingly, and then notices that a bread delivery truck is parked in front of the shop and the baker has gone inside with some bread, leaving the truck unattended. She steals a loaf and begins running, but crashes into the Tramp as he comes around a corner and they both fall over. While she and the Tramp untangle themselves, the baker walks out of the bakery and a well-dressed woman tells him that the Gamin stole a loaf of bread. He runs down the street toward her, and grabs her wrist, yelling at her. She pleads with him, and says she did not steal the bread. A policeman then appears and the baker tells him that the Gamin stole a loaf of bread, but just before she is arrested, the Tramp tells the policeman that he was the one who stole the bread, so the policeman arrests him instead. As the crowd disperses, leaving the Gamin alone on the ground, the well-dressed woman who initially drew attention to the theft runs up to the baker and insists that the Gamin stole the bread. The baker then runs up to the policeman and tells him this, causing the policeman and the rest of the crowd to run back toward where the Gamin was, leaving the Tramp alone.
While the Gamin is being arrested, the Tramp goes into a lunch cafeteria, where he fills up two massive trays with food. He eats everything, picks up the bill and walks toward the register. On his way, he knocks on the window of the cafeteria at a policeman outside, and gestures for him to come in. At the register, he hands in the bill and says he cannot pay. He is arrested by the policeman, who takes him outside, holding onto his wrist as he calls for a wagon from a police callbox. There is a magazine window next to the callbox, and while the officer is on the phone, the Tramp asks for a cigar. He begins smoking it and hands a few items to two children who stop by the shop before the policeman finishes his phone call. When the policeman finishes the call and steps in front of the magazine window, the Tramp gestures for him to pay or explain to the man that he has been arrested and has no money. The policeman takes the cigar from the Tramp and tries to explain the situation to the store clerk, and the Tramp picks up the cigar and continues smoking it. The policeman takes the cigar away again and leads the Tramp into the street where he is picked up by the police wagon.
Inside the crowded police wagon, the Tramp accidentally sits on a middle-aged woman’s lap and she angrily pushes him off. After a few moments, the wagon stops again and the Gamin is brought on. The Tramp stands and offers her his seat because there are none available, and as she takes it he asks if he remembers her from the incident with the bread. She nods and then begins crying, and he offers her his kerchief, and she wipes her eyes. The Tramp is knocked by a bump onto the other woman’s lap again, and the woman angrily pushes him off again. The Gamin runs to the back of the wagon to escape and the Tramp follows, but the policeman at the back of the wagon blocks them. However, the wagon then goes around a curve and has to swerve to avoid crashing into another car, which causes it to tip over, and the Gamin, the Tramp, and the policeman are thrown from the wagon. They are knocked out briefly, but the Tramp soon wakes up and shakes the Gamin awake, telling her that now is her chance to escape. The policeman begins waking up but the Tramp knocks him out again with his own baton, and the Gamin runs down the street and around a corner. She pops her head back around the corner and calls for the Tramp to come with her, who seems unsure of what to do. However, the policeman starts waking up again, so the Tramp runs to catch up to the Gamin and they run off through the city together.
In the next scene, the Tramp and the Gamin find a peaceful patch of grass on which to sit, outside of a house in a suburban area. The Gamin picks a flower and twirls it near her face, and the Tramp asks her where she lives, to which she responds “no place—anywhere.” A married couple emerges from the house behind them, and the wife waves her husband off to work excitedly. The Tramp mocks her excitement to the Gamin, and they both laugh. The Tramp then asks her if she could imagine the two of them living together in a little home like that, and we are shown a fantasy sequence of what he thinks their life could be like. He imagines entering the house after a long day at work, where the Gamin greets him wearing a dress and apron, with a bow in her hair. They live in a world of plenty, with an orange tree growing in through the living room window. The tramp picks an orange and begins eating it, but the Gamin calls him to dinner so he throws it back out the window after just one bite. As she is putting the food on the table, the Tramp sticks his head out the kitchen door and calls the cow to come over. He places a pitcher under the cow, and milk flows from one of the cow’s udders without needing to be milked, while the Tramp eats grapes from a vine hanging just outside of the door. He pats the cow when the pitcher is full, the milk stops flowing, and he sends the cow away again. He sits down to dinner with the Gamin, and they begin cutting into a steak. The sequence fades out to the Tramp still sitting on the grass with the Gamin and sawing at an imaginary steak. The Gamin licks her lips and says that she is hungry. As the Tramp inspires himself, saying that he will get them a home even if he has to work for it, a policeman approaches them from behind. The Gamin gets the Tramp’s attention to let him know about the police officer, and they both scramble to their feet and walk away quickly.
An intertitle explains that there has been an accident at a department store, and the Tramp and the Gamin come upon a large crowd outside the store. The Gamin asks someone what happened, and he explains that the night watchman broke his leg. The Gamin tells the Tramp to go inside and apply for the job right away, and the Tramp pushes through the crowd and runs inside. When he gets inside, he gives his letter of recommendation from the prison sheriff to the owner of the store, who immediately hires him and tells the manager to show him around. It is evidently almost night, because the manager briefly shows him around and then leaves, and the Tramp is alone in the department store. He immediately runs outside where the Gamin is waiting, grabs her arm, and pulls her inside, where he serves her food and cake at the cafe/bar.
An intertitle establishes that the next location is the toy department on the fourth floor, and the following shot shows the Tramp and the Gamin emerging from an elevator into a dark room. The Tramp turns the light on and the Gamin jumps and claps her hands together in delight, then runs to a table and picks up a few toys. The Tramp grabs some roller skates and begins putting them on, and gestures for the Gamin to do the same. As the Gamin continues tying her skates, the Tramp jumps up and begins gracefully skating around the room. He skates backwards into the adjacent room while staring at the Gamin, failing to see a large sign in the new room that reads “DANGER” and which the audience can see clearly. As the camera pans with his movement, we see that the sign marks a large opening in the floor that is under construction. By chance, the Tramp stops his backward motion an inch from the edge and wobbles slightly from the cessation of momentum, nearly toppling backward. He brags to the Gamin that he can even skate blindfolded, and as he puts the blindfold on he turns for the first time toward the sign that says “DANGER,” but fails to see it because of the blindfold. He then skates around the room with the blindfold on very gracefully, in large figure eights and circles that bring him dangerously close to the edge—so close that when skating on only one foot, his outside foot extends over the hole without his realizing.
After a few moments the Gamin has finished tying her skates, stands, and looks across to where the Tramp is, gasping when she realizes the immediate danger. She is less graceful on the skates, and clumsily makes her way to where the Tramp is skating, clutching the walls and tables on the way. She tries to grab the Tramp but cannot quite reach him, and when he hears her he skates backward away from her, toward the hole. He bumps at a low speed into the lip that sticks up above the hole, and the Gamin skates to him and pulls him away from the edge. She takes his blindfold off so he can see and he becomes so frightened that he is suddenly much more clumsy on his skates and nearly falls over the edge from fright before the Gamin pulls him away. Another intertitle explains that the Gamin and the Tramp are going to the fifth floor where there is a bedroom display. The next scene opens on a close shot of the Gamin wrapped in a luxurious bathrobe, before zooming out to reveal the Tramp nearby, smoking a cigar. He stands, still in his roller skates, and tells the Gamin that he needs to go punch the time clocks. He tells her to stay and sleep, and that he will wake her up in the morning before the store opens. He leaves, still in his roller skates, and shuts off the lights.
Analysis
When the Tramp fails to find and maintain a job, his desire to return to prison highlights the way that poverty and lack of welfare drive poor people to return to the prison system. Though he is unable to find gainful employment in part because of his own incompetence (when he wrecks the ship in the boatyard), his eagerness to return to the safety of prison demonstrates the extent to which the world has become hostile to those of his status—he would rather give up his personal freedoms than continue struggling to survive out in the city. Though he goes about it in a funny and cavalier way, the stakes are actually quite high, because the Tramp may have difficulty surviving on his own outside of prison.
The parallel stories of the Tramp and the Gamin converge when she steals the bread and crashes into him. The kindness that he shows her, in first trying to prevent her from being arrested and then later in trying to comfort her in the police wagon, draws a sharp contrast—he is the first stranger to show her any kindness in the film. It is also significant that the Gamin is shown stealing a loaf of bread in this scene, because it likely refers to the classical ethical dilemma of whether or not it is wrong to steal a loaf of bread to feed yourself or your family. Further, it seems a sharp criticism that the woman who sees the Gamin stealing the bread, the baker, and the policeman all have such a strong, vindictive response (considering that the typical answer to this ethical question is that it is not wrong, because stealing a loaf of bread causes little harm but allowing someone to starve to death causes a great deal of harm). We next see that the Tramp is quite intent on returning to prison, stealing food from a restaurant and turning himself in to the police in order to be arrested. However, the Gamin manages to convince him to abandon that plan, escape with her, and try to live his life in a better way. This ability of the Gamin to convince the Tramp to ‘seize life’ is a characteristic of the Gamine archetype, and continues to be one of the main traits of the Manic Pixie Dream Girl character type (which is considered the modern-day successor to the Gamine type). Throughout the rest of their story together, she largely takes on the role of encouraging and inspiring him to ‘seize life’ in this way.
The fantasy sequence is interesting for the way that it shows simultaneously what the Tramp most wants, as well as how imagines wealthy (or even middle class) people to live. In the fantasy, having a nice house and a job equates to everything becoming infinitely easier for him and the Gamin: fruit trees grow in through the windows, they always have enough food, and the cow even milks herself. He has such few concerns about having enough to eat that he can throw an orange out the window after just one bite, which also carries an implicit criticism that the wealthy are wastefully rich while people like himself struggle to find food. It derives its humor from these expectations as well, as the audience understands that the Tramp’s idea of what will happen when he gets a job is far from reality, which can be considered an example of dramatic irony. Again, as when he was released from prison, one could argue for a conservative reading of this scene by pointing out that his fantasies resemble a desire for easy handouts without any effort. However, this reading again seems unlikely given Chaplin’s progressive leanings and in the context of the rest of the film. While the Tramp’s fantasy builds him up and begins inspiring him to work hard to earn a home for them, the Gamin’s hunger contrasts starkly with the fantasy sequence, reminding the audience again just how unfortunate she has been.
When the Tramp and the Gamin come across the commotion outside of the department store, we see again how the Gamin takes charge of the situation and has to push the Tramp to do something when he fails to realize the opportunity presented by the injured guard. In this way, the Gamin is set up as something of a foil to the Tramp: though they have been forced into the same conditions of poverty, she is clever and motivated, but unable to apply for many jobs because she is a woman, while the Tramp is hapless, confused, and somewhat lazy, while being the only one really capable of earning a living for the two of them. Finally, it seems as though their luck is turning around when the manager hires the Tramp as the night guard and the two are able to eat something in the cafe for the first time in a while. They are able to go around the empty department store and actually enjoy themselves, engaging in leisure activities and luxuries usually reserved for the wealthy—some food, a few toys and roller skates, and a comfortable bed are able to make them incredibly happy.
Another brief diversion from the plot, the roller skating scene sets up a typical construction for Chaplin movies of having some action or danger to the Tramp very nearby, which he fails to notice. Because he blindfolds himself, he is unable to see the 'DANGER' sign that is clearly displayed to the audience, which creates dramatic irony. It also is likely that the scene was constructed in part because of Chaplin’s skill at roller skating, which had already played a central role in his 1916 film, The Rink. A large part of the humor of the scene is derived from the tension that is built up and released repeatedly as the Tramp swerves past the hole in the floor over and over again. Of course, the final and biggest laugh comes at the end, when the Tramp is suddenly clumsy on the roller blades after realizing how close he is to the edge, in an instance of situational irony.
Finally, the bedroom display scene shows some important relationship development between the Tramp and the Gamin, as well as setting up the major conflicts of the following several scenes. The Tramp demonstrates a desire to take care of the Gamin, and they have clearly developed a good deal of trust when the Tramp assures her that she can sleep and he will wake her up in the morning to leave the department store. However, the audience, which is used to the Tramp’s inability to follow through on anything, is cued by this very promise that there will likely be some issue that prevents him from being able to wake her in the morning, foreshadowing the conflict with the robbers. The focus on the clock in the bedroom display also hints at this same problem.
