670
PARTISAN REVIEW
that he is an embodiment of childhood, and it is perfectly true. His per–
ceptions have the eccentricity of viewpoint and the almost dazzling de–
tailed clarity of a child's perceptions, and carry similar suggestions of
unspecific and perhaps unintended depth. His feelings are as definite
and as strong as a child's, and as irresistibly appealing. But like a child
he is also imprisoned within the limits of his own needs and understand–
ing, and can express no true relation with others. Precisely the lack of
such a relation is what makes him a clown-the most childish kind of
entertainer-and gives him his clown's subject matter. What is the–
Tramp but the greatest of all egotists?-an outcast by choice refusing
to take the least trouble to understand his fellow men, and yet contriving
by his unshakable detachment to put everyone else in the wrong, trans–
forming his rejection of society into society's rejection of him. The
Tramp can draw close only to those who are outsiders like him: children,
animals, the Blind Girl-the maimed and the innocent. And in the
end he is always walking away into the depths of the screen with his
back turned. Verdoux, instead of protecting the lonely and innocent,
preys on them, though the difference is not so absolute as it might seem:
he is just as much a sentimentalist as the Tramp, as he demonstrates in
sparing the life of one woman merely because he is touched by her
history and because she has read Schopenhauer; and even for his vic–
tims he has a kind of icy kindness which might be one of the things
that attract them.
Calvero, combining Verdoux's doubtful
savoir faire
with the
Tramp's sweetness, is neither the victim of his world nor its victimizer,
but a kind of benevolent observer with all the threads of life held loose
in his hands. Though we come upon him when he is no longer successful
as a performer, he has failed by becoming too good for his audience,
too "dignified," not by falling below it. Besides, he is the only one who
understands his failure, or if he doesn't exactly understand it, at least
his tolerant acceptance of it takes the place of understanding. There
has been a significant change in the role of the Blind Girl-this time
not blind, of course, but lonely, defeated, and suffering from a functional
paralysis of the legs. Having saved her from suicide and reluctantly
taken her into his lodgings, Calvero in a few minutes of psychoanalysis
discovers the cause of her paralysis and proceeds to cure it. Soon she
becomes a ballet star. This moment of her success is when the Tramp
would have found himself rejected. But now the girl makes a declaration
of love-that declaration which the Tramp never had the courage to
make for himself-and though Calvero lets himself be persuaded for
a time, it is he who eventually refuses; he must be the one to decide
