In the late 1940's, sickened by the bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki as well as the bigotry awakened by the anti-communist witch-hunts, the great writer and film critic, James Agee responded with a screenplay, "The Tramp's New World". He sent it to Chaplin, his lifelong hero, insisting that the Tramp's humor and grace were essential to help the world heal. The film shows Agee in the process of writing and through the force of his imagination, bringing his movie to life. "The Tramp's New World" opens with a March of Time newsreel showing the bombing of Hiroshima and reaction of the American public. Cut to: Agee introducing himself outside his house in Greenwich Village. As he speaks of his love of cinema, the film enters into his thoughts; his memories of being taken to see Chaplin as a child and then his first glimpse of the man himself at the press conference for Monsieur Verdoux in which the great silent comedian was vilified by the New York press. As he rides home on the subway, Agee starts to formulate his idea for a screenplay. Working late into the night in his famously cluttered office, he begins to reads his script aloud, taking on the role of a xenophobic and bigoted president whose actions trigger the bombing of Manhattan. As he gets deeper into his story, the film becomes more dreamlike, Agee finds himself in the ruins of central park. It appears to snows in his apartment as he images a wild climate crisis that follows the blast and images how Chapin's little Tramp would cope - scenes from the Gold Rush appear like visions projected onto the paper in his typewriter. Agee imagines how, out of catastrophe, people might begin again to build a world freer from racism that anything we can imagine today, a world where people work hard for basic necessities, but value friendship and affection over wealth or power over others. What might it look like? He pictures this young community as children playing . At the same time, he is well aware of the fragility of his dream. Countering this utopia, Agee imagines a parallel world an underground laboratory, the realm of technologists who are building a supercomputer that has the power to order and control post war society.
The Tramps New World
Deeply disturbed by the bombing of Hiroshima, writer James Agee sketches out a screenplay in which he imagines New York destroyed and in the ruins of Central Park, Chaplin's little Tramp, starts a utopian community.
