Alfred Hitchcock -- commenting on Chaplin's narrative THE_PILGRIM

 transcribed by Jeanine Basinger & Sam Wasson

Hollywood: The Oral History (HarperCollins, 2022)

You can learn a lot from

watching Chaplin.  He

once made a short film

titled The Pilgrim. The

opening shot was the

outside of a prison gate.

A guard comes out and

pastes up a "WANTED"

notice with a picture of

Chaplin in prison stripes.

NEXT, cut to a very tall,

thin man, coming out of

a river, having had a 

swim, and he finds that

his clothes are missing;

all he can pick up is a

convict's uniform.  Next,

cut to a railroad station,

and walking toward the

camera is Charlie Chaplin 

dressed as a parson; his

pants are too long.  Three

pieces of film, and look

at the amount of story they

told!