English coursework
CHARLIE CHAPLIN
Albu Teodora Anca Liceul Teoretic William Shakespeare, XII Real Timisoara, judet Timis Prof. coordonator: Carmen Cotuna
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CONTENTS LIST : Rationale ………………………………………………………………………3 Introduction……………………………………………………………………. 4 Charlie Chaplin‘s life
1. Childhood……………………………………………………………………..… 5 2. Start of career ……………………………………………………………….…...5 3. The Tramp character…………………………………………………………......6 4. The Mutual period…………………………………………………………….....7 5. Gaining independence………………………………………………………...….7 6. Filmmaking methods…………………………………………………………......8 7. United Artists…………………………………………………………………….. 9 8. Awards………………………………………………………………...………. 10 9. Knighthood…………………………………………………………..……….... 11 10. Last years and death…………………………………………………………..11 11. Controversies………………………………………………………………… 12 Charlie Chaplin’s films reflection of of Chaplin’s Chaplin’s personal personal experiences experiences …………….. …………….. 13 12. “The Kid ” – a pure reflection 13. Masterpieces: woman of Paris Paris “………………………………………………….. 14 13.1. “ A woman 13.2. “Gold Rush”………………………………………………………….. 14 13.3. “The Circus”…………………………………………………..……… 15 13.4. “City Lights”………………………………………………………….. 16 13.5. “ Modern Modern times times”……………………………………………………….. 17 13.6. “The Great Dictator ”……………………………………….………… ”……………………………………….…………18 Monsieur Verdoux Verdoux”………………………………………………..… 22 13.7. “ Monsieur 13.8. “ Limelight ”…………………………………………………...….........23 23 Limelight ”…………………………………………………...…......... King in New New York York ”………………………………………………... 13.9. “ A King ”………………………………………………... 24 13.10. “A Countess from Hong Kong” ……………………………………... 25 . Conclusion……………………………………………………………….. ………..26
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RATIONALE My motivation for choosing the actor, director, writer and composer Charles Chaplin as the subject for my coursework is actually rooted way back in the past as I have always been interested in artistic programs which involved mime. Furthermore, in the elementary school I played with my colleagues mime during the breaks and, because I was quite good at it and because my feet used to stay in the same awkward position as a consequence of ballet courses, they said I resemble a bit with Charlie Chaplin, which I considered an honor. But when I really developed interest in the area was after watching one of his movies five months ago. The very first aspect that caught my attention was the simplicity of the imagines conveying a sensible message combined with a good sense of humor so rare nowadays. Afterwards, I noticed all the small details incredibly well synchronized working together but seeming as one coherent system and the expression of ideas, thoughts, concepts and issues without words or sounds, just due to his extraordinary body language skills. What I also found special in Charlie Chaplin’s films was the precision of gestures and actions so that every man in the street could understand its meaning and the combination of humorous aspects with tragic themes such as wars, death, violence, stupidity. The following months saw me searching feedback about his films because I believe he had something special for acting, a fleur for theatre area only a few of us own, a gift for cinematography so to say. And I was not wrong at all. I became fascinated for instance by the idea that a great deal of movies were inspired by his personal experiences, by the courage of handling controversial issues such as communism, wars, dictatorship during that particular period of time and, nevertheless, by the irony towards stupidity and absurdism. This fascination led me to develop my coursework which shall prove that Charlie Chaplin was indeed a prominent figure in cinematography mainly due to his own experiences and thoughts displayed in his movies and, who inspired a lot the next comedy actors.
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INTRODUCTION More than seventy years since he last appeared on the screen, Charlie Chaplin remains a supreme icon not just of the movies but of the twentieth century – still recognized and loved throughout the world. The following pages are aimed to prove that if there can be an explanation of his unique success with a universal public, it is his gift of transmuting the fundamental anxieties and concerns of human life into comedy- a reflection of his own life experiences and so, he became the muse of many future artists in cinematography. In order to demonstrate his films had anything to do with his personal life and his work influenced the next artists, the chapters briefly present his whole life and then, a few of his most significant films, masterpieces still remembered nowadays. First of all, in the “ Charlie Chaplin’ life” sector, I began by mentioning the most important aspects of the subject so that it would be easy to understand whom I am writing about. Then, the first chapter will describe his early childhood and the background of his family, which are the base of a famous film called “ The Kid ”. The second chapter states the harsh beginning of his career in entertainment an his debut on stage. After that, the third section highlights the development of his tramp character and describes what it consists of. Furthermore, branch number 4 features the most productive period of his cinematography: the Mutual period. Chapter 5 explains why he must be his own director which led to brilliant masterpieces, briefly presented in section 13. Through branch 6, I mentioned some of the filmmaking methods that made Chaplin so popular and his film of such a good quality. Chapter 7 is aimed to feature the organization “ United Artists ” in which Chaplin was of a member and which contributed a lot in his career. Then, the next four branches will stated the awards, knighthood, controversies and his last years of activity. The second sector of this project consists of chapters 12, 13 and features his most important films, with a special mention to “ The Great Dictator” in which Chaplin dealt with burning issues of the day which he himself faced, such as: the horrors of the First World War, industrialization and the confrontation of capital and labor, fascism, dictatorship and its leaders.
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CHARLIE CHAPLIN’S LIFE
Sir Charles Spencer Chaplin, better known as Charlie Chaplin, became one of the most famous actors as well as successful director, composer, musician and writer in the early to mid "Classical Hollywood" era of American cinema. Therefore, he was one of the most influential and creative personalities in the area of silent - cinematography. He dedicated 65 years of his life to working on entertainment beginning as a child performer in music halls in the United Kingdom, until his death at the age of 88.
1. CHILDHOOD
Charlie was born on 16 April 1889, in East Street, Walworth, London, the son of music hall singers (his father being a vocalist and an actor and his mother, a singer and an actress) who separated when he was a baby, he grew up in extreme poverty, spending part of his childhood in institutions for destitute children. His maternal grandmother was half-Gypsy, a fact he was extremely proud of, his father was an alcoholic and had little contact with his son and his mother got mentally ill and died when Charlie was very young. Having inherited natural talents from their parents, the youngster took to the stage as the best opportunity for a career. Charlie made his professional debut as a member of a juvenile group called “The Eight Lancashire Lads” and rapidly won popular favor as an outstanding tap dancer. Chaplin's early years of desperate poverty were a great influence on his characters. Themes in his films in later years like “The Kid” (1921) would re-visit the scenes of his childhood deprivation.
2. START OF CAREER
However, his fortunes took an abrupt and significant turn when he got his first chance to act in a legitimate stage show, and appeared as “Billy” the page boy, in support of William Gillette in “Sherlock Holmes”. This gave him a precocious grounding in stagecraft and started a career as a comedian in vaudeville. His talent was honed by his years with Fred Karno, the most brilliant comedy impresario of the British music halls.
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Whilst touring the United States vaudeville circuits he was spotted and engaged by Mack Sennett’s Keystone’s studios. By then, Chaplin's film debut, “Making a Living” (1914), was produced. Chaplin's pictures were soon a success, and he became one of the biggest stars at Keystone. His entrance in the cinema world took place when he joined Mack Sennett and the Keystone Film Company. His initial salary was $150 a week, but his overnight success on the screen spurred other producers to start negotiations for his services.
3. THE TRAMP CHARACTER
Chaplin's earliest films were made for Mack Sennett's Keystone Studios, where he developed his tramp character and very quickly learned the art and craft of film making. The tramp was first presented to the public when Chaplin was age 24 in his second film Kid Auto
Races at Venice (released 7 February 1914). The tramp character would quickly gain immense popularity among theatre audience. As Chaplin recalled in his autobiography: "I had no idea what makeup to put on. I did not like my get-up as the press reporter [in Making a Living ]. However on the way to the wardrobe I thought I would dress in baggy pants, big shoes, a cane and a derby hat. I wanted everything to be a contradiction: the pants baggy, the coat tight, the hat small and the shoes large. I was undecided whether to look old or young, but remembering Sennett had expected me to be a much older man, I added a small moustache, which I reasoned, would add age without hiding my expression. I had no idea of the character. But the moment I was dressed, the clothes and the makeup made me feel the person he was. I began to know him, and by the time I walked on stage he was fully born." Chaplin's principal character was "The Tramp" (known as "Charlot" in France, and the French-speaking world, Italy, Spain, Andorra, Portugal, Greece, Romania and Turkey, "Carlitos" in Brazil and Argentina, and "Vagabond" in Germany). "The Tramp" is a vagrant with the refined manners and dignity of a gentleman. The character wears a tight coat, oversized trousers and shoes, and a derby; carries a bamboo cane; and has a signature toothbrush moustache (as shown in the image below).
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4. THE MUTUAL PERIOD
The next films were more ambitious, running twice as long as the former ones. In 1916, the Mutual Film Corporation paid Chaplin US$670,000 to produce 12 two-reel comedies that include: “The Floorwalker”, “The Fireman”, “The Vagabond”, “One A.M.” (a production in which he was the only character for the entire two reels with the exception of the entrance of a cab driver in the opening scene), “The Count”, “The Pawnshop”, “Behind the Screen”, “The Rink”, “Easy Street” (heralded as his greatest production up to that time), “The Cure”, “The Immigrant” and “The Adventurer”. He was given near complete artistic control, and produced twelve films over an eighteen-month period that rank among the most influential comedy films in cinema. Practically every Mutual comedy is a classic: Easy Street , One AM , The Pawnshop , and The Adventurer are perhaps the best known. Chaplin considered the Mutual period as the happiest of his career, although he had concerns that the films during that time were becoming formulaic owing to the stringent production schedule his contract required.
5. GAINING INDEPENDECE
In 1918 an agreement with the distribution company First Nation enabled him to achieve the luxury of his own studio, designed to be state-of-the-art for its day, and with his own permanent cast and crew. His first film under this new deal was “A Dog’s Life”. After this production, he turned his attention to a national tour on behalf of the war effort, following which he made a film the US government used to popularize the Liberty Loan drive: “The Bond”. His next commercial venture was the production of a comedy dealing with the war. “Shoulder Arms”, released in 1918 at a most opportune time, proved a veritable source of 7
income at the box office and added enormously to Chaplin’s popularity. This he followed with “Sunnyside” and “A Day’s Pleasure”, both released in 1919, that converted the horrors of the First World War into comedy. However, after Chaplin assumed control of his productions, entrepreneurs serviced the demand for Chaplin by bringing back his older comedies. The films were recut, retitled, and reissued again and again, first for theatres, then for the home-movie market, and in recent years, for home video.
6. FILMMAKING SECRETS
Chaplin never spoke more than cursorily about his filmmaking methods, claiming such a thing would be tantamount to a magician spoiling his own illusion. In fact, until he began making spoken dialogue films with The Great Dictator , Chaplin never shot from a completed script. The method he developed, once his Essanay contract gave him the freedom to write for and direct himself, was to start from a vague premise - e.g., "Charlie enters a health spa" or "Charlie works in a pawn shop." Chaplin then had sets constructed and worked with his stock company to improvise gags and "business" around them, almost always working the ideas out on film. As ideas were accepted and discarded, a narrative structure would emerge, frequently requiring Chaplin to reshoot an already-completed scene that might have otherwise contradicted the story. Chaplin's unique filmaking techniques became known only after his death, when his rare surviving outakes and cut sequences were carefully examined in the 1983 British documentary “Unknown Chaplin ”. This is one reason why Chaplin took so much longer to complete his films than did his rivals. In addition, Chaplin was an incredibly exacting director, showing his actors exactly how he imagined they perform and shooting scores of takes until he had the shot he wanted. This combination of story improvisation and relentless perfectionism - which resulted in days of effort and thousands of feet of film being wasted, all at enormous expense - often proved very taxing for Chaplin, who in frustration would often lash out at his actors and crew, keep them waiting idly for hours or, in extreme cases, shutting down production altogether. Chaplin was known by his actors for doing numerous takes to get a perfect scene. During the Gold Rush scene wherein the Lone Prospector was eating his shoelaces (made entirely of licorice) Chaplin was not satisfied with the scene so he did take after take of eating the 8
shoelaces. From the great amount of sugar Chaplin had consumed he was taken to the hospital because he suffered from a sugar shock.
7. UNITED ARTISTS
In 1919 the four Hollywood giants of the day- Chaplin, Douglas Fairbanks, Mary Pickford and the director DW Griffith – formed United Artists, to distribute their own films. In his book “History of the Movies” , writer B. B. Hampton, says: “The corporation was organized as a distributor, each of the artists retaining entire control of his or her respective producing activities, delivering to United Artists the completed pictures for distribution on the same general plan they would have followed with a distributing organization which they did not own. The stock of United Artists was divided equally among the founders. This arrangement introduced a new method into the industry. Heretofore, producers and distributors had been the employers, paying salaries and sometimes a share of the profits to the stars. Under the United Artists system, the stars became their own employers. They had to do their own financing, but they received the producer profits that had formerly gone to their employers and each received his share of the profits of the distributing organization”. However, before he could assume his responsibilities with United Artists, Chaplin had to complete his contract with First National. So early in 1921, he came out with a six-reel masterpiece, “The Kid” in which he introduced to the screen one of the greatest child actors the world has ever known- Jackie Coogan. Then, feeling the need of a complete rest from his motion picture activities, Chaplin sailed for Europe in September 1921. London, Paris, Berlin and other capitals on the continent gave him tumultuous receptions. After an extended vacation, Chaplin returned to Hollywood to resume his picture work and start his active association with United Artists.
8. AWARDS
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Chaplin won one Oscar in a competitive category, and was given three honorary Academy Awards. .
In 1972, Chaplin won an Oscar for the Best Music in an Original Dramatic Score for the
1952 film Limelight , which co-starred Claire Bloom. The film also features an appearance with Buster Keaton, which was the only time the two great comedians ever appeared together. Due to Chaplin's political difficulties, the film did not play a one-week theatrical engagement in Los Angeles when it was first produced. This criterion for nomination was unfulfilled until 1972. .
Chaplin was also nominated for Best Comedy Director for The Circus in 1929, for Best
Picture, Best Actor, Best Original Screenplay (although the Academy no longer lists these nominations in their official records because he received a Special Award instead of being included in the final voting for the competitive ones), Best Original Screenplay and Best Actor for The Great Dictator in 1940, and again for Best Original Screenplay for Monsieur Verdoux in 1948. During his active years as a filmmaker, Chaplin expressed disdain for the Academy Awards; his son Charles Jr wrote that Chaplin invoked the ire of the Academy in the 1930s by jokingly using his 1929 Oscar as a doorstop. This may help explain why City Lights and
Modern Times, considered by several polls to be two of the greatest of all motion pictures, were not nominated for a single Academy Award. .
When the first Oscars were awarded on 16 May 1929, the voting audit procedures that now
exist had not yet been put into place, and the categories were still very fluid. Chaplin had originally been nominated for both Best Actor and Best Comedy Directing for his movie The
Circus , but his name was withdrawn and the Academy decided to give him a special award "for versatility and genius in acting, writing, directing and producing The Circus" instead. The other film to receive a special award that year was The Jazz Singer . Chaplin's second honorary award came forty-four years later in 1972, and was for "the incalculable effect he has had in making motion pictures the art form of this century". He came out of his exile to accept his award, and received the longest standing ovation in Academy Award history, lasting a full five minutes.
9. KNIGHTHOOD
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Chaplin was named in the New Year's Honours List in 1975. On 4 March, he was knighted at age eighty-five as a Knight Commander of the British Empire (KBE) by Queen Elizabeth II. The honour was first proposed in 1931, but was not carried through due to lingering controversy over Chaplin's failure to serve in the First World War. Knighthood was proposed again in 1956, but was vetoed by the then Conservative government for fears of damage to relations with the United States at the height of the Cold War and planned invasion of Suez of that year.
10. LAST YEARS AND DEATH 10.1. Chaplin’s versatility extended to writing, music and sports. He was the author of at least
four books, “My Trip Abroad”, “A Comedian Sees the World”, “My Autobiography”, “My Life in Pictures” as well as all of his scripts. An accomplished musician, though self-taught, he played a variety of instruments with equal skill and facility (playing violin and cello lefthanded). He was also a composer, having written and published many songs, among them: “Sing a Song”; “With You Dear in Bombay”; and “There’s Always One You Can’t Forget”, “Smile”, “Eternally”, “You are My Song”, as well as the soundtracks for all his films. Charles Chaplin was one of the rare comedians who not only financed and produced all his films (with the exception of “A Countess from Hong Kong”), but was the author, actor, director and soundtrack composer of them as well. 10.2. Chaplin's robust health began to slowly fail in the late 1960s and by 1977 he could no
longer communicate and was confined to a wheelchair. He died in his sleep in Vevery, Switzerland, on Christmas day 1977, survived by eight children. .
He was interred in Corsier-Sur-Vevery Cemetery, Vaud, Switzerland. On 1 March 1978,
his corpse was stolen by a small group of Swiss mechanics in an attempt to extort money from his family.The plot failed, the robbers were captured, and the corpse was recovered eleven weeks later near Lake Geneva. His body was reburied under two meters of concrete to prevent further attempts. 11. CONTROVERSIES
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During World War I, Chaplin was criticised in the British press for not joining the Army. He had in fact presented himself for service, but was denied for being too small and underweight. Chaplin raised substantial funds for the war effort during War bond drives not only with public speaking at rallies but also by making, at his own expense, The Bond , a comedic propaganda film used in 1918. The lingering controversy reportedly is thought to have prevented Chaplin from receiving a knighthood in the 1930s.
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Another argument caused the Jewish ancestry. Nazi propaganda in the 1930s prominently portrayed him as Jewish (named Karl Tonstein) relying on articles published in the U.S. press before, and FBI investigations of Chaplin in the late 1940s also focused on Chaplin's ethnic origins. There is no documentary evidence of Jewish ancestry for Chaplin himself. For his entire public life, he fiercely refused to challenge or refute claims that he was Jewish, saying that to do so would always "play directly into the hands of anti-semites." Although baptised in the Church of England, Chaplin was thought to be an agnostic for most of his life. Also, Chaplin has also figured in the mysterious events surrounding the death of producer Thomas Ince aboard the yacht of William Randolph Hearst in 1924, one of Hollywood's greatest mysteries. A fictionalized version of these events is depicted in Peter Bogdanovich's 2001 film
The Cat's Meow. The precise circumstances of Ince's death are still not known. Nevertheless, Chaplin's lifelong attraction to younger women remains another enduring source of interest to some. His biographers have attributed this to a teenage infatuation with Hetty Kelly, whom he met in Britain while performing in the music hall, and which possibly defined his feminine ideal. Chaplin clearly relished the role of discovering and closely guiding young female stars; with the exception of Mildred Harris, all of his marriages and most of his major relationships began in this manner. All of these controversies became a source of themes in films such as: The Great Dictator, Limelight, A Woman of Paris, Gold Rush.
CHARLIE CHAPLIN’S FILMS 12. “ THE KID” - a refection of his own experience
The Kid (1921) is notable as being the first feature length comedy film to combine comedy and drama, as one of the opening titles says: "A picture with a smile, and perhaps a tear..." The
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most famous and enduring sequence in the film is the Tramp's desperate rooftop pursuit of the welfare agents who have taken the child and, their emotional reunion.
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The Kid
was, more than anything else to that date, made Chaplin a living legend. It took over a year to produce, and was an incredible success for Chaplin. The plot shows a woman (Edna Purviance) who leaves a charity hospital with a newborn, and passes a church wedding, and then she leaves her baby with a pleading note in a limousine and goes off to commit suicide. She turns from suicide at the last moment to return to her child, only to find him missing. The limo had been stolen by thieves who dumped the baby by a garbage can. Charlie the Tramp finds the baby and, after failing to pass the child on to someone more suitable, raises the child himself. Five years later Edna has become an opera star but does charity work for slum youngsters in hope of finding her lost boy. Charlie and The Kid make an interesting pair, with The Kid breaking windows with a rock, which Charlie then comes by to repair (this routine was taken from the life of Charlie Chaplin's old boss, Fred Karno, who actually did this as a boy). A doctor called by Edna discovers the note with the truth about The Kid and reports it to the authorities who come to take him away from Charlie. In one of the most touching moments of the film, the Kid has to be pulled out of Charlie's arms by the authorities. (This incident came directly from Charlie Chaplin's own childhood, when he was torn from his mother's arms as he entered a workhouse.) Before he arrives at the Orphan Asylum Charlie steals him back and takes him to a flophouse. The proprietor reads of a reward for the Kid and takes him from a sleeping Charlie to Edna. Charlie is later awakened from a dream by a kind policeman who reunites him with the Kid at Edna's mansion. My favorite scene at which I almost cried was the sequence in the film when the Tramp's desperately trying to the welfare agents who have taken the child and, their emotional reunionat the end of the movie. I think that the connection between his life and the film made the difference because the plot is really plausible, which involves the watcher into the action and the drama.
13. MASTERPIECES :
13.1. “ A WOMAN OF PARIS “
Chaplin’s first release though the company was A Woman Of Paris (1921), a dramatic film designed to star Edna Puviance- his faithful leading lady– in which he made only a fleeting 13
appearance. After seventy films in which he himself had appeared in every scene, he now directed a picture in which he merely walked on for a few seconds. Until this time, every film had been a comedy. A Woman of Paris was a romantic drama. This was not a sudden impulse. For a long time Chaplin had wanted to try his hand at directing a serious film. The story is centered on a small-town French girl, Marie St. Clair, who plans to elope to Paris with Jean, a struggling artist. Through a misunderstanding, Marie goes to Paris alone, where she becomes the mistress of Pierre, a wealthy and influencial figure in society. Through a party location mix-up, Marie accidentally meets Jean in Paris, where they rekindle their love. However, Jean's clinging mother disapproves, and there are melodramatic twists which finally end when Marie finds her true calling.
What I found special about this particular film was the lack of exaggeration in facial expressions or physical gestures as I would expect from a silent film and the title cards were inserted only when they are necessary, not every t ime a character speaks. I find "A Woman of Paris" an anomaly in Chaplin's filmography because it's a melodrama, not a comedy, except for a few passively amusing scenes with a masseuse, which were a slight source of laughter. There are some shots of a Paris toward the end that are so impressive that I have regret not visiting the place by now.
13.2. “ GOLD RUSH”
The disaster of “ A Woman of Paris” was offset by the triumph of the Gold Rush (1925), which again demonstrated Chaplin’s belief that tragedy and comedy are never far apart: this hilarious comedy was inspired by the acute privations of gold prospectors of the 1890’s. The “Gold Rush “ is one of Charlie Chaplin’s greatest films. Like all of his films starring the Little Tramp, it is a silent, and demonstrates very well why the silent move is an art form in its’ own right. Modern clowns would do well to learn from a master of the art of pantomime by watching this film – it’s Chaplin at his finest. Chaplin and his crew do an excellent job of telling the story without dialog, and it moves from funny to poignant to sad to touching and back to funny again. Again, he found inspiration from real life in stories of the backbreaking Alaskan gold rush. These tales of tragedy and endurance provided Chaplin with a rich vein of comic possibilities. The Little Tramp finds himself in a mountain cabin with two other fortune hunters, Chaplin stages a veritable ballet of starvation, culminating in the cooking of a leathery boot.
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Back in town, the Tramp is smitten by a dance-hall girl, but it seems impossible that she could ever notice him. Finally, he discovers the gold, gets rich and takes the girl.
When
I watched the film, I really split myself with laughter. It contains some of Chaplin’s most hilarious moments, including the ‘dance’ of the dinner rolls, Charlie boiling and eating his own shoe, and several other great moments. But although the plot was quite simple and the comic was always present, I think the message is way more complex. For instance, the scene when the house was about to fall down between two mountains and only a string maintained it still on the ground is very significant. Chaplin was in between life and death, between chaos and fortune, as we humans are everyday. Another aspect that caught my attention was the way he treated the woman after she humiliated him (with total respect) and the ones who tried to kill him (with politeness). All in all, I highly recommend the film for anyone who wants to laugh and enjoy a sensible comedy.
13.3. “THE CIRCUS “
“The Circus” (1928) bought to Chaplin the first Academy Award – it was still not yet called the ‘Oscar’ – he was given it at the first presentations ceremony, in 1929. .
The plot features the Tramp character at the circus where he gets chased by the police that
blame him of being a pickpocket. Trying to get away from the trouble, he accidentally does the opposite as he pops into the show. So, the tramp became the source of amusement of the audience due to his funny attempts to elude the police. The owner hires him but immediately discovers the tramp can’t perform on purpose so he planned to trick him like that every show. Unaware of the exploration, the tramp falls in love with the owner's lovely acrobatic daughter, who is abused by her father. His chances seem good, until a dashing rival comes in and Charlie feels he has to compete with him. .
This movie is a river of comic moments but I think the most funny scene is the chase
through the hall of mirrors (which has to be seen), in which the Tramp accidentally runs into the circus' center ring, where he is unintentionally hilarious.
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Chaplin’s film again brought laughter to me as “ the circus” is a comedy without a net. When I first meet Chaplin's Tramp in this comic gem, he was in typical straits: broke, hungry, destined to fall in love and lust just as sure to lose the girl. Mistaken for a pickpocket and pursued by a peace officer into a circus tent, the Tramp becomes a star when delighted patrons think his escape from John Law is an act. The funny moments, in my opinion, include the frenetic fun15
house sequence, the Tramp turning a magic skit into mayhem and his teetering tightrope walk while monkeys cling to his head. 13.4. “ CITY LIGHTS”
“City Lights” proved to be the hardest and longest undertaking of Chaplin’s career. By the time it was completed he had spent two years and eight months on the work, with almost 190 days of actual shooting. The marvel is that the finished film betrays nothing of this effort and anxiety. Even before he began City Lights the sound film was firmly established.
This
new revolution was a bigger challenge to Chaplin than to other silent stars. His Tramp character was universal. His mime was understood in every part of the world. But if the Tramp now began to speak in English, that world-wide audience would instantly shrink. Chaplin boldly solved the problem by ignoring speech, and making City Lights in the way he had always worked before, as a silent film.
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“City
Lights” is an excellent combination of comedy, satire and pathos. In it, Charlie portrays his world-famous tramp clown, who happens upon a blind flower girl, played extremely well by Virginia Cherrill, not realizing at first that she is blind, and then spending the remainder of the movie trying to raise enough money to pay for the operation to restore her sight. .
It is hilarious, and contains some of Charlie Chaplin’s best routines, including Charlie
Chaplin as a boxer, sanitation worker, etc. But the running joke throughout the film is the inebriated millionaire, played by Harry Myers. When drunk, the millionaire is the Tramp’s friend and benefactor, but when sober he remembers nothing about the Tramp at all. .
Towards the end of the film, Charlie breaks the letter of the law to obtain the money for the
girl—and goes to prison for it. She has the operation and regains her sight, and doesn’t see the Tramp until he is released from prison. Even then, at first she doesn’t realize who the Tramp is —she has been under the impression, while blind, that Charlie is well off—but comes to the realization of who her benefactor truly is; the ending is a tearjerker, and must be seen. .
I found the idea of showing how unlucky can be a blind human to be marvellous. That
really got me appreciating more the fact that I can see and I wondered how many times we forget about the simple and, at the first sight, normal aspects in our life such as: sight, smell, hearing, etc and moreover, forget to help the others. In short, it is a lesson of life and a masterpiece of Charlie Chaplin’s work.
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13.5. “ MODERN TIMES”
Chaplin was acutely preoccupied with the social and economic problems of this new age. In 1931 and 1932 he had left Hollywood behind, to embark on an 18-month world tour. In Europe, he had been disturbed to see the rise of nationalism and the social effects of the Depression, of unemployment and of automation. He read books on economic theory; and devised his own Economic Solution, an intelligent exercise in utopian idealism, based on a more equitable distribution not just of wealth but of work. In 1931 he told a newspaper interviewer, “Unemployment is the vital question . . . Machinery should benefit mankind. It should not spell tragedy and throw it out of work”.
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So, as
a result of his intense research in the issue,“ Modern Times” highlights the very problems everyone faced and still faces concerning machinery versus mankind.
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Modern Times portrays Chaplin as a factory worker, employed on an assembly line. After being subjected to such indignities as being force-fed by a "modern" feeding machine and an accelerating assembly line where Chaplin screws nuts at an ever-increasing rate onto pieces of machinery, he suffers a mental breakdown. Chaplin is sent to a hospital. Following his recovery the now unemployed Chaplin is mistakenly arrested for leading a Communist demonstration when he was only attempting to return a flag (a red flag) that fell off a delivery truck. In jail, he accidentally eats smuggled cocaine, mistaking it for salt. In his subsequent delirious state he walks into a jailbreak and knocks out the convicts. He is hailed a hero and is released. Outside the jail, he discovers life is harsh, and attempts to get arrested after failing to get a decent job. He soon runs into an orphan girl (the "gamine"), played by Paulette Goddard, who is fleeing the police after stealing a loaf of bread. To save the girl he tells police that he is the thief and ought to be arrested. However, a witness reveals his deception and he is freed. In order to get arrested again, he eats an enormous amount of food at a cafeteria without paying. He meets up with the gamine in the paddy wagon, which crashes, and they escape. Dreaming of a better life, he gets a job as a night watchman at a department store, sneaks the gamine into the store and even lets burglars have some food. Waking up the next morning in a pile of clothes, he is arrested once more. Ten days later, the gamine takes him to a new home - a run-down shack which she admits "isn't Buckingham Palace" but will do. The next morning, Chaplin reads about a new factory and lands a job there. He gets his boss trapped in machinery, but manages to extricate him. The other workers decide to go on strike. Accidentally paddling a brick into a policeman, he is 17
arrested again. Two weeks later, he is released and learns that the gamine is a café dancer, and she tries to get him a job as a singer. By night, he becomes an efficient waiter though he finds it difficult to tell the difference between the "in" and "out" doors to the kitchen, or to successfully deliver a roast duck to table. During his floor show, he loses a cuff that bears the lyrics of his song, but he rescues his act by improvising the words in gibberish while pantomiming. His act proves a hit. When police arrive to arrest the gamine for her earlier escape, they escape again. Finally, we see them walking down a road at dawn, towards an uncertain but hopeful future. 13.6.“ THE GREAT ICTATOR”
When writing “The Great Dictator” in 1939, Chaplin was as famous worldwide as Hitler, and his Tramp character wore the same moustache. He decided to pit his celebrity and humor against the dictator’s own celebrity and evil. He benefited – if that is the right word for it, given the times – from his “reputation” as a Jew, which he was not – (he said “I do not have that pleasure”). In the film Chaplin plays a dual role –a Jewish barber who lost his memory in a plane accident in the first war, and spent years in hospital before being discharged into an antisemite country that he does not understand, and Hynkel, the dictator leader of Ptomania, who tries to become the emperor of the world. .
The film begins during World War I. Chaplin, as an unnamed Jewish private in the army
of the fictional nation of Tomainia (allusion to ptomaine poisoning), valiantly attempts to rescue an officer named Schultz (Reginald Gardiner), only to lose his memory when the plane the two had taken off in crashes into a tree. Schultz escapes from the wreckage, and the young private spends the next 20 years in the hospital, thoroughly oblivious to the changes that are taking place in Tomainia: Adenoid Hynkel (cf. Adolf Hitler, Chaplin in a double role), now the ruthless dictator of Tomainia, has undertaken to persecute Jews throughout the land, aided by ministers Garbitsch (cf. Joseph Goebbels) and Herring (cf. Hermann Göring). The amnesiac soldier returns to his barbershop in the Jewish ghetto, still unaware of the political situation, and is shocked when storm troopers paint "Jew" on the windows of his shop. In the ensuing scuffle with the stormtroopers, he finds a friend, and ultimately a love interest, in Hannah (Paulette Goddard), a beautiful resident of the ghetto. Meanwhile, Schultz, who has come up in the ranks in the intervening 20 years, recognizes the barber (who is reminded of
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WWI by Schultz and therefore gets his memory back) and, though surprised to find him a Jew, orders the storm troopers to leave him and Hannah alone. Hynkel, in addition, has relaxed his stance on Tomainian Jewry in an attempt to woo a Jewish financier into giving him a loan. Egged on by Garbitsch, Hynkel has become obsessed with the idea of world domination. (In one famous scene, he dances with a large, inflatable globe to the tune of a theme from Richard Wagner's Lohengrin). On Garbitsch's advice, Hynkel has planned to invade the neighboring country of Osterlich (likely a corruption of Österreich, the German name for Austria) and needs the loan to finance the invasion. Eventually, the financier refuses, and Hynkel reinstates his persecution of the Jews, this time to an even greater extent. Schultz voices his objection to the pogrom, and Hynkel orders him placed in a concentration camp. Schultz flees to the ghetto and begins planning to overthrow the Hynkel regime. To decide who will carry out this plot, a coin is placed in one of five puddings, and the person who receives the one with the coin in it is to carry out the mission to blow up the palace, considered a suicide mission. However, Hannah has placed a coin in every dessert, leading to one of Chaplin's most comical scenes. Eventually, both Schultz and his barber friend are captured and condemned to the concentration camp. Hynkel is initially opposed by Benzino Napaloni (a portmanteau of Benito Mussolini and Napoleon Bonaparte), dictator of Bacteria, in his plans to invade Osterlich. Hynkel invited Napaloni to talk the situation over in Tomainia, however, and attempted to impress Napaloni with a display of military might and psychological warfare, and thus invites Napolini to a military show. The military show turned out to be a disaster. Hynkel's "light artillery" did not arrive. Hynkel's bombers fall from the sky after initially being mistaken for Napaloni's planes. The tanks do arrive, but they totally fail to impress Napaloni, who claims to have tanks that can fly and go under the water. (Herring blusters that they are concentrating on "flying dreadnoughts".) After some friction (and a comedic food fight) between the two leaders, a deal is made (which Hynkel immediately breaks) and the invasion proceeds successfully. Hannah, who has since emigrated to Osterlich to escape Hynkel, once again finds herself living under Hynkel's regime. Schultz and the barber escape from the camp wearing Tomainian uniforms (featuring the double cross, in parody of the Nazi swastika). Border guards mistake the barber for Hynkel, to whom he is nearly identical. Conversely, Hynkel, on a duck-hunting trip so that people will not expect an invasion, falls overboard and is mistaken for the barber and is arrested by his own soldiers. The barber, who has assumed Hynkel's identity, is taken to the Tomainian capital to make a victory speech. Garbitsch, in introducing "Hynkel" to the throngs, decries free speech and other 19
supposedly traitorous and outdated ideas. In contrast, the barber then makes a rousing speech, reversing Hynkel's anti-Semitic policies and declaring that Tomainia will now be a free nation and a democracy. Hannah hears the barber's speech on the radio, and is amazed when "Hynkel" addresses her directly: "Hannah, can you hear me? Wherever you are, look up, Hannah. The clouds are lifting. The sun is breaking through. We are coming out of the darkness into the light. We are coming into a new world, a kindlier world, where men will rise above their hate, their greed and brutality. Look up, Hannah. The soul of man has been given wings, and at last he is beginning to fly. He is flying into the rainbow -- into the light of hope, into the future, the glorious future that belongs to you, to me, and to all of us. Look up, Hannah. Look up" . .
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Chaplin’s aim is obvious, and the film ends with a now famous and humanitarian speech
made by the barber, which I consider extremely suggestive as a proof of his contribution towards the next actors, writers, orators and humanity in general : “ I'm sorry but I don't want to be an Emperor - that's not my business - I don't want to rule or conquer anyone. I should like to help everyone if possible, Jew, gentile, black man, white. We all want to help one another, human beings are like that. We all want to live by each other's happiness, not by each other's misery. We don't want to hate and despise one another. In this world there is room for everyone and the earth is rich and can provide for everyone. The way of life can be free and beautiful. But we have lost the way. Greed has poisoned men's souls - has barricaded the world with hate; has goose-stepped us into misery and bloodshed. We have developed speed but we have shut ourselves in: machinery that gives abundance has left us in want. Our knowledge has made us cynical, our cleverness hard and unkind. We think too much and feel too little: More than machinery we need humanity; More than cleverness we need kindness and gentleness. Without these qualities, life will be violent and all will be lost. The aeroplane and the radio have brought us closer together. The very nature of these inventions cries out for the goodness in men, cries out for universal brotherhood for the unity of us all. Even now my voice is reaching millions throughout the world, millions of despairing men, women and little children, victims of a system that makes men torture and imprison innocent people. To those who can hear me I say "Do not despair". The misery that is now upon us is but the passing of greed, the bitterness of men who fear the way of human progress: the hate of men will pass and dictators die and the power they took from the people, will return to the people and so long as men die [now] liberty will never perish... Soldiers - don't give yourselves to brutes, 20
men who despise you and enslave you - who regiment your lives, tell you what to do, what to think and what to feel, who drill you, diet you, treat you as cattle, as cannon fodder. Don't give yourselves to these unnatural men, machine men, with machine minds and machine hearts. You are not machines. You are not cattle. You are men. You have the love of humanity in your hearts. You don't hate - only the unloved hate. Only the unloved and the unnatural. Soldiers don't fight for slavery, fight for liberty. In the seventeenth chapter of Saint Luke it is written " the kingdom of God is within man " - not one man, nor a group of men - but in all men - in you, the people. You the people have the power, the power to create machines, the power to create happiness. You the people have the power to make life free and beautiful, to make this life a wonderful adventure. Then in the name of democracy let's use that power - let us all unite. Let us fight for a new world, a decent world that will give men a chance to work, that will give you the future and old age and security. By the promise of these things, brutes have risen to power, but they lie. They do not fulfil their promise, they never will. Dictators free themselves but they enslave the people. Now let us fight to fulfil that promise. Let us fight to free the world, to do away with national barriers, do away with greed, with hate and intolerance. Let us fight for a world of reason, a world where science and progress will lead to all men's happiness.” Having considered the above, I think it’s easy to see why this movie quickly became one of my favorites. First of all, I admired Chaplin’s courage to film such a parody especially taking into account the circumstances. Not only the resemblance between Chaplin and Hitler is incredibly stunning, but also the background. The film features the horrors of that time converted due to Chaplin’s methods into comedy. .
Also, this film impressed me due to Chaplin’s ability to play two different roles in the same
movie and make fun of dictators’ gestures, behaviors, speeches, lives.
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13.7.
“MONSIEUR VERDOUX”
The idea was originally about alegendary French killer who murdered at least ten women, two dogs and one boy.
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Monsieur Verdoux is one of Charlie Chaplin’s most unusual films. One of his talking films, Charlie Chaplin is not playing the role of the little Tramp in any way. Instead, he plays the dapper Henri Verdoux, a French bank teller who, after being ‘downized’ in the 1930’s, decides to support his invalid wife and son in a most unusual way.
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In real life, Charlie Chaplin had the reputation for being a lady killer; in Monsieur Verdoux, he plays a literal lady killer—a man who, under a variety of aliases, romances, marries and murders rich women.
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The film
opens with Henri Verdoux picking roses from his garden, and being too tenderhearted to step on a caterpillar—while in the background, an incinerator is burning, with the clear implication that his latest victim’ corpse is being disposed of in it. This sets up the duality of the main character —he is legitimately both a kindhearted individual, who is capable of cold-blooded murder without remorse. And this is supposed to be a comedy? Actually, yes—and parts of it are quite funny. Much of the humor, and any audience sympathy, comes from the character of the 22
women that he murders. Most of them are harsh, mean-spirited, etc. and ‘deserving’ of their fate. One of the extended scenes is with his ‘wife’ Annabella. It quickly becomes a running joke that all of Henri Verdoux’s attempts at murdering Anaabella are foiled by one thing after another. One woman that Henri Verdoux doesn’t murder is a woman that he passes on the street one evening, who’s just recently released from prison. Verdoux invites her to his apartment, intending to test a new, untraceable poison on her. However, once the woman tells how she went to prison as a result of trying to help her invalid husband, he spares her from drinking the poisoned wine. Later on in the film, this moment of kindness comes back to haunt him, inadvertently leading to Verdoux’s capture and trial. This is after the Great Depression, during which Verdoux has lost all of his wealth and has led to the death of his wife and child. Verdoux has lost his will to fight, and in a comic turn at a night club, he turns himself to the police. .
Concerning Monsieur Verdoux , I think it is a funny film, but also a thought-provoking one
because we never know whom we have near us or what expects us if we walk on the street on a certain moment. 13.8. “ LIMELIGHT”
Not surprisingly, then, in choosing his next subject he deliberately sought escape from disagreeable contemporary reality. He found it in bitter-sweet nostalgia for the world of his youth – the world of the London music halls at the opening of the 20th century, where he had first discovered his genius as an entertainer. With this strong underlay of nostalgia, Chaplin was at pains to evoke as accurately as possible the London he remembered from half a century before and it is clear from the preparatory notes for the film that the character of Calvero had a very similar childhood to Chaplin’s own.
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Limelight’ s story of a once famous music hall artist whom nobody finds amusing any longer may well have been similarly autobiographical as a sort of nightmare scenario. Chaplin’s son Sydney plays the young, talented pianist who vies with Calvero for the young ballerina’s heart, and several other Chaplin family members participated in the film. The movie is set in London in 1914, on the eve of World War I. 1914 was the year Chaplin made his first movie. Calvero (Charles Chaplin), once a famous stage clown but now a washedup drunk, saves a young dancer, Thereza, alias Terry (Claire Bloom), from suicide. Nursing her
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back to health, Calvero helps Terry regain her self-esteem and resume her dancing career. In doing so he regains his own self-confidence, but his attempts to make a comeback are less successful. Terry says she wants to marry Calvero despite their age difference, although she has befriended Neville, a young composer whom Calvero believes would be better suited to her. In order to give them a chance Calvero leaves home and becomes a street entertainer. Terry, now starring in her own show, eventually finds Calvero and persuades him to return to the stage for a benefit concert. Reunited with his old partner (Keaton), Calvero gives a triumphant comeback performance but suffers a heart attack and dies in the wings while just a few feet away Terry, the second act on the bill, is dancing on stage.
13.9.“ A KING IN NEW YORK”
A King in New York ‘s theme was the paranoia and political intolerance which overtook the United States in the Cold War years of the 1940s and 50s. Chaplin himself had bitter personal experience of the American malaise of that time. .
At the centre of this film is a fierce and effective comic essay on political intolerance and
its ultimate victims. .
In the film, victim is the small boy Rupert Macabee robbed of his self-respect when the
Un-American Activities Committee investigators trick him into “naming names”, betraying the political affiliations of his parents’ friends. It is interesting to compare A King in New York with an earlier film, The Kid in which a small boy is also a central figure, and the ultimate victim of a sick society. In The Kid the injustice of society takes the form of physical deprivation. In A King
in New York the child suffers something far worse – his honor, his conscience and his soul are abused.
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The plot
shows, due to a revolution in his country, King Igor Shahdov (Charlie Chaplin) comes to New York City with almost no money, his securities having been stolen by his own Prime Minister. He tries to contact the Atomic Energy Commission with his ideas for using atomic power to create a utopia. At a dinner party, some of which is televised live (unbeknownst to him), he reveals he's had some experience in the theater. He's approached to do TV commercials but doesn't like the idea. Later, he does make a few commercials in order to get some money.
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Invited to speak at a progressive school, he meets Rupert Macabee (Michael Chaplin), editor of the school paper, a ten-year-old historian who gives him a stern anarchist lecture. Although Rupert himself says he distrusts all forms of government, his parents are communists. Shahdov is subsequently suspected as a communist himself and has to face one of McCarthy's hearings. He is cleared of all charges and decides to join his estranged queen in Paris for a reconciliation. But Rupert's parents are jailed, and authorities force the child to reveal the names of his parents' friends. Grieving and guilt-ridden, he is presented to King Shahdov as a "patriot". Shadov reassures him that the anti-communist scare is a lot of nonsense, and invites him to come to Europe with his parents for a visit. In a cataclismic scene, Shadov accidentally directs a strong stream of water from a fire hose at the members of HUAC, who scatter in panic - a bit of fulfilment, considering Chaplin's own bitter experience with that body. 13.10. “A COUNTESS FROM HONG KONG”
In 1966 he produced his last picture, “A Countess from Hong Kong” for Universal Pictures, his only film in color. .
The plot presents an American millionaire, Brando, leaving Hong Kong to assume an
ambassadorship. He discovers Sophia Loren--playing a daughter of Russian aristocrats and a former gangster moll--concealed in his closet onboard the outbound ship, hoping to gain passage to the States. Brando, looking none too pleased, agrees to help her, with not terribly comic or romantic results. Chaplin’s one modestly clever touch is to have the camera rock gently and slowly back and forth, ostensibly emulating the movement of the luxury liner. The humor falls flat, Brando and Loren have no chemistry, and the story isn’t terribly engaging. The former Little Tramp appears, mercifully briefly, as a seasick steward who opens and closes a door, swooning in between.
CONCLUSION
All in all, Charlie Chaplin’ s multitude of films had a great impact on the audience of the day and continues to have nowadays. And this is mainly because his inspiration themes were picked up from his very own life, experiences and thoughts. In a review of the book Chaplin: A
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Life (2008), Martin Sieff writes: "Chaplin was not just 'big', he was gigantic. In 1915, he burst onto a war-torn world bringing it the gift of comedy, laughter and relief while it was tearing itself apart through World War I. Over the next 25 years, through the Great Depression and the rise of Hitler, he stayed on the job. He was bigger than anybody. It is doubtful any individual has ever given more entertainment, pleasure and relief to so many human beings when they needed it the most." Besides, he had a precious gift for transmuting the tragedy into comedy and developed it at its top level. The cinematography critic Rudolph Arnheim said that “Charles Chaplin is the only artist who holds the secret weapon of mortal laughter. Not the laugh of superficial gibing that self-complacently underrates the enemy and ignores the danger, but rather the profound laughter of the sage who despises physical violence, even the threat of death, because behind it he has discovered the spiritual weakness, the stupidity, and falseness of his antagonist.”
Last but not least, what is even more important from Charlie Chaplin’ work is the fact that for centuries he inspired lots of actors, musicians, composers, writers, directors but especially comedians to develop a good feedback of amusement. The Italian director Federico Fellini said that “Charlie Chaplin was a sort of Adam, from whom all actors are descended…There were two aspects of his personality: the vagabond, but also the solitary aristocrat, the prophet, the priest and the poet”.
List of sources: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Charlie_Chaplin http://www.charliechaplin.com , http://www.clown-ministry.com
My Autobiography by Charlie Chaplin Chaplin by David Robinson
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