Charlie Chaplin: C/D

Chaplin (re)invented cinema comedy grammar, hence all who followed are influenced whether they know it or not. Similar to Griffith with melodramas and chase sequences.

how do you mean? as an assertion this is both vague and broad.

max linder's films have some very chaplin-esque qualities, pre-chaplin. though a search for precedents is neverending, almost by definition.

Chiefly, no predecessor incorporated gags, set pieces, etc into a dramatic narrative to the degree he did.

Also, "The Gold Rush" is rather unimpeachable; some utterly majestic sequences...

In terms of his sound films, yes, he doesn't work so well in the format, but do not underestimate "Monsieur Verdoux", a notably dark film, with Chaplin's addressing-the-world tendency for once injecting a note of lasting despair. Well balanced by lighter moments. However, "A King in New York" is forlornly bad; a bitter film that just ends up seeming petty and stillborn. The self-regarding "Limelight" I am undecided about, and "The Great Dictator" is a bizarre panoply of tones and approaches...

And I think that's the rub. Up-thread, there is comment on his Victorian quality. He brings sophisticated physical comedy and high cultural signifiers (self-composed classical scores, lest we forget) together with all of the pathos and spectacle of the Victorian showman - whether Irving or Dan Leno. There are sentimental music-hall type songs/themes, such as "Smile" (melo) and exaggerated villains and desperate situations ('drama'). His tramp's a bit like a Dickensian protagonist, or a persecuted hero in mid-Victorian crime melodramas such as Tom Taylor's "Ticket of Leave Man".

It's not particularly easy to fully enjoy Chaplin on the terms set out by comedy in 2005, or even 1955...

this is amazing

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QcvjoWOwnn4

Saw The Gold Rush at the NY Film Fest today, w/ accompaniment by members of the NY Philharmonic. I didn't know that TGR (and other features of his) can't be theatrically exhibited unless there's an orcgestra of at least 13 pieces playing!

Anyway, tho I prefer Keaton's features in general, the dance of the rolls is one of the all-time great moments. And the laughs still counterbalanced the pathos at that point.

(...of his career, I mean)

if you don't like The Kid you're insane.

ha, forgot about this thread -- i disown most of what i said; chaplin subsequently became more or less my favorite film person ever.

i saw 'city lights' with an audience a couple years ago and it pretty much was the best film experience ever.

probably should quit ending sentences with 'ever.'

this thread just reminded me that i forgot to record Limelight on TCM last night. I've never seen it.

the MI5 file: "It may be that Chaplin is a communist sympathiser but on the information before us he would appear to be no more than a 'progressive', or radical."

http://www.guardian.co.uk/uk/2012/feb/17/mi5-spied-on-charlie-chaplin

"City Lights" is being shown here at the end of March with accompaniment by the Cleveland Orchestra and I'm seriously considering going even though I just watched it again on Netflix not two months ago.

Ugh, went w/partner to a screening of The Gold Rush not realising it was the 1942 re-release.

"In 1942, Chaplin released a new version of The Gold Rush, taking the original silent 1925 film and composing and recording a musical score, adding a narration which he recorded himself, and tightening the editing which reduced the film's running time by several minutes.

DO NOT WANT. We ended up leaving about five minutes in; we couldn't take the narration any longer.

p sure I've only happened on to that version on TV long ago

the current DVD version of 'the gold rush' emphasizes that version and tacks on the original version as an 'extra,' apparently at the insistence of chaplin's family.

123 today. Showed my class the boxing match from City Lights; they laughed, so they I showed them the Oceana rolls from Gold Rush; they laughed at that, so I moved onto the factory scene from Modern Times.

Criterion set of The Gold Rush makes a restored edition of the reconstructed silent version (with an adaptation of the '42 musical score) fully available at last.

http://www.slantmagazine.com/dvd/review/the-gold-rush/2341

I have to say it's risen even further in my esteem after seeing it this way at the NYFF last fall and another 3 times while absorbing this set. The emotional strings are plucked somewhat more subtly, maybe, than in City Lights and Modern Times, even if it's not as knockabout gritty as the shorts.

also, every auteur needs a chicken suit.

http://25.media.tumblr.com/tumblr_lw605siTyO1qa6obyo1_500.jpg

oh my local vid rental place got this in recently. excited!

happy 125th

http://www.fandor.com/keyframe/daily-chaplin-125

Graham Greene writes to CC after his banishment, one of the overlooked mega-moves of McCarthyism:

http://www.newrepublic.com/article/119468/graham-greene-writes-support-charlie-chaplin-against-mccarthyism

“Charlie Chaplin’s The Tramp was released to the public through Essanay Studios on April 12th, 1915.... Chaplin has been much written about in the 100 years since he first captured the attention of the public, but his career is so jam-packed with messy attitudes and impulses that it still stands as a shifting, fresh body of work to marvel at and get lost in.”

http://www.rogerebert.com/balder-and-dash/charlie-chaplins-the-tramp-at-100

The Kid looks astonishing on the new Criterion blu-ray, and the movie itself is still a joy.

gets his own museum

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/comedy/comedians/charlie-chaplin-museum-opens-in-switzerland/

http://www.chaplinsworld.com/

Filmstruck loses his Keystone, Essanay and Mutual shorts in about 48 hours — which ones should I try to catch before then?

all the Mutuals

(if u must choose)

ive been working my way through the Essanays, and while there's great stuff in there he's clearly still eveolving, sometimes haltingly.

My friend wrote the Criterion essay for The Circus:

Roland “Rollie” Totheroh was Chaplin’s principal cameraman through Modern Times, and then continued to consult on the later features with younger cinematographers like Karl Struss. He also handled Chaplin’s special effects (for example, the miniature cabin and puppets in The Gold Rush) and was his film archivist. Being with the comic from 1916 to the closing of the Chaplin Studio, in 1952, he was immensely important for the iconic look of the films—particularly the sharp clarity of the alleys and run-down buildings of Charlie’s universe. A key but often overlooked player in developing the no-frills visual style where the main focus was always on Chaplin’s performance, Totheroh had this to say to interviewer Timothy J. Lyons right before his death in 1967:

“As a director Mr. Chaplin didn’t have anything to say as far as exposures, things like that. Otherwise, I used to say, ‘Take a look through here.’ The idea of that was that if he was directing, he’d have to know the field I was taking in. Of course, in the early days, the role of the cameraman was much bigger than it is now. It was up to the cameraman to decide what angle to shoot for lighting; or outside, which is the best angle on a building or whatever it is.”

In addition to being Charlie’s camera eye, as conservator of the Chaplin oeuvre Totheroh was responsible for many of the versions of the films that we see today—especially the First National shorts like A Dog’s Life (1918) and Shoulder Arms (1918), whose original negatives were worn out, resulting in new versions having to be assembled in the 1940s from outtakes and C and D negatives. In the early 1950s, with Chaplin exiled in Europe, it was Rollie who closed up the studio, bringing to an end an amazing decades-long run of extreme creativity.

https://www.criterion.com/current/posts/6618-charlie-the-ringmaster

Overall, I love Chaplin, but his over-the-top sentimentality and preachiness can drive me crazy sometimes, especially in his talkies (in particular the famous speeches in The Great Dictator and Monsieur Verdoux). The Gold Rush and City Lights, however, are unfuckwithable.

.

The Circus may not be quite up to the three Tramp features surrounding it, but what is? And that monkey is really biting the hell out of his nose on the tightrope.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_yUXgvwNf6Q

In his collected film criticism, James Agee makes a full-throated defense of Monsieur Verdoux as Chaplin's best film, which certainly runs counter to its general reception in 1947.

jonathan rosenbaum is also a fan of verdoux and rates chaplin's performance in it as one of the best ever, tho sadly i don't think he's written about it at length

I had forgotten that CC really keeps the melodrama to a minimum in The Kid even though that's what people remember most. His direction of Coogan must've been the work of a savant or genius.

The whole 'heaven' dream near the end seems jarring, but it makes the point that even the Tramp's paradise turns to shit.

heard that the scene in The Kid where Jackie Coogan is being taken away in the cart is so well-acted because he actually thought it was happening, not sure I would call that good direction exactly.

CANCEL!

“There was a scene in which we wanted Jackie to actually cry when two workhouse officials take him away from me. I told him all sorts of harrowing stories, but Jackie was in a very gay and mischievous mood. After waiting for an hour, the father said: ‘I’ll make him cry.’
‘Don’t frighten or hurt the boy,’ I said guiltily.
‘Oh no, no,’ said the father.
Jackie was in such a gay mood that I had not the courage to stay and watch what the father would do, so I went to my dressing-room. A few moments later I heard Jackie yelling and crying.
‘He’s all ready,’ said the father.
It was a scene where I rescue the boy from the workhouse officials and while he is weeping I hug and kiss him. When it was over I asked the father: ‘How did you get him to cry?’
‘I just told him that if he didn’t we’d take him away from the studio and really send him to the workhouse.’
I turned to Jackie and picked him up in my arms to console him. His cheeks were still wet with tears. ‘They’re not going to take you away[…]”
“I knew it,’ he whispered. ‘Daddy was only fooling.”

Chaplin's autobiography seems inconclusive -- Jackie might have been putting on a brave face for CC.

Jackie Coogan's parents were of course not the most compassionate people around.

There's hope for the world...my 12 year old loved City Lights and The Kid. He was blown away by Coogan too.

I've heard that Chaplin's book is extremely creative re provable facts.

yes, whatever the deal with Coogan (who Chaplin himself seems to have treated very well as far as I know), CC himself would have multiple reasons to get cancelled today - however this is an era which has DW Griffith doing his inexcusable thing and extras and stuntmen being regularly killed, Chaplin's films are definitely at the "less problematic" end of the scale.

One thing I love about The Kid is that it's an hour long, which is the seldom-used but correct length for a comedy film.

I wanted to do a poll: "Chaplin: Funny? Moving?" I found this thread instead, which was all the conversation I would have hoped for. (My answer is "neither", but I respect his work.)

The short films are funny. Morbz not around to agree with me :(

misogynist dickhead

He hated the police though! (See above)