MY DVD Collection - 09 Feb 2007

The Fireman

(Der Feuerwehrmann [de])

USA 1916
d: Charles Chaplin
Image Entertainment (Region 0 us)

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The Vagabond

(Der Vagabund [de])

USA 1916
d: Charles Chaplin
Image Entertainment (Region 0 us)

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One of the films directed by Chaplin during his white-hot streak of comedy shorts for the Mutual Film Corporation, is his first minor masterpiece. "The Vagabond" also gestures toward the development of the Tramp persona in such films as "The Kid" (1921), "The Gold Rush" (1925), and "City Lights" (1931), and hones Chaplin's considerable skills as a director. After starting out in such primitive slapstick efforts as Henry Lehrman's "Kid Auto Races at Venice" (1914), which many agree is one of the first fully realized manifestations of the Tramp persona for which Chaplin became famous, Chaplin realized that he had to take control of his image, and his films, if he hoped to achieve any real and lasting artistic satisfaction and/or commercial impact. Just two years later, by the time of "The Vagabond", Chaplin was already an assured director, even if his visual style remained deeply theatrical. In "The Vagabond", Chaplin appears as a down-on-his-luck violinist who travels to the countryside and falls in love with a young woman (the radiant Edna Purviance) who is being held against her will by a group of gypsies led by veteran Chaplin heavy Eric Campbell. Rescuing her from the troupe, the Tramp accompanies the young woman as she has her portrait painted an itinerant artist (played by Lloyd Bacon, who would later go on to become one of Warner Bros.' most important directors in the 1930s and '40s). But, as is usually the case with the Tramp's comedies, there is heartbreak at the core of the work; the young woman falls in love with the artist, and Charlie's affections are once again spurned. Fate takes a hand when the portrait is seen by a older woman (Charlotte Mineau) who recognizes the young woman as her daughter, who had been kidnapped when she was just a child. At the film's end, the girl is reunited with her mother, and she offers Chaplin's character money as a reward, but the Tramp refuses any payment for his "services." Instead, he is content to wander into his next adventure, perpetually in search of romance, success, and a comfortable station in life.
"The Vagabond" is one of Chaplin's most affecting short comedies, and in his ill-fated romance with Edna Purviance's character, Chaplin prefigures the leading ladies he would work with in his films throughout his long career: unattainable objects of desire who are always interested in some other suitor. But how could the Tramp's fate be otherwise? Destined to roam the back roads of society, continually searching for respectability, Chaplin created a character imbued with the essential paradoxes of human existence: the desire to belong, to be respected by one's peers, and yet remain apart from society, able to function with some degree of freedom. Chaplin was making a fortune with these early films, but he was also astutely paving his way for his later work as a director of feature films for his own studio, as the two-reel comedy format collapsed.
— Wheeler Winston Dixon, AMG

One A.M.

(Ein Uhr nachts [de])

USA 1916
d: Charles Chaplin
Arte TV (Region 0 de)

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The Count

(Der Graf [de])

USA 1916
d: Charles Chaplin
Image Entertainment (Region 0 us)

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Easy Street

(Leichte Straße / Easy Street [de])

USA 1916
d: Charles Chaplin
Image Entertainment (Region 0 us)

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Arguably the best of Charlie Chaplin's 12 Lone Star/Mutual comedies, "Easy Street" gives us a look at the environment in which Chaplin grew up, the slums of South London. Indeed the title of the film is likely a reference to the street where Chaplin was born, East Street in Walworth.
One of Charles Chaplin's most famous comedies, "Easy Street" is a superb example of the comedian's early work, a period in which he displayed an astounding streak of creative genius, making a series of stunning and deeply original comedy shorts on an absolute assembly-line basis. And yet, when he made "Easy Street", Chaplin was coming to end of his two-reel period, and would soon embark on the series of feature films that would solidify his early reputation.
"Easy Street" was made for the Mutual Film Corporation only four years before Chaplin directed his first feature, the deeply sentimental melodrama "The Kid" (1921), in which he co-starred with a young Jackie Coogan (who enjoyed a brief career renaissance in the '60s on the Addams Family TV series as Uncle Fester). In Easy Street, which Chaplin starred in and directed (albeit without screen credit) in addition to having created the story and worked on the screenplay with Vincent Bryan and Maverick Terrell, Chaplin's Tramp character winds up on the right side of the law for a change, as a policeman patrolling one of the toughest districts in town. The usual members of the Chaplin stock company are well in evidence; Edna Purviance is back as a mission worker whom The Tramp is smitten with; Eric Campbell plays the toughest bully on the block; and future Warner Brothers director Lloyd Bacon has an uncredited bit as a drug addict. The key set piece of film is undoubtedly the sequence in which The Tramp, unable to beat Eric Campbell's bully in a fight, finally resorts to sticking the bully's head in a gas street lamp. The bully is thus forced to inhale the gas and is knocked unconscious. Beating the bully up makes The Tramp the ruler of the district; suddenly he is a hero and takes to his new role with great satisfaction. There is a last-minute setback for The Tramp, however, as the bully escapes from jail and kidnaps The Tramp's precious mission worker. But then, accidentally sitting on a stray hypodermic needle left behind by one of the district's drug addicts, The Tramp is suddenly filled with the strength of ten men and cleans up the town in short order. One of Chaplin's best and most accomplished early shorts, "Easy Street" demonstrates again his keen skills as a farceur and his almost balletic movements as an actor. After "Easy Street", Chaplin's status as a screen presence was iconic.
— Wheeler Winston Dixon, AMG

Behind the Screen

(Hinter der Leinwand [de])

USA 1916
d: Charles Chaplin
Image Entertainment (Region 0 us)

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The Rink

(Die Rollschuhbahn [de])

USA 1916
d: Charles Chaplin
Arte TV (Region 0 de)

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"The Rink" is not so much a fully developed short, but rather a series of sight gags in a restaurant and a skating rink with Charles Chaplin at the height of his considerable powers as a physical comedian. His grace and skill in the film are undeniable; the plot, such as it is, is negligible. Edna Purviance is back as the object of Chaplin's affections; Eric Campbell plays the aptly named Mr. Stout, who has designs on Purviance's character; and Lloyd Bacon and Charlotte Mineau show up in bit parts. Chaplin's skill in assembling these brief shorts was by this time legendary (as was his salary). As the writer, director, and star of the film, Chaplin was clearly chafing at the bit, and wanted to move on to bigger and better things. But for the moment, one is more than content to watch Chaplin trip through the film with a display of confidence unmatched by any of his comic peers of the era. Chaplin's Tramp character, whether appearing as himself or, as in this film, briefly impersonating a social "swell," Sir Cecil Seltzer, belonged to the public, and was the ideal comic silent film personage. One of the reasons that Chaplin resisted the coming of sound so intensely was because he knew that the moment The Tramp spoke, much of the magic of the character would immediately vanish. Indeed, he managed to successfully keep The Tramp a silent character though several sound films, including "City Lights" (1931) and "Modern Times" (1936), before finally capitulating to the new demands of the medium and giving a voice to the character in "The Great Dictator" (1940). Thus, some 17 years after sound was generally introduced, The Tramp character spoke onscreen for the first time; but just as Chaplin predicted, much of the magic was lost. Here, we can see Chaplin at his finest, as a phantasmal figure of the silent era, alternately moving and comic, using the language of his facial and body movements to create a unique and immediately identifiable character, one which the public embraced wholeheartedly. Chaplin's later work, significantly, would not be so universally embraced.
— Wheeler Winston Dixon, AMG

The Cure

(Die Kur [de])

USA 1917
d: Charles Chaplin
Image Entertainment (Region 0 us)

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The Immigrant

(Der Einwanderer [de])

USA 1917
d: Charles Chaplin
Image Entertainment (Region 0 us)

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The Adventurer

(Der Abenteurer [de])

USA 1917
d: Charles Chaplin
Image Entertainment (Region 0 us)

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A Dog's Life

(Ein Hundeleben [de])

USA 1918
d: Charles Chaplin
Image Entertainment (Region 0 us)

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The Kid

(Das Vagabund und das Kind [de])

USA 1921
d: Charles Chaplin
Image Entertainment (Region 0 us)

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'A picture with a smile and perhaps a tear' says the opening title of Chaplin's first feature. There's no perhaps about it, what with Charlie struggling to nurture a cast-off illegitimate child in the face of unfeeling cops, doctors and orphanage workers. As always, Chaplin's opulent Victorian sentimentality is made palatable both by the amazing grace of his pantomimic skills and the balancing presence of harsh reality: the drama and the intertwining gags are played out amongst garbage, flophouses, a slum world depicted with Stroheim-like detail. As for the smiles, they're guaranteed too, although the gags don't coalesce into great sequences the way they do in later features.
— GB, Time Out Film Guide
•••••
Charles Chaplin's first feature-length film pairs his Tramp character with an orphan boy, forging a life together in a slum reminiscent of Chaplin's childhood London home. Finding humor in the extreme harshness of the Tramp's impoverished existence with his plucky adopted foundling, Chaplin turns the pair's survival into a series of comic set pieces depicting such events as their scheme to sell windows and their daily breakfast rituals. Coordinated in their movements and well-matched in their temperaments, the Tramp and the Kid are the perfect pair, underlining the potential for tragedy when the child welfare authorities step in. Still, having revealed the Tramp's paternal devotion in a bravura chase scene and a whimsical dream sequence, Chaplin reunites the redefined family for a happy ending. Chaplin overcame First National's resistance to his desire to make a dramatic comedy, and he wrote, directed, and starred in a major success. Shot over nine months and accompanied by a score composed by Chaplin himself, "The Kid" became an critically hailed international hit, launching Jackie Coogan as a major child star. With a blend of social realism and finely tuned physical comedy, Chaplin infuses "The Kid" with a pathos and sweetness that would later mark one of his greatest features, "City Lights" (1931).
— Lucia Bozzola, AMG

The Gold Rush

(Goldrausch [de])

USA 1925
d: Charles Chaplin
Warner Home Video (Region 2 uk)

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The Little Tramp is here the Lone Prospector, poverty stricken, infatuated with Hale, and menaced by thugs and blizzards during the Klondike gold rush of 1898. Famous for various imaginative sequences - Charlie eating a Thanksgiving meal of an old boot and laces, Charlie imagined as a chicken by a starving and delirious Swain, a log-cabin teetering on the brink of an abyss - the film is nevertheless flawed by its mawkish sentimentality and by its star's endless winsome attempts to ingratiate himself into the sympathies of his audience. Mercifully, it lacks the pretentious moralising of his later work, and is far more professionally put together. But for all its relative dramatic coherence, it's still hard to see how it was ever taken as a masterpiece.
— GA, Time Out Film Guide
•••••
The film he said he wanted to be remembered by, Charles Chaplin's masterwork seamlessly combined humor and tragedy as his refined and compassionate little tramp struggled to strike gold in 1898 Alaska. Chaplin's gift for sight gags and intricate mime is most memorably displayed as he feasts on a boiled boot sole, twirling the laces like spaghetti and sucking on the nails as if they were a gourmet delicacy. Even as Chaplin makes comedy out of starvation and struggle, he reveals the dehumanizing effects of greed as it impinges on the capacity to love. Over a year in production and filmed partly on location near Lake Tahoe to recreate the look of photos of Yukon prospectors, "The Gold Rush" became Chaplin's first hit for his United Artists studio, reaffirming his superstar status after a directorial detour through drama in "A Woman of Paris" (1923). The reedited 1942 reissue included music and new narration by Chaplin. "The Gold Rush" has often been paired with Buster Keaton's " General" (1927) as the two greatest silent comedies.
— Lucia Bozzola, AMG
•••••
En 1942, Chaplin a réédité son chef-d'œuvre de 1925 en supprimant les cent quarante et un cartons d'origine et en ajoutant une musique et un commentaire dit par lui-même. La suppression des intertitres n'est pas anodine. Ils étaient accompagnés de dessins qui ajoutaient leur touche à l'émotion - comme une rose près du nom de Georgia, qui perd ses pétales quand Charlot millionnaire regrette son amour perdu.
Surtout, l'alternance des images mobiles et des cartons fixes conférait au découpage une respiration particulière, qui disparaît naturellement de la version sonorisée. C'est frappant par exemple lorsque, entre les trois premiers plans de Georgia au début du film, trois intertitres viennent scander son nom, et donnent à sa présentation le rythme d'un cœur qui bat. Ensuite, comme toujours chez Chaplin, les intertitres étaient concis, voire laconiques. Le commentaire qui les remplace est plutôt bavard et redondant. Il appauvrit le sens en l'explicitant ; il l'alourdit aussi d'intonations très appuyées. Paradoxalement, cette narration off attire un peu plus l'attention sur le caractère muet du film - alors que l'écriture de la version de1925, images et cartons mêlés avait une dynamique et un mordant qui n'était pas sans annoncer l'écriture plus vive et plus réaliste du parlant.
Pour éviter les faux raccords entraînés par la suppression des cartons, Chaplin (qui depuis "Une vie de chien", tournait toujours avec deux caméras côte à côte) a utilisé le négatif non de la première caméra (celle de gauche, dont les images apparaissaient dans la version originale) mais la seconde, celle de droite. Les deux tiers des plans de la version de 1942 sont donc tout simplement différents de ceux de la version de 1925. Dans la plupart des cas, c'est presque invisible. On le remarque tout de même dans la dernière séquence sur le navire et surtout dans celle de la danse des petits pains : Charlot en 1925, regarde droit la caméra. Son regard passe à gauche de l'objectif dans la version de 1942, ce qui modifie sensiblement l'impact de la scène. Parfois aussi, comme dans la scène de la cuisson de la chaussure, Chaplin a été cherché des prises qui n'apparaissaient pas dans la version originale, pour modifier ou ajouter une action ou un gag.
Le passage des cartons au commentaire a encore comme l'effet paradoxal (car à rebours de la tendance globale du parlant à la particularisation) de renforcer le côté universel de la fable et donc, dans une certaine mesure, d'atténuer son inscription historique et d'affaiblir sa portée critique. On peut regretter cet effacement, même s'il fut encouragé par tout un pan de la critique chaplinienne dès les années dix - au nom de l'universalité du mythe. Dans la seconde version de La ruée vers l'or celui qui était "le prospecteur solitaire" devient ainsi "le petit homme" ("the little fellow") : glissement significatif. Chaplin rogne par ailleurs sur l'arrière plan documentaire du film. Dans l'introduction, il supprime la moitié des plans du passage du col par les colonnes de sourdoughs (les misérables chercheurs d'or qui se nourrissent de "pâte aigrie"). Or cette dimension était profondément inscrite dans le projet d'origine, et elle participe de façon non négligeable à la puissance de la première version.
Les autres modifications du film vont toutes dans un même sens : celui d'une atténuation de la critique du rêve américain. Pendant la ruée vers l'or de l'Alaska, beaucoup de prospecteurs du Klondike n'avaient dû leur salut qu'à la revente de leur barda, pour payer le voyage retour sur le vapeur. C'est l'objet d'un passage de la version de 1925, supprimé de celle de1942. On y voit Charlot s'approcher avec son équipement des trois boules de l'enseigne du mont-de-piété. Carton : "Le seul or qu'il gagna jamais grâce à sa pelle et à sa pioche". Puis il ressort tristement, délesté de son chargement.
La fin est également modifiée. On peut certes concevoir que l'érotisme du baiser, sans vraiment braver le Code Hays rappelait le Charlot libidineux des origines dont Chaplin ne voulait plus. Mais le baiser posait sûrement moins problème que l'intertitre auquel il est associé. Voyant Charlot et Georgia s'embrasser sur la bouche au lieu de regarder l'objectif, le photographe s'exclamait "Oh !Vous avez fait rater la photo. Et le double sens du carton ("Vous avez trahi le film") ajoutait une intéressante nuance autocritique au jeu avec la censure. La fin de "La rué vers l'or" est en effet un des seuls véritables happy-end de l'œuvre de Chaplin. Au terme de ses aventures dans les Charlot, le vagabond est presque toujours rendu à sa condition d'origine ; le voici ici au contraire héros d'une success story. Le cinéaste ne pouvait pas ne pas être sensible au caractère artificiel de cette conclusion et l'ultime carton de la version muette laissait percer un doute quant à son bien fondé. En supprimant ce carton, et en terminant sur l'image de Charlot et Georgia de dos, montant l'escalier du pont (tandis que la voix narratrice conclut "Et voici une histoire qui finit bien, très bien") la version de 1942 évacue son questionnement subliminal.
La modification la plus sérieuse apportée à la version de 1942 n'est ni l'élimination d'une pointe satirique, ni le gommage d'une version trop narquoise de l'American Dream, mais le remaniement d'une séquence clé qui altère profondément l'esprit général du film et donc la perception de chacun de ses éléments : sans doute l'acte d'autocensure le plus radical que le cinéaste ait jamais accompli.
Dans le film de 1942, le Vagabond, retournant au dancing le lendemain de la fête du réveillon où il a attendu en vain Georgia et ses amis, brandit dédaigneusement sa canne devant Jack, son insolent rival, prend des poses, se brûle au poêle, avant d'être abordé par un garçon qui lui remet le mot suivant "Excusez-moi de ne pas être venue dîner chez vous. Je voudrais vous voir pour vous expliquer. Georgia". Fou de joie, Charlot se précipite à la recherche de la jeune fille tandis que Big Jim, qui vient de reconnaître son compagnon, le poursuit pour l'entraîner à la recherche de sa "montagne d'or".
Dans la version de 1925, c'est à Jack, non à Charlot, que Georgia écrit son mot, pour s'excuser de l'avoir giflé la veille et lui réaffirmer son amour. La lettre conclut "Pardonnez-moi pour hier soir. Je vous aime. Georgia". Jack après avoir lu le billet (sous les yeux de Georgia qui observe toute la scène de la mezzanine) s'en gausse avec les filles assises à sa table et le fait cyniquement porté à Charlot par un serveur, comme si c'était à lui qu'il était adressé. On comprend mieux la liesse du vagabond- que le contenu du billet dans la version de 1942 ne pouvait guère justifier. Après qu'il ait déclaré son amour à la jeune fille, c'est sous les rires moqueurs de la foule qu'il est traîné par Big Jim hors du saloon. Dans la version de 1942, cette sortie humiliante est habilement neutralisée par un fondu au noir qui fait disparaître l'image des spectateurs saisis d'hilarité.
On se demande bien pourquoi le cinéaste a ainsi modifié son chef-d'œuvre. Le film sort dans deux grandes salles Paramount de Hollywood et de Los Angeles six mois après l'attaque de Pearl Harbor, à un moment où Chaplin est fortement engagé dans la lutte idéologique contre le nazisme. Son combat toutefois, est déjà considéré dans beaucoup de milieux conservateurs comme le signe d'une sympathie coupable à l'égard du communisme et de l'URSS. La veille de la sortie du film, le 18 mai 1942, Chaplin fait, à San Francisco, son premier discours pour l'ouverture d'un deuxième front, prêtant ainsi le flanc à de nouvelles critiques. Si l'on ajoute à cela qu'il est en cours de divorce d'avec Paulette Goddard et que s'aggravent dangereusement ses relations avec Joan Barry, prélude à l'un des plus douloureux procès de sa vie, on peut comprendre qu'il n'ait pas souhaité susciter des accusations d'antiaméricanisme. Si son chef-d'œuvre de 1925, réofferte en 1942 à la jeunesse des Etas-Unis, devait être ressenti comme démoralisateur ou cynique, des nouvelles campagnes du FBI et des associations patriotiques, religieuses ou morales (qui jugeait le cinéaste "concupiscent et ricanant" à l'égard du pays qui avait fait sa fortune) étaient inévitables.
On peut comprendre, en 1942, les raisons du cinéaste. Il est plus difficile d'expliquer pourquoi les ciné-clubs du grand et petit écran ont entériné son autocensure en ne projetant que la version sonorisée. A leur décharge, c'est bien Chaplin lui-même qui a programmé cette occultation en veillant à ce qu'aucune copie de la version de 1925 ne reste en distribution. Pendant vingt ans l'original muet n'a jamais été montré et c'est seulement dans les années soixante que quelques copies 35mm et 16mm ont resurgi. Kevin Brownlow et David Gill ont reconstitué en 1993 la meilleure version de "La ruée vers l'or" qu'on puisse voir aujourd'hui."
— Francis Bordat: Chaplin cinéaste, éditions du cerf 1998, p. 28

The Circus

(Circus / Der Zirkus [de])

USA 1928
d: Charles Chaplin
mk2 / Warner Home Video (Region 2 uk)

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Placing screen clowns within congenial environments (as with "The Marx Brothers at the Circus") is one of the best ways to produce a bummer, but Chaplin manages to work a miracle, exploiting the various circus activities to richly comic effect. Charlie is chased through a hall of mirrors and trapped in a lion's cage the climax comes when he battles along a tightrope hampered by falling trousers and a clinging monkey. The set pieces are linked, none too neatly, by a framing story of disappointed love.
— GB, Time Out Film Guide
•••••
Charlie Chaplin puts the Little Tramp into the circus, and the result is his most underappreciated feature. Like many of Chaplin's films, "The Circus" blends the hilarious with the sentimental, and at the core is Charlie's destiny to watch from the sidelines as his love falls for someone else. The very naïveté and sentimentality of Charlie's scenes with Merna Kennedy are what make them so strangely affecting and sincere. But it is the comedy that makes this film priceless. Among the best sequences are: Charlie's pursuit by the police, which takes him through the house of mirrors and includes the famous gag of Charlie turning himself into a sort of robotic figurine to elude the police; Charlie's failure to successfully audition for the circus, because it involves being intentionally funny; Charlie's disastrous introduction as a prop man; Charlie getting stuck in the lion's cage; and, of course, the flawless climax in which Charlie attempts to perform Rex's high wire act. Throughout, there are smaller, more subtle, moments that flesh out the characters and give the film its heart, and as always with Chaplin, there is the essential aspect of Charlie's personality: the Little Tramp who tries to maintain his dignity in the face of ridicule and defeat. Chaplin's pitch-perfect comic timing and his ability to convey the Tramp's personality through the subtlest of gestures and expressions are what make his creation so endurable. In fact, he is so smooth that he makes it easy to take for granted the amount of work involved in making the film seem so effortless, but the very fact that the shooting for the picture spanned an amazing two years underscores just how much sweat and experimentation went into Chaplin's work. "The Circus" will probably always exist in the shadow of Chaplin's better-known efforts, but it deserves to be fully appreciated on its own terms.
— Bob Mastrangelo, AMG
•••••
"The Circus" has several gaping logic holes which tend to pull the film down (we're supposed to believe, for example, that Charlie is unaware that he's a sensation as a clown, even after several weeks of performing before appreciative audiences), but the film contains several excellent setpieces, including a Hall of Mirrors sequence which anticipates Orson Welles' more serious "Lady From Shanghai" climax by twenty years. "The Circus" won Chaplin a special Oscar in 1928, then lay unseen for forty-two years; it was reissued in 1970, with a new musical score by Chaplin himself (who can be heard singing the theme song in the opening scenes).
— Hal Erickson, AMG
•••••
La deuxième séquence, la poursuite du vagabond à travers la fête foraine, est particulièrement éblouissante. Elle constitue un des sommets de l'art burlesque de Chaplin, où le rythme a tant d'importance et donne sa musique propre et son ordonnance à la profusion jaillissante des gags. Chez Chaplin le rythme et al chorégraphie jouent par rapport aux gags un rôle unificateur, amplificateur et lyrique.
Pour l'essentiel est une œuvre très équilibrée, amère et triste, se déroulant sur un rythme assez lent. Le vagabond est devenu peu à peu un personnage entièrement positif et même héroïque. Il rend le bien pour le mal et, malheureux lui-même fait le bonheur des autres.
Ses rapports avec le directeur qui le renvoie et le réengage constamment ont, en moins systématique, cet aspect de douche écossaise qui caractérisera l'amitié épisodique du millionnaire et de Charlot dans le film suivant de Chaplin, "Les lumières de la ville".
— Jacques Lourcelles

City Lights

(Lichter der Großstadt [de])

USA 1931
d: Charles Chaplin
Warner Home Video (Region 2 uk)

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With its plot focusing on Charlie's love for a blind flower-seller and his attempts to get enough money to pay for an eye operation, "City Lights" edges dangerously close to the weepie wonderland of "Magnificent Obsession" and other lace-handkerchief jobs. This horrid fate is narrowly avoided by bracing doses of slapstick (the heroine unravels Charlie's vest thinking it's her ball of wool) and Chaplin's supreme delicacy in conveying all shades of human feeling. Matters aren't helped by the film's structure, which is as tattered and baggy as the tramp's trousers. But there are plenty of great moments, and the occasional comic use of sound (despite its date, the film is silent) is beautifully judged.
— GB, Time Out Film Guide
•••••
Many critics consider "City Lights" to be Charles Chaplin's finest film, no small accomplishment considering his long string of great films. The film is a Chaplin tour-de-force, as he has his hand in almost every aspect of its production. He co-wrote, produced, directed, scored and edited the film. Unwilling to bend to the winds of change, which saw the introduction of the spoken word in movies three years earlier, Chaplin's is a silent film. However, he does use music and sound effects cleverly throughout, even employing them pointedly to satirize "the talkies." Other familiar targets are the hypocrisy, prissiness, and arrogance of wealthy "polite society" and cruelty to society's less fortunate, lovable outcasts like The Little Tramp himself. Of course, Chaplin's physical comedy is riotously funny. He dances along the highwire between hilarity and disaster with aplomb. All the while, Chaplin's Little Tramp maintains his dignity and sense of fair play. "City Lights"'s parallel plot lines unfold effectively, as the storyline involving The Little Tramp and the suicidal millionaire presages themes developed more fully in Frank Capra's "It's a Wonderful Life". The pathos-ridden love story with the blind flower girl plays on universal themes, such as the intoxicating blindness of love and the rejuvenating power of selflessness. A graceful, athletic artist of pantomime, Chaplin's Little Tramp moves effortlessly between figures of destitution and wealth, aiding and abetting all around him. "City Lights" is a paean to our best impulses, a plea for humanitarianism and justice. Most important, it is the work of a master craftsman, in full control of his craft.
— Dan Jardine, AMG

Modern Times

(Moderne Zeiten [de])

USA 1936
d: Charles Chaplin
Warner Home Video (Region 2 uk)

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The last appearance of the Chaplin tramp, before Hitler, "Monsieur Verdoux" and other personae took over. Antics and situations from the earliest shorts are revived in a narrative framework designed to portray 'humanity crusading in the pursuit of happiness', as the opening title puts it; the tramp faces the perils of factory machinery, poverty, starvation and Depression unrest - and just about survives. Chaplin's political and philosophical naivety now seems as remarkable as his gift for pantomime.
— GB, Time Out Film Guide
•••••
Charles Chaplin's last "silent" film hilariously satirizes Depression-era social ills through the Tramp's disastrous encounters with the industrial age. Chaplin turns his factory worker's nervous breakdown into comic set pieces involving an automated feeding machine, an inability to stop tightening bolts, and, most famously, his entrapment in machinery gears. In a potent satire of authoritarian idiocy, Chaplin repeatedly ends up in jail for stumbling into worker riots and "Communist" protests, yet his ability to quell a prison break while accidentally hopped up on cocaine (!!) earns him the sheriff's respect. Paulette Goddard's fetching Gamin helps Chaplin find work as a singing waiter, but police intervention leaves their togetherness as their only hope. Accompanied by a Chaplin-composed score (including Smile) and synchronized sound effects, numerous bits of business showcase Chaplin's silent gift for physical comedy, including a department store roller skate and maneuvers with a food tray. In a send-up of talking pictures and technology's dehumanizing effects in general, the only voices heard in the movie (save for Chaplin's gibberish song and his fellow waiters' warbling) come from the factory's Orwellian telescreen P.A. system, a phonograph, and a radio. Three years in production, "Modern Times" became another international success for Chaplin (though it was banned in Germany and Italy) and one of the signature works of his career.
— Lucia Bozzola, AMG
•••••
It starts with an overhead shot of pigs, cuts to the throngs coming out of a subway station. Was Chaplin a Surrealist, or just a realist? His version of modern times looks forward in equal measure to Jacques Tati and "1984". This “silent” is full of modern sounds, heard over loudspeakers and big corporate television screens (not to mention the Tramp's outburst of French-inspired gibberish). Charlie the ever-elegant Tramp is an industrial swashbuckler with an oil can for a sword, but he's begun taking on the characteristics of factory machines, obsessively twisting buttons no matter where they reside. We can't have this antisocial behavior, can we? He's released to the rest-and-relaxation of unemployment, eventually to be arrested as a Communist. Paulette Goddard as a starving gamine becomes his comrade in loving arms against an overmechanized world. Only Chaplin could both satirize their kitschy dreams and have them walk off into the sunset in the most poignant Depression image ever faked.
— Judy Bloch, PFA

Modern Times

(Moderne Zeiten [de])

USA 1936
d: Charles Chaplin
Image Entertainment (Region 0 us)

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The Great Dictator

(Der große Diktator [de])

USA 1940
d: Charles Chaplin
Warner Home Video (Region 2 uk)

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Chaplin acts the roles of Hitler (alias Adenoid Hynkel) and a Jewish barber who returns as an amnesiac, decades after an accident in World War I, totally unaware of the rise of Nazism and the persecution of his people. The representation of Hitler is vaudeville goonery all the way, but minus the acid wit and inventive energy that Groucho Marx managed in his impersonation of authoritarianism gone berserk in "Duck Soup". Mr Nobody is eventually carted away to a concentration camp, which leads to a reversal of roles when the barber escapes and is mistaken for Hynkel on the eve of the invasion of Austria. Cue for an impassioned speech about freedom and democracy calculated to jerk tears out of the surliest fascist, in a manner startlingly similar to Hitler's very own delivery.
— VG, Time Out Film Guide
•••••
After a five-year absence from movies, Charles Chaplin took on a dual role in his first full-length talking feature, famous for its comic attack on Nazi Germany (and Adolf Hitler in particular). The script was written before Hitler's invasion of Poland, and Chaplin subsequently noted that, had he known the scope of the evil perpetrated on Europe by the Nazis, he would never have made them the subject of this lampoon. Not as maniacally funny as Chaplin's classic comedies of the 1920s, "The Great Dictator" has more in common with Chaplin's later films, which were more lyrical in approach and more overt in their socio-political messages. In this case, the proselytising turned out to be prescient, as Hitler would soon prove Chaplin's concerns well-founded. This was one of very few films made in the West before World War II that dared to take on Hitler and Mussolini. Still, many critics found fault with Chaplin's approach, claiming that, by portraying German Nazis and Italian Fascists as schoolyard bullies and buffoons, Chaplin was cheapening the impact of their evil actions on millions of Europeans. Despite these criticisms, Chaplin's lampooning of Hitler is a moment of comic genius, complemented by Jack Oakie's ridiculously exaggerated portrayal of the Mussolini-like Italian fascist (nominated for an Academy Award as Best Supporting Actor). "The Great Dictator" is loosely structured, lacking the tight pace and sense of direction of Chaplin's best films: its long-winded concluding speech is the most egregious example. It was nominated for five Academy Awards, including Best Picture and Chaplin for Best Actor.
— Dan Jardine, AMG

The Great Dictator

(Der große Diktator [de])

USA 1940
d: Charles Chaplin
Image Entertainment (Region 0 us)

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Monsieur Verdoux

(Monsieur Verdoux - Der Frauenmörder von Paris [de])

USA 1947
d: Charles Chaplin
Warner Home Video (Region 2 uk)

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Chaplin's self-styled 'comedy of murders' (from an idea by Orson Welles) about a gent who marries short-lived wealthy women was generally disliked on its first appearance: people found it slow, cold, bitter and insufficiently funny. Now it shapes up as Chaplin's most startling, most invigorating movie: its icy temperature is positively bracing after the hot syrup of his earlier work (though a dollop of that survives in the waif character played by Marilyn Nash). Chaplin uses his customary fastidious gestures to emphasis human nastiness - typified by the brassy Martha Raye, who plays the most vulgar woman ever created, chattering away with her mouth full of croissant and laughing not like one drain but ten.
— GB, Time Out Film Guide
•••••
"Monsieur Verdoux" was a box-office failure on its release in 1947. Conventional wisdom has it that writer/director/star Charles Chaplin was in disfavor from paternity suits and alleged Communist sympathies. However, it is difficult to find any film like "Monsieur Verdoux" in or near 1947 that was a box-office success; most likely the film would have flopped commercially no matter what Chaplin's personal situation. The story is a darkly disturbing allegory that contrasts the horrific acts of an individual with the horrific acts of society at large. In his own mind, the title character feels that his acts of murder are justified: they are simply a matter of business. As Chaplin's story challenges the conventional view of war as valiant and necessary, there was little chance that American audiences of 1947, still celebrating U.S. victories in World War II, would flock to see the movie. Similarly, Chaplin's visual style here is reminiscent of his fixed location work in the silent era, a style that seemed outmoded and dull to 1947 audiences. While current-day viewers may enjoy "Monsieur Verdoux" for its trenchant audacity, the film was largely unloved in its own time and a significant setback to Chaplin's career.
— Richard Gilliam, AMG
•••••
Charlie Chaplin abandoned all vestiges of the tramp character and, doing a complete turnabout, emerged as a modern Bluebeard. Dapper, silver-haired Parisian Henri Verdoux, having become unemployable during the French economic recession of the twenties, turns to supporting his invalid wife and young son by the singular method of marrying an assortment of wealthy women, and then murdering them for their money. Audiences in 1947 recoiled in horror at these immoral goings-on, providing Chaplin with his first popular failure. The theme of "Monsieur Verdoux" resembles Brecht's intentions in several plays: to show that the individual murderer - "the small businessman in murder," as Chaplin's character states in the film - is regarded as a criminal in bourgeois society, while big business, the munitions manufacturers and the professional soldiers who contribute to murder on a mass scale are given great honors and rewards. Today, "Monsieur Verdoux" is widely regarded as Chaplin's greatest work.
— PFA