Real Charlie Chaplin – Film newspaper

A silent film icon, one of the biggest Hollywood stars ever and someone who kept wondering why people loved him anyway. This narrow documentary tells the grand and tragic story of Charlie Chaplin’s life.

When Charlie Chaplin signed his first big contract in 1917 – $1 million for eight films – he had a giant studio built, spanning five acres of land, and equipped with every possible technological prowess. One of Chaplin’s neighborhoods looked exactly like the ramshackle London suburbs in which he had grown up. Which, as a teenager, shortly after 1900, he had traded for America by boat. He never knew his father, his mother was mentally unstable, and he was there”Ongoing crisisChaplin threw himself into comedy as a boy and moved as fast as he could to the land where the biggest dreams seemed to come true.

With Chaplin, these dreams also came true. In the documentary Real Charlie Chaplin His life is retold through film fragments, archival footage, and ripped interviews, focusing on Chaplin’s not knowing. “Who is the real Charlie Chaplin?‘, initially antipyretic voiceover asks – instructions for all of what follows.

Nobody can answer. Some assert that Chaplin was someone who lived for his work, and had great attention to detail. He has shot some movie scenes more than a hundred times. He has written, directed, produced, made-up, and made a soundtrack – and of course played the main role himself, usually as his brilliant and witty character The Tramp. He was disciplined, extremely talented, perfect, he was everything. but still says Real Charlie Chaplin Also the life story of someone who never calmed down. He has remained emotionally attached to his miserable childhood. Who, despite all the admiration, kept asking the touching question:Why would anyone love me?“

Well, there are of course plenty of compelling answers, as happens in this documentary. Real Charlie Chaplin On Chaplin’s tremendous influence on the silent film, about the revolutionary The great dictator (1940) and most notable of his other works. Fortunately, the documentary doesn’t lean toward unadulterated paganism, it’s very well-balanced for that. Although it was said that ChaplinMost famous“had become”More than anyone else“(Really?), These are the Tramps.”Greatest comedian of all timeIt was (why?), but on the other hand there is also a reflection of his often overpowering selfishness, the usual way in which he treated women – including his own wives – and the sad isolation that marked his last years in Switzerland, after his expulsion from America on suspicion of communism.

Who is the real Charlie Chaplin? There is no unequivocal answer to this, everyone knows a different version of it. Chaplin pundits won’t hear anything new about all these different personality traits and life stages in this documentary, but that doesn’t change the fact that directors Bette Middleton and James Spinney have made something totally entertaining. They used an intriguing technique that also appeared in their earlier work: they framed old audio recordings with atmospheric scenes, in which actors describe the recorded texts. These narrative pieces work great. Suddenly we see Chaplin giving an interview. In fact, none of this was filmed – it was a newspaper article – but nonetheless, it comes to life very convincingly. there he is. We can’t get any closer.