Who was Charles Chaplin? Read and find out. Look carefully. You will find links to some of his films, for study and enjoyment.
Sir Charles (Charlie) Spencer Chaplin was comedic actor, film director, composer and musician.
He was born in the United Kingdom and moved to the United States of America (USA) in 1913 and
eventually became one of the most creative and influential personalities of the silent-film era.
His working life in entertainment spanned over 75 years, from the Victorian stage and the Music-hall in the United Kingdom as a child performer until his death at the age of 88.
Chaplin’s most prolific creative activity occurred in the USA from 1914 to the mid 1940s.
His most well-regarded movies were made with United Artists and include City Lights (1931), Modern Times (1936), The Great Dictator (1940) and Monsieur Verdoux (1947), although he made many other classic movies.
Chaplin was critical to the development of film as an art form and he showed the potential of the medium to communicate complex themes.
Chaplin, in his mature period, made intricate films, and provided an abrasive exploitation of paradox and ambiguity. He was the premier comedian and film maker of his time, and remains influential in the present day.
His contribution as a creative person himself and as an inspiration to countless other people has been unique, widespread and timeless.
Chaplin demonstrated stage presence, a natural aptitude for impersonation, and dancing prowess
when he was a young child.
He joined the Fred Karno troupe in 1910, and when the troupe toured America in late 1913 Chaplin's act was seen by Mack Sennett who hired him for his studio, the Keystone Film Company. Sennett mentored the young Chaplin and Chaplin sought out role models, mentors and people he could learn from throughout his life.
Chaplin's pictures were popular successes, and he was one of Keystone’s biggest stars. Keystone was Chaplin’s creative ‘infancy’.
Chaplin learned about film making and developed his tramp character while he worked at a
phenomenal rate completing 34 short films in one year. Chaplin’s ‘Tramp’ gained enormous
popularity among cinema audiences all over the world.
He was known as
Charlot in French speaking countries, Italy, Spain, Andorra, Portugal, Greece, Romania and Turkey,
Carlitos in Brazil and Argentina, and
Vagabond in Germany.
In 1915 Charlie signed a more favorable contract with Essanay Studios.
Chaplin’s time at Essanay was his ‘adolescent’ creative period; he further developed his cinematic
skills, added new levels of depth and pathos to Keystone-style slapstick.
His films became much more ambitious, being twice as long as a typical Keystone picture. Many of the films he made with Essanay are classics including The Tramp. They show Chaplin’s growing talent and many of the ideas that were to come to mature fruition in his later mature period of film making.
Chaplin sought complete artistic control over his products from very early in his career. At Essanay
he became a full-blown celebrity, as he was very popular and he made himself and those around him
wealthy.
From Essanay Chaplin moved to the Mutual Film Corporation in 1916. Mutual paid Chaplin $670,000 to produce a dozen two-reel comedies.
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. This period in Chaplin’s career was his happiest¸ although he found the stringent production schedule demanding and restrictive, especially because his method of film-making involved improvisation and repetition, which were both expensive and time- consuming.
At the conclusion of his contract with Mutual contract (in 1917) Chaplin signed a contract with First
National. Chaplin enjoyed much more creative control over all aspects of the filming process including production and he built his own Hollywood studio. He was also able to perform at a more relaxed pace that allowed him to focus on quality.
Although First National expected Chaplin to deliver short comedies, he expanded most of his personal projects into longer, feature-length films, including
Shoulder Arms (1918),
The Pilgrim (1923) and the feature-length classic
The Kid (1921), which introduced a strong element of pathos and sentimentality to silent movies which was innovative at this time.
In 1919, Chaplin along with other celebrities co-founded the United Artists film distribution company in order to escape the growing power of film distributors and financiers in the fast developing Hollywood studio system.
With this move to United Artists Chaplin assumed complete control of film production. He became independent and this move was crucial in allowing him to achieve his artistic maturity.
After the arrival of sound films, and while still with United Artists, Chaplin made
The Circus (1928),
City Lights (1931), as well as
Modern Times (1936) before he committed to sound.
Modern Times and
City Lights are considered to be prime examples of Chaplin’s art. Both are sophisticated pieces of symbolic film-making that were essentially silent films scored with Chaplin’s music and sound effects.
Chaplin's first dialogue picture,
The Great Dictator (1940), was an act of defiance against German
dictator Adolf Hitler, Nazism, Anti-Semitism and Fascism. It was filmed and released in the United
States one year before the U.S. abandoned its policy of neutrality to enter World War II.
Chaplin exploited the similarities between Hitler and The Tramp (especially the little moustache) and played the role of Adenoid Hynkel, Dictator of Tomania, clearly modeled on Hitler. The film was seen as an act of courage in the political environment of the time, both for its ridicule of Nazism and for the depiction of Jewish persecution. Chaplin was nominated for Academy Awards for The Great Dictator, but he did not win.
Chaplin made his home in Vevey, Switzerland.
He briefly and triumphantly returned to the United States in April 1972, with Oona O’Neill to receive an Honorary Oscar.
Chaplin's final films were
Limelight (1953),
The King in New York (1957) and
A Countess from Hong Kong (1967).
Chaplin was a musician, composer and choreographer as well as film-director and actor. He
composed scores, wrote songs, and choreographed most of his films. Two of his most popular songs
are ‘Smile’ and ‘This is my song’. Chaplin's score for Limelight won an Academy Award in 1972.
There was a delay in the film premiering in Los Angeles due to Chaplin’s unpopularity in America in the early 1950s and so the movie became eligible decades after it was filmed.
In his later career Chaplin wrote extensively on his life. He also wrote original music compositions
and scores for his silent pictures and re-released them. Chaplin's last completed work was the score
for
Woman of Paris. He was knighted at age eighty-five.
Sir Charles Chaplin died in his sleep in Vevey on Christmas Day 1977.
