Key
Collaborators: Roland
Totheroh (Cinematographer), Henry Bergman (Leading Character Player),
Edna Purviance (Leading Player), Albert Austin (Leading
Character Player), Charles D. Hall (Production Designer), John Rand
(Character Player), Eric Campbell (Leading Character Player), Allan Garcia
(Leading Character Player),
Syd Chaplin (Leading Player), Henry P. Caulfield (Producer)
Highly
Recommended:
Modern
Times (1936), The Great Dictator (1940), Monsieur Verdoux (1947)
Recommended:
Easy Street (1917), The Immigrant (1917), Shoulder
Arms (1918), The Kid (1921), The Pilgrim (1923), The
Gold Rush (1925), The Circus (1928), City Lights (1931)
1,000
Greatest Films: The
Kid (1921), The Pilgrim (1923), A Woman of Paris (1923), The Gold Rush (1925), The
Circus (1928), City Lights (1931),
Modern Times (1936), The Great Dictator (1940), Monsieur Verdoux (1947),
Limelight (1952)
"Best
known as the 'the little tramp', he drew on his childhood
experiences of poverty and loss to depict a quintessential
underdog, a rather exquisite, sentimentalised version of the
Common Man eternally at odds with the strong and the rich, the
powerful and unjust...In 1972 he received an honorary Oscar,
followed three years later by a knighthood. While the awards
were in recognition of his genius, he should be remembered less
as a great film-maker than as the man who was the first real
icon of cinema. Chaplin's importance lies in the way he embodied
the movies' power to touch the world." - Geoff
Andrew (The Film Handbook, 1989)
"Chaplin, British-born, and raised and Hollywood-sharpened,
offered the world an image - and was its own best salesman. As
an actual film director, he was not of the first rank, but as an
ideas man and a showcaser of his own talents, he was almost
without peer." - David
Quinlan (Quinlan's Film Directors, 1999)
"The
apparent simplicity of Chaplin's art should never be confused
with lack of technique. For Chaplin, his other self on the
screen has always been the supreme object of contemplation, and
the style that logically followed from this assumption
represents the antithesis to
Eisenstein's early formulations on montage." -
Andrew
Sarris (The American Cinema, 1968)
"Despite being a brilliant comic actor, Chaplin directed with a
simple, sometimes awkward style. Yet his career is loaded with
classics which are often as sentimental as they are funny.
Chaplin's social conscience, first revealed in the pathetic
wanderings of the Little Tramp, blossomed in the 1930s and 40s." -
William R. Meyer (The Film Buff's Catalog, 1978)
"All
my pictures are built around the idea of getting in trouble and
so giving me the chance to be desperately serious in my attempt
to appear as a normal little gentleman." -
Charles Chaplin
"I
do not have much patience with a thing of beauty that must be
explained to be understood. If it does need additional
interpretation by someone other than the creator, then I
question whether it has fulfilled its purpose." -
Charles Chaplin
