Charles Chaplin

The life of Charles Spencer Chaplin, born in the London neighborhood of Kennington in 1898, makes for a movie. In fact, Richard Attenborough launched the company in 1992, based on Chaplin’s autobiography and other books. The filmmaker’s childhood has Dickensian overtones: born to parents associated with theater and music-hall; he suffers from her separation, from his alcoholism, from her partial dementia; he knows poverty and is confined for two years in a severe orphanage. With such a scenario, he helps her befriend his older stepbrother Sydney. Both will work in the theater.

Charles made his debut at the precocious age of 5, and made a name for himself at the Karno Pantomime Company. On his second tour of the United States, a spectator notices him: it is Mack Sennett , founder of Keystone, attentive to discover talents for his comedy films. In 1914 Chaplin debuted on the screen. His success is brilliant. In his life, there will be two sides of the coin of the “American dream”: the bright side, which allows him to get rich by reaching the top of his profession, and the dark side of scandal and persecution, which leads him to To exile. Keystone movies were shot at full speed, resorting to improvisation, with gags and cartoonish characters.

Chaplin fights for more elaborate films. His first film as an actor, of a roll, is Haciendo por la vida , and he still does not have the clothing with which he will be known worldwide, incorporated in Car racing for children . In 1914 he directed his first Charlot film, which was followed by more than thirty, almost always with Mabel Normand. Edna Purviance , Virginia Cherrill , Paulette Godard, will be other female on-screen partners.

Chaplin will find it difficult to achieve marital stability. He went through four weddings: with Mildred Harris (1918-20, one son), Lita Gray (1924-27, two children, and a scandalous divorce), Paulette Godard (1933-1941), and finally, the daughter of playwright Eugene O’Neill, Oona (1943-77, eight children). In between, in 1942, there was another scandal over his relationship with Joan Barry , which brought him a paternity suit, which ended with the obligation for Chaplin to pay a pension for a child that was not his. When Chaplin happens to work in Essanay, he has the power to invent and direct the plots he wants. That creative control (Chaplin will act, write, direct and compose music) takes hold at Mutual and First National, until it is total when creating in 1919, with Douglas Fairbanksand Mary Pickford , United Artists. Here he shoots unforgettable feature films for their humanity and lyricism, compatible with humor: The Boy (1921), The Pilgrim (1923), A Woman from Paris (1923, a dramatic rarity, in which he does not act), The Gold Rush (1925 ), The Circus (1928). 

He does not like the arrival of sound, which, he thinks, may represent a setback for the Seventh Art: the moving melodrama City Lights (1931) and the fierce criticism of inhuman capitalism in Modern Times (1936) may have music and noise, but nothing more. Chaplin’s films are spaced out. He achieves the genius of delivering a political and cartoonish film, The Great Dictator (1940), without falling into the pamphlet, when isolationist voices in the face of war abound in the US. His political ideas lead him to be accused in 1947 of the HUAC, the Anti-American Activities Committee. It is the same year that he signs the black comedy Monsieur Verdoux . In 1952, tired of the controversies, he went into exile in Switzerland; that year he delivers Candilejas, in which a forgotten comedian, Calvero, returns to the scene; in 1957 A King in New York insists on a plaintive lament.

Chaplin had promised not to return to the country that raised him to the top and then beat him up. But in 1972 he returned to the praises of crowds to collect an honorary Oscar. He had previously made his only color film, The Countess from Hong Kong (1967). In 1977, on Christmas Day, Chaplin died at his home in Switzerland.