It’s been over a century since Charlie Chaplin introduced his beloved Tramp character in 1914’s “Kid Auto Races at Venice.” Unlike a lot of the silent film performers of the time, Chaplin breaks the fourth wall and makes eye contact with the audience. And even a century later, there’s an immediacy to that eye contact, there’s a bond between you and the silent clown. “He’s this very fluid character who just communes with the audience,” said James Spinney, who, with Peter Middleton, directed the lauded new Showtime documentary “The Real Chaplin.”
“When you watch him, you feel this crackle as he looks at you,” Spinney noted during a recent Film Independent conversation. “It’s kind of flirtatious and mischievous when he does that. Watching his films today, we found that they felt fresh and subversive, even over a century later, and felt like a type of...
“When you watch him, you feel this crackle as he looks at you,” Spinney noted during a recent Film Independent conversation. “It’s kind of flirtatious and mischievous when he does that. Watching his films today, we found that they felt fresh and subversive, even over a century later, and felt like a type of...
- 12/20/2021
- by Susan King
- Gold Derby
As directed by Peter Middleton and James Spinney, The Real Charlie Chaplin attempts a delicate dance, quite ambitiously trying to understand both Chaplin the genius filmmaker and his iconic character the Tramp. “Enjoy any Charlie Chaplin you have the good luck to encounter, but don’t try to link them up to anything you can grasp,” observed writer Max Eastman. A title card with the above text opens the film, offering a direct warning: as much as one can know Chaplin, one never really will. Given access to an incredible amount of archival footage from the legend’s estate, Middleton and Spinney do their damndest to confront the man from every angle. And though they don’t succeed, perhaps that’s the point?
Pearl Mackie does sharp work as the narrator, guiding the viewer through Chaplin’s downtrodden childhood in London, to his signing with Fred Karno and move to America,...
Pearl Mackie does sharp work as the narrator, guiding the viewer through Chaplin’s downtrodden childhood in London, to his signing with Fred Karno and move to America,...
- 11/17/2021
- by Dan Mecca
- The Film Stage
Switzerland became Charlie Chaplin’s home after he was hounded out of the U.S. in 1952, so it’s perhaps fitting that the Zurich Film Festival hosted the European premiere of feature documentary “The Real Charlie Chaplin.”
Playing in the festival’s documentary competition section, “The Real Charlie Chaplin” is an innovative montage of film clips, behind-the-scenes footage, newly-unearthed audio recordings, dramatic reconstructions and personal archive about cinema’s first and arguably greatest icon – tracing his meteoric rise from the slums of Victorian London to Hollywood stardom and eventual banishment.
The darker side of Chaplin’s life is explored too, from the treatment of his ex-wives (his second wife Lita Grey was just 15 when their relationship began) to his eccentric working methods.
The film is directed by Peter Middleton and James Spinney, whose acclaimed 2016 debut feature doc “Notes on Blindness” won the British Independent Film Award for Best Documentary Film.
Playing in the festival’s documentary competition section, “The Real Charlie Chaplin” is an innovative montage of film clips, behind-the-scenes footage, newly-unearthed audio recordings, dramatic reconstructions and personal archive about cinema’s first and arguably greatest icon – tracing his meteoric rise from the slums of Victorian London to Hollywood stardom and eventual banishment.
The darker side of Chaplin’s life is explored too, from the treatment of his ex-wives (his second wife Lita Grey was just 15 when their relationship began) to his eccentric working methods.
The film is directed by Peter Middleton and James Spinney, whose acclaimed 2016 debut feature doc “Notes on Blindness” won the British Independent Film Award for Best Documentary Film.
- 9/30/2021
- by Tim Dams
- Variety Film + TV
Outfitted with a new score and title sequence, reedited sans several scenes involving the woman, and rereleased in 1972, Charlie Chaplin’s first feature length film The Kid has finally made its way to home video in HD thanks to the Cineteca di Bologna’s gloriously meticulous restoration and 4k digital transfer. Originally released back in 1921 after about a half decade of acting and eventually directing wildly popular shorts for Keystone Studios, the Essanay Film Manufacturing Company and finally the Mutual Film Corporation, the film endured a year long production amidst personal and professional crisis. It was thought that Chaplin’s signature brand of comedic slapstick, which typically ran just two reels of film, could not support the length of a six reel feature, but as is evidenced within, the film perfectly fuses Chaplin’s penchant for melodrama with his masterful vaudevillian humor to create an astonishingly emotional comedy that plumbs...
- 2/16/2016
- by Jordan M. Smith
- IONCINEMA.com
“Tramps And Orphans”
By Raymond Benson
The Criterion Collection continues its excellent re-issuing of Charles Chaplin’s major works with The Kid, the first full-length feature from the filmmaker. Released in 1921, Chaplin expanded on the two and three reelers he had been making (a “reel” at that time was approximately 10-15 minutes long) to the six-reels of The Kid (the original cut was just over an hour; Chaplin re-edited it in the early 70s to create the now standard 53-minute version). It’s still a short film, but longer than what were considered “shorts.”
The Kid received high acclaim on its release and was one of the writer/actor/director’s most popular pictures. This was in part due to the presence of young Jackie Coogan in the titular role. Coogan, who grew up to play Uncle Fester in The Addams Family television series of the 1960s, steals the movie...
By Raymond Benson
The Criterion Collection continues its excellent re-issuing of Charles Chaplin’s major works with The Kid, the first full-length feature from the filmmaker. Released in 1921, Chaplin expanded on the two and three reelers he had been making (a “reel” at that time was approximately 10-15 minutes long) to the six-reels of The Kid (the original cut was just over an hour; Chaplin re-edited it in the early 70s to create the now standard 53-minute version). It’s still a short film, but longer than what were considered “shorts.”
The Kid received high acclaim on its release and was one of the writer/actor/director’s most popular pictures. This was in part due to the presence of young Jackie Coogan in the titular role. Coogan, who grew up to play Uncle Fester in The Addams Family television series of the 1960s, steals the movie...
- 2/1/2016
- by nospam@example.com (Cinema Retro)
- Cinemaretro.com
In 1925, the dawning of a new age in film that is right around the corner can already be seen. One of the largest steps is not only seeing film, but also hearing it. A big step towards this process was made when Western Electric and Warner Bros. decide to work together in order to make a system to make motion pictures with sound.
We also see the beginning of the use of foul language in the cinema. While the most infamous early use is most well-known as appearing in Gone With the Wind, The Big Parade beat their “damn” by fourteen years. The Big Parade, an epic silent war film used a title card that said, “March and sweat the whole damned day…”, marking one of the earliest uses of a curse word in an Us film.
Special effects in film even took a huge step forward. Not only were...
We also see the beginning of the use of foul language in the cinema. While the most infamous early use is most well-known as appearing in Gone With the Wind, The Big Parade beat their “damn” by fourteen years. The Big Parade, an epic silent war film used a title card that said, “March and sweat the whole damned day…”, marking one of the earliest uses of a curse word in an Us film.
Special effects in film even took a huge step forward. Not only were...
- 7/6/2011
- by Ross Bonaime
- Flickchart
Ian Sansom on the complex family saga of the silent movie star
A recent headline in the Birmingham Mail read: "Charlie Chaplin may have been from Birmingham." It reports on a letter found by Chaplin's daughter Victoria, after her father's death, that suggests south London's most famous son may have been a Gypsy born in Smethwick. We may never know the truth: Chaplin's birth certificate has never been discovered. But we do know that his parents worked in the music halls, and that he worked in the entertainment industry for more than 75 years, and that many of his 11 children became actors: the Chaplin family story is as complex, sad and delightful as one of his finest slapstick routines. He wrote in My Autobiography (1964): "To gauge the morals of our family by commonplace standards would be as erroneous as putting a thermometer in boiling water."
Chaplin's father, Charles Chaplin Sr,...
A recent headline in the Birmingham Mail read: "Charlie Chaplin may have been from Birmingham." It reports on a letter found by Chaplin's daughter Victoria, after her father's death, that suggests south London's most famous son may have been a Gypsy born in Smethwick. We may never know the truth: Chaplin's birth certificate has never been discovered. But we do know that his parents worked in the music halls, and that he worked in the entertainment industry for more than 75 years, and that many of his 11 children became actors: the Chaplin family story is as complex, sad and delightful as one of his finest slapstick routines. He wrote in My Autobiography (1964): "To gauge the morals of our family by commonplace standards would be as erroneous as putting a thermometer in boiling water."
Chaplin's father, Charles Chaplin Sr,...
- 3/5/2011
- by Ian Sansom
- The Guardian - Film News
It's not just Woody Allen who's trumpeting an enthusiasm for May-to-December romances on the big screen. Should he, and his ilk, be berated? Or might they be helping save lives?
Once more, Woody Allen's genius has brought forth a poignant liaison between a dour but lovable greybeard and a naive but discerning tootsie. Or, to put it another way, a peevish old goat manages to cop off yet again with a complaisant babe.
If you've seen Manhattan, A Midsummer Night's Sex Comedy and Mighty Aphrodite, you won't be surprised by the scenario on which Whatever Works relies. But Woody's aren't the only movies in which an older guy gets lucky.
You may have heard tell of To Have and Have Not, The Big Sleep, An American in Paris, How to Marry a Millionaire, Gigi, High Society, Love in the Afternoon, South Pacific, Rio Bravo, The Sound of Music, Last Tango in Paris,...
Once more, Woody Allen's genius has brought forth a poignant liaison between a dour but lovable greybeard and a naive but discerning tootsie. Or, to put it another way, a peevish old goat manages to cop off yet again with a complaisant babe.
If you've seen Manhattan, A Midsummer Night's Sex Comedy and Mighty Aphrodite, you won't be surprised by the scenario on which Whatever Works relies. But Woody's aren't the only movies in which an older guy gets lucky.
You may have heard tell of To Have and Have Not, The Big Sleep, An American in Paris, How to Marry a Millionaire, Gigi, High Society, Love in the Afternoon, South Pacific, Rio Bravo, The Sound of Music, Last Tango in Paris,...
- 6/28/2010
- by David Cox
- The Guardian - Film News
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