Chaplin has survived the times – although his period as a director belongs to the distant past. Even those who did not grow up with Charlie Chaplin and his films know the hobo. “He was not a Hollywood star,” says American Chaplin expert Lisa Stein Haven, “because when he was a star, Hollywood did not exist.”
Charlie Chaplin was a British comic actor who became one of the biggest stars of the silent film era of the 16th century. His acting, based on pantomime and strange movements, made many people smile. But Charlie did not have an easy life and was not as “comic” as he appeared in his roles. His rise to fame and success in the film world was quite challenging for him. He was born on April 1889, 25 and died on December 1977, XNUMX in Switzerland. English actor, screenwriter, director and producer Charlie Chaplin was one of the pioneers of cinema and one of the greatest artists in the history of film. Born in London, Chaplin came from a poor family.
His alcoholic father abandoned Chaplin, his mother, and his older brother not long after Chaplin was born. This left them solely in the care of their mother, who was a singer. Chaplin’s mother, who had long suffered from severe mental illness, in a performance that would have thrust her youngest son into the spotlight, inexplicably lost her voice in the middle of a performance, prompting the manager to push the five-year-old Chaplin, whom he had heard singing, onto the stage to replace him.
Chaplin captivated audiences, captivating them with his natural presence and comic flair, at one point imitating his mother’s voice. For a time, Chaplin and his brother Sydney had to fend for themselves, as their mother was no longer in good health. Chaplin was determined to appear in plays and on stage himself, and in 1897, using his mother’s contacts, he started a dance troupe called the Eight Lancashire Lads, although this was a short and not very profitable period. “I was a newsboy, a printer, a toy builder, a doctor’s boy, etc., but during these professional digressions, I never lost sight of my ultimate goal of becoming an actor,” Chaplin later confessed.
“So, between jobs, I would shine shoes, wash clothes, wear a clean collar, and make periodic calls to a theatrical agency.” After appearing in several plays, Chaplin finally caught the attention of film producer Mack Sennett, who signed Chaplin to a contract for $150 a week. During his first year with the company, Chaplin made 14 films, including “The Tramp.” It is generally considered the actor’s first classic. By the age of 26, Chaplin was a star of the film world, and during the 1920s, his career flourished even more. Where, in 1972, he won the “Oscar” award, Charlie, on December 25, 1977, in the early hours of the morning, died at his home in Switzerland, being recognized today as an icon of silent films.
As in his first film, with which he achieved great success “The Child” (1921), “The Tramp” combined in his character, humor and joke with despair and melancholy. Born on April 16, 1889 in London, he died in Switzerland in 1977 – during his life he experienced many successes in cinematography, but also many scandals. Charles Spencer Chaplin came from a poor family and managed to earn millions in Hollywood. His film “The Gold Rush” (1925) thematizes precisely this contradiction: the sad reality and the dream of gold and wealth. Most of Chaplin’s works were created during the silent film era. For “City Lights” he worked in the phase of transition from silent to sound film. But Chaplin did not prefer sound films. He used sound sparingly and experimentally. His films prove that he was right: Mimicry, pantomime, gestures, and expression – all work even today in Chaplin’s films.
Charlie Chaplin was fond of women and was married four times. The young film star was always attracted to young girls. This often got him into trouble. In the US and in his homeland in England, the apostles of morality criticized him harshly, especially his second wife Lita Grey Chaplin and their two children. Only in his older films did Chaplin play unpleasant characters. He soon devoted himself to the roles that later characterized his films: this was the simple man, defending himself against the injustices of life. In later works such as “Modern Times” (1936) he also exercises a deep social criticism – man in the gears of industrialization. A masterpiece of Chaplin is the film “The Great Dictator” (1940).
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Chaplin succeeded in the almost impossible attempt to satirize Hitler and the Nazis. Later, Chaplin said that if he had known about the concentration camps, he would not have made the film. Despite this, “The Great Dictator” is still a film worth seeing today. In his later work “The Projectors”, Chaplin also elaborated on many of his experiences. It deals with the ups and downs of the artist. The film premiered in 1952, at a time when Chaplin was despised in the USA. He was accused there of being close to communism. Chaplin, who was in England at the time, was not allowed to return to the USA. After a ten-year hiatus, Charlie Chaplin re-released the film “A Hong Kong Countess” in Europe in 1967. Although the film with the two cinema stars Sophia Loren and Marlon Brando had top-notch actors, it did not bring any commercial success. Chaplin spent the last years of his life in Switzerland. He only returned to the USA briefly once. To this day, there is no other figure in the history of cinema that is as present as Charlie Chaplin. Whether in advertisements, in shopping malls, on posters, in photographs or on the Internet – the figure of the vagabond with the typical features of the actor Charlie Chaplin is encountered everywhere and at all times.
Chaplin has survived the times – although his period as a director belongs to the distant past. Even those who did not grow up with Charlie Chaplin and his films know the hobo. “He was not a Hollywood star,” says American Chaplin expert Lisa Stein Haven, “because when he was a star, Hollywood did not exist.” Even today you can say that: Charlie Chaplin is much more than an actor. He is a legend.
