Legends: Charlie Chaplin
Charlie Chaplin passed away 30 years ago on Christmas Day; the final joke from one of the great funny men. To commemorate this, from Christmas Eve to New Year's Eve every morning Sky Movies Classics presents a week of Chaplin shorts and feature films from one of cinema's true auteurs.The Little Tramp is one of the world's most famous silhouettes. Charlie Chaplin (or Sir Charles Spencer Chaplin, Knight of the British Empire by the end of his life) was a vaudeville kid, but possessed a preternatural understanding of cinema.
Chaplin starred in, scripted, produced, directed and sometimes scored and edited his movies. Cinema was in its infancy, so if anyone demonstrated an ability to make money the biggest train-set in the world would be handed to them.
He shared the comic limelight with other solo comics Buster Keaton and Harold Lloyd (who tried to ape Chaplin before discovering his glasses) but whereas Keaton and Lloyd slip in and out of vogue, Charlie has remained immediately recognizable.
The Chaplin shorts demonstrate his burgeoning talent, but he was best when making feature films. With The Kid he began expanding his movies and proved himself adept at characterization, and with City Lights, where the Tramp befriends a blind flower girl, he gave Hollywood an all-time great weepy.
Synch sound came onto the screen in 1927 with The Jazz Singer, but Chaplin resisted the innovation until 1940's The Great Dictator, his first proper talkie. Rather than being afraid of the cinematic development, with hindsight it appears as if Chaplin the perfectionist was waiting for sound technology to catch-up with him before making the transition.
City Lights, made in 1931, was a silent, but in 1936 Modern Times was an inspired "partial talkie" (speech came from inanimate objects) that remains a a perfect synthesis of sound and vision.
After World War 2, Chaplin's output became less prolific, due to a trumped up Communist charge from the House of Un-American Activities, sharply lampooned in A King in New York, and also due to the aging Chaplin unable to discover a persona to replace the Little Tramp.
Chaplin considered reviving the Tramp but ultimately decided against it. After A King in New York he completed A Countess from Hong Kong, released ten years before his death.
Honestly, Chaplin's talkies are not the equal of his silents, stretching in length past his comfortable ninety minutes to the two hour plus mark. But, there is always something joyous in a Chaplin film, something laugh out-loud funny, and as the great little man himself said:
"A day without laughter is a day wasted."
Legends: Charlie Chaplin
Monday 24th December
10am - The Kid
11.10am - A Dog's Life
Tuesday 25th December
9.55am - City Lights
11.25am - A Day's Pleasure
Wednesday 26th December
10.05am - Modern Times
Thursday 27th December
9.30am - The Great Dictator
11.35am - Shoulder Arms
Friday 28th December
9.40am - The Circus
11am - The Pilgrim
11.45am - A Woman of Paris
Saturday 29th December
9.10am - Monsieur Verdoux
11.20am - Pay Day
Sunday 30th December
10am - A King in New York
Monday 31st December
9.55am - Limelight
12.10pm - Charlie - The Life and Art of Charles Chaplin
2.25pm - Sunnyside
