Director: Sir Richard Attenborough
Genre: Biography/ Drama
If there's one thing audiences anticipate with a biographical movie, it's who is going to portray the main character and whether they will look like the real person. I'm sure the level of this anticipation is determined by the popularity of the person audiences are paying to learn about. Casting is everything. After all, you got to have to audience really get to know the person who they've paid to learn about...whether it's Jesus in The Passion, or Charlie Chaplin in this movie.
Chaplin can be considered a grand-daddy of motion pictures. He's an iconic image worldwide, portrayed in many various ways. So, picking the right actor to portray him was worth scrutinizing.
Chaplin is the biographical movie about the silent film comedian, writer, composer, producer and director. It's based off the books My Autobiography by Charles Chaplin and Chaplin: His Life and Art by David Robinson.
Robert Downy, Jr., did a bang-up job in portraying Chaplin. He starts from his days in Vaudeville, to his elder days. His portrayal of Chaplin's changing personality from a budding comedian to a respected but lonely genius was so well done. Downy's studies into Chaplin's life and art really paid off.
The movie portrays Chaplin dictating is autobiography to a fictitious stenographer. Chaplin starts off his own story with his days as a young boy watching his mother, Hannah Chaplin, slowly deteriorate mentally. He was born into poverty in London and lived with his mother and brother Sydney.
The film doesn't make much mention of his father other than he wasn’t much involved with Chaplin’s life. He drank and died as a result.
He then follows with his discovery by Fred Karno, a British music hall impresario. From there, Chaplin speaks about entering British Vaudeville before coming to America at the request of movie maker Mack Sennett.
Chaplin's career in movies took off, making him a world-wide star. Despite this huge success, and a few failed marriages, Chaplin suffered from loneliness- an ailment he couldn't quite overcome. He stayed very much attached to the things of his past and didn't take too much for granted.
As movies started to transition from silent to "talkies", Chaplin made an effort to keep films silent, thinking talkies would be a mere fad that audiences would soon grow tired of. He thought talkies would insult the imagination of audiences. He held out with talking motion pictures by making a few silent movies while talking had already taken over the movies. His persistence paid off with two huge successful motion pictures, City Lights and Modern Times.
Finally, he couldn't hold out as his good friend and actor Douglas Fairbanks told him he wouldn't. He made his first talking movie, The Great Dictator, which didn't gain a whole lot of popularity as he played both a Jewish barber and a dictator parody of Adolf Hitler.
FBI Director, J. Edgar Hoover had a dislike for Chaplin and all the while, had tried to pin something on Chaplin whom he considered to be nothing more than a public scandal.
As The Great Dictator was released, it caught the attention of both Hoover and Sen. Joseph McCarthy. Chaplin wasn't spared from the notorious McCarthy hearings and was eventually labeled a communist. After making a series of movies where he played other characters aside from his "little tramp" alter ego, he was asked to leave the United States on suspicion of being a communist. He spent the rest of his years living in Switzerland. He did return to the U.S. one last time in the mid- 1970's to receive his honorary Oscar Award.
The film shows the true side of this iconic comedian’s life. It portrays the truth, personified in Chaplin, that comedians must know sadness in order to be comedians better than any other film I've seen dealing with a similar story.
The various celebrities are well cast, especially Geraldine Chaplin portraying her own grandmother.
Chaplin described himself as, "a gentleman, a poet, a dreamer; always hopeful of romance." Downy captured that description very well. He particularly portrays Chaplin's dedication to perfection in his artful films well. The emotion and drama is superb. There is a fair amount of "Chaplinesque" comedy but it's not over done and doesn't take anything away from the movie.
Downy's British accent is the only problem in the film. That much was terrible. It distracts at times from his acting. There were a few scenes where it was obvious he was attempting it a little too hard.
The soundtrack is enjoyable, especially the use of the score from City Lights written by Chaplin himself.
This movie does contain some adult subject matters so... discretion is advisable.
