Charlie Chaplin (in which I am behind the times by nearly 100 years)
I have a confession to make: Until about two weeks ago, I'd never seen a Charlie Chaplin film all the way through.
I'd seen clips, of course, on tv and in film classes, but frankly I'd always taken the “it's cooler to like Buster Keaton” thing to heart, which I think is actually the dominant conventional going-against-convention view-for anyone who still cares about silent films, anyway. Not that I don't still love Keaton, and actually, I like his movies better. (Though there really doesn't need to be a competition-I think they were friendly, anyway.) But two weeks ago I watched The Great Dictator and fell in love. Not necessarily with Chaplin's movies, however.
From a filmmaking perspective, I don't think The Great Dictator is great. I think it's important, which is different, and I think he's brilliant. I watched The Kid last week and found it likewise important but (unlike Dictator) not very interesting. Because I seem to be a lot more interested in Chaplin than I am in his films. I keep thinking about The Great Dictator with the fondness of a new crush, but really what excites me (and yes, I'm way late to this party, I know it) is that this man refused to do talkies for ten years and finally decided that when he spoke, it would be in the dual role of a Jewish barber and Hitler. Seriously, does it get more ballsy than that? And his performance, especially as “Hynkel,” is incredible. It's almost too good, too sympathetic somehow, and I love that Chaplin could look at those newsreels and say, “this is the greatest actor I have ever seen” and turn him into this. Now, he's stated that had he known the extent of what was going on, he couldn't have made the film. He had second thoughts while he was doing so. And the film is uneven and self-indulgent and ends by breaking the narrative completely in order for Chaplin to preach. But you know what? I don't care. I might care if it was modern-I'm a lot more critical when it comes to my contemporaries. But the fact that this guy decided his time, money and career were best spent in sending a big fuck you to the Third Reich delights and frankly amazes me. (As a side note, I now know where Mel Brooks got... well, just about everything.)
Oh, and on a shallow note and not ignoring the problems the man had with regard to young girls, he's pretty darn cute. He's got that whole tiny-man false-vulnerability thing I can't resist. And I'm sort of obsessed with his hair. I'm developing a massive thing for the way men back in the day attempted to tame unruly hair-because it's fantastic when it fails.
I watched half of Chaplin the other day before my disc failed, and as usual I find myself dissatisfied with biopics. They nearly always dwell on the sentimental or the sexual, when what I really want to know is what why and how they did whatever it was they did. This is probably why I love Lawrence of Arabia and Amadeus despite their being wildly inaccurate and don't like, say, Wilde. Robert Downey Jr. is as good as anyone I can think of for the part, but it just doesn't satisfy my curiosity. It offers a conventional narrative without offering me a glimpse at what made him special.
Luckily, that film does exist, and it's called Unknown Chaplin. Basically it's the result of copious study of Chaplin's rushes and outtakes, a documentary in three parts which actually does explain Chaplin's working methods and tells me a lot more about him as a man and an artist than any “re-creation” of his life and loves. And really, what's more effective? Someone done up as Mary Pickford warning Downey!Chaplin that random!Milla Jovovich is jailbait? Or a documentary sequence which shows clips of Lita Grey playing a seductive angel at 12, shots of her on location for The Gold Rush at 15, and James Mason explaining that he had to reshoot the whole film because Lita Grey was now married and pregnant.
Anyway. Unknown Chaplin, which I remember seeing on PBS at some point, demonstrates a kind of analysis that's only possible because Chaplin (directing himself) filmed rehearsals. So they were able to piece together the decisions made, the process by which he constructed his non-scripted stories, and his dedication, physicality, and wastefulness. It's enthralling to watch him shape a segment through hundreds of shots, a process whereby something that started with one set or one idea morphed into something entirely different. I've actually watched it twice already.
And weirdly, all of this is probably way more entertaining to me than his actual movies.
This entry is also posted at http://my-daroga.dreamwidth.org/260349.html. Feel free to comment wherever you want.
I'd seen clips, of course, on tv and in film classes, but frankly I'd always taken the “it's cooler to like Buster Keaton” thing to heart, which I think is actually the dominant conventional going-against-convention view-for anyone who still cares about silent films, anyway. Not that I don't still love Keaton, and actually, I like his movies better. (Though there really doesn't need to be a competition-I think they were friendly, anyway.) But two weeks ago I watched The Great Dictator and fell in love. Not necessarily with Chaplin's movies, however.
From a filmmaking perspective, I don't think The Great Dictator is great. I think it's important, which is different, and I think he's brilliant. I watched The Kid last week and found it likewise important but (unlike Dictator) not very interesting. Because I seem to be a lot more interested in Chaplin than I am in his films. I keep thinking about The Great Dictator with the fondness of a new crush, but really what excites me (and yes, I'm way late to this party, I know it) is that this man refused to do talkies for ten years and finally decided that when he spoke, it would be in the dual role of a Jewish barber and Hitler. Seriously, does it get more ballsy than that? And his performance, especially as “Hynkel,” is incredible. It's almost too good, too sympathetic somehow, and I love that Chaplin could look at those newsreels and say, “this is the greatest actor I have ever seen” and turn him into this. Now, he's stated that had he known the extent of what was going on, he couldn't have made the film. He had second thoughts while he was doing so. And the film is uneven and self-indulgent and ends by breaking the narrative completely in order for Chaplin to preach. But you know what? I don't care. I might care if it was modern-I'm a lot more critical when it comes to my contemporaries. But the fact that this guy decided his time, money and career were best spent in sending a big fuck you to the Third Reich delights and frankly amazes me. (As a side note, I now know where Mel Brooks got... well, just about everything.)
Oh, and on a shallow note and not ignoring the problems the man had with regard to young girls, he's pretty darn cute. He's got that whole tiny-man false-vulnerability thing I can't resist. And I'm sort of obsessed with his hair. I'm developing a massive thing for the way men back in the day attempted to tame unruly hair-because it's fantastic when it fails.
I watched half of Chaplin the other day before my disc failed, and as usual I find myself dissatisfied with biopics. They nearly always dwell on the sentimental or the sexual, when what I really want to know is what why and how they did whatever it was they did. This is probably why I love Lawrence of Arabia and Amadeus despite their being wildly inaccurate and don't like, say, Wilde. Robert Downey Jr. is as good as anyone I can think of for the part, but it just doesn't satisfy my curiosity. It offers a conventional narrative without offering me a glimpse at what made him special.
Luckily, that film does exist, and it's called Unknown Chaplin. Basically it's the result of copious study of Chaplin's rushes and outtakes, a documentary in three parts which actually does explain Chaplin's working methods and tells me a lot more about him as a man and an artist than any “re-creation” of his life and loves. And really, what's more effective? Someone done up as Mary Pickford warning Downey!Chaplin that random!Milla Jovovich is jailbait? Or a documentary sequence which shows clips of Lita Grey playing a seductive angel at 12, shots of her on location for The Gold Rush at 15, and James Mason explaining that he had to reshoot the whole film because Lita Grey was now married and pregnant.
Anyway. Unknown Chaplin, which I remember seeing on PBS at some point, demonstrates a kind of analysis that's only possible because Chaplin (directing himself) filmed rehearsals. So they were able to piece together the decisions made, the process by which he constructed his non-scripted stories, and his dedication, physicality, and wastefulness. It's enthralling to watch him shape a segment through hundreds of shots, a process whereby something that started with one set or one idea morphed into something entirely different. I've actually watched it twice already.
And weirdly, all of this is probably way more entertaining to me than his actual movies.
This entry is also posted at http://my-daroga.dreamwidth.org/260349.html. Feel free to comment wherever you want.