1、,Charles Spencer Chaplin,Overview of His Life,5,4,3,PICTURE START,Charles Spencer Chaplin,Chaplin was one of the most creative and influential personalities of the silent-film era. He was influenced by his predecessor, the French silent movie comedian Max Linder, to whom he dedicated one of his film

2、s.5 His working life in entertainment spanned over 75 years, from the Victorian stage and the Music Hall in the United Kingdom as a child performer, until close to his death at the age of 88. His high-profile public and private life encompassed both adulation and controversy. Chaplins identification

3、 with the left ultimately forced him to resettle in Europe during the McCarthy era in the early 1950s. In 1999, the American Film Institute ranked Chaplin the 10th greatest male screen legend of all time.6 In 2008, Martin Sieff, in a review of the book Chaplin: A Life, wrote: Chaplin was not just bi

4、g, he was gigantic. In 1915, he burst onto a war-torn world bringing it the gift of comedy, laughter and relief while it was tearing itself apart through World War I. Over the next 25 years, through the Great Depression and the rise of Adolf Hitler, he stayed on the job. . It is doubtful any individ

5、ual has ever given more entertainment, pleasure and relief to so many human beings when they needed it the most.7 George Bernard Shaw called Chaplin the only genius to come out of the movie industry.,Childhood,Charles Spencer Chaplin was born in London, England, on April 16th 1889. His father was a

6、versatile vocalist and actor; and his mother, known under the stage name of Lily Harley, was an attractive actress and singer, who gained a reputation for her work in the light opera field. Charlie was thrown on his own resources before he reached the age of ten as the early death of his father and

7、the subsequent illness of his mother made it necessary for Charlie and his brother, Sydney, to fend for themselves. Having inherited natural talents from their parents, the youngsters took to the stage as the best opportunity for a career. Charlie made his professional debut as a member of a juvenil

8、e group called “The Eight Lancashire Lads” and rapidly won popular favour as an outstanding tap dancer.,The Masterpiece Features,City Lights (1931),Modern Times (1936),The Great Dictator(1940),1,2,3,City Lights (1931),“City Lights” proved to be the hardest and longest undertaking of Chaplins career.

9、 By the time it was completed he had spent two years and eight months on the work, with almost 190 days of actual shooting. The marvel is that the finished film betrays nothing of this effort and anxiety. Even before he began City Lights the sound film was firmly established. This new revolution was

10、 a bigger challenge to Chaplin than to other silent stars. His Tramp character was universal. His mime was understood in every part of the world. But if the Tramp now began to speak in English, that world-wide audience would instantly shrink. Chaplin boldly solved the problem by ignoring speech, and

11、 making City Lights in the way he had always worked before, as a silent film. However he astounded the press and the public by composing the entire score for “City Lights”. The premieres were among the most brilliant the cinema had ever seen. In Los Angeles, Chaplins guest was Albert Einstein; while

12、 in London Bernard Shaw sat beside him. “City Lights” was a critical triumph. All Chaplins struggles and anxieties, it seemed, were compensated by the film which still appears as the zenith of his achievement and reputation.,Modern Times (1936),Chaplin was acutely preoccupied with the social and eco

13、nomic problems of this new age. In 1931 and 1932 he had left Hollywood behind, to embark on an 18-month world tour. In Europe, he had been disturbed to see the rise of nationalism and the social effects of the Depression, of unemployment and of automation. He read books on economic theory; and devis

14、ed his own Economic Solution, an intelligent exercise in utopian idealism, based on a more equitable distribution not just of wealth but of work. In 1931 he told a newspaper interviewer, “Unemployment is the vital question . . . Machinery should benefit mankind. It should not spell tragedy and throw

15、 it out of work”.,When writing “The Great Dictator” in 1939, Chaplin was as famous worldwide as Hitler, and his Tramp character wore the same moustache. He decided to pit his celebrity and humour against the dictators own celebrity and evil. He benefited if that is the right word for it, given the t

16、imes from his “reputation” as a Jew, which he was not (he said “I do not have that pleasure”). In the film Chaplin plays a dual role a Jewish barber who lost his memory in a plane accident in the first war, and spent years in hospital before being discharged into an antisemite country that he does not understand, and Hynkel, the dictator leader of Ptomania, whose armies are the forces of the Double Cross, and who will do an