The Real Charlie Chaplin. (12.)
Directed by Peter Middleton and James Spinney
Narration by Pearl Mackie. Featuring Jeff Rawle, Paul Ryan, Anne Rosenfeld and Dominic Marsh. In cinemas or available for digital download. 114 mins.
Charlie Chaplin was one of the defining figures of the 20th century; its biggest movie star and in terms of global pop culture influence only The Beatles and Elvis were comparable. Or he was painfully annoying, unfunny ****.
It seems to me that the BFI style council has decreed that audiences like it when a narrator speaks like a child. Well, er, I have to disagree. The opening quarter of an hour of this Chaplin documentary is marred by a bad attack of Mark Cousins-itis. Pearl Mackie’s narration is written in a kind of gobsmacked wide-eyed wonderment that makes her sound like a children’s TV presenter. Over images of early Chaplin screen appearances, she says, "So who is he? He's been called The Little Man. The Little Fellow. The Tramp. He's a character, Played by Charlie Chaplin.” Yes. We Know.
The lines are introducing the film’s central notion that the onscreen incarnation of Chaplin and the off-screen one – a cold, driven autodidact what spoke posh – were very different yet entirely codependent. Which is a good hook to hang a Chaplin film on, but all the way through the introduction you are begging the film to just drop it and be a proper documentary that tells you stuff about its subject.
And thankfully, that's what it becomes. Its approach is to avoid all experts and let the silent star speak for himself. Instead of talking heads, we get lipsynced heads. The film is built around three recordings of interviews: a press conference in 1947, supposedly for his movie Monsieur Verdoux, that becomes McCarthyite hit squad; a more wide-ranging, reflective one in 1966 and one with his childhood friend Effie Wisdom in 1983. Each of these is performed by actors lipsyncing the dialogue.
It’s a ruse that is only partially effective, but the film delivers real insights. For example, there’s a sequence showing how the sets for some of his scenes were based on the locations from his past in Kennington. The grinding poverty of his childhood was something that never left him.
The film’s great merit is how rounded a portrait it is. He was a monster, who was treated monstrously by the US authorities. His hounding during the McCarthy period by the FBI is truly outrageous – smeared as a commie and having his citizenship revoked when he left the country. The film shows him to be a sex-mad egomaniac and borderline paedophile – "I was too old for him; I was 20," said one leading lady denying any romantic involvement – whose enormous fame insulated him from any consequences. And it's here the film treats you like an adult: giving you the information and leaving you to form your own opinions.
Directed by Peter Middleton and James Spinney
Narration by Pearl Mackie. Featuring Jeff Rawle, Paul Ryan, Anne Rosenfeld and Dominic Marsh. In cinemas or available for digital download. 114 mins.
Charlie Chaplin was one of the defining figures of the 20th century; its biggest movie star and in terms of global pop culture influence only The Beatles and Elvis were comparable. Or he was painfully annoying, unfunny ****.
It seems to me that the BFI style council has decreed that audiences like it when a narrator speaks like a child. Well, er, I have to disagree. The opening quarter of an hour of this Chaplin documentary is marred by a bad attack of Mark Cousins-itis. Pearl Mackie’s narration is written in a kind of gobsmacked wide-eyed wonderment that makes her sound like a children’s TV presenter. Over images of early Chaplin screen appearances, she says, "So who is he? He's been called The Little Man. The Little Fellow. The Tramp. He's a character, Played by Charlie Chaplin.” Yes. We Know.
The lines are introducing the film’s central notion that the onscreen incarnation of Chaplin and the off-screen one – a cold, driven autodidact what spoke posh – were very different yet entirely codependent. Which is a good hook to hang a Chaplin film on, but all the way through the introduction you are begging the film to just drop it and be a proper documentary that tells you stuff about its subject.
And thankfully, that's what it becomes. Its approach is to avoid all experts and let the silent star speak for himself. Instead of talking heads, we get lipsynced heads. The film is built around three recordings of interviews: a press conference in 1947, supposedly for his movie Monsieur Verdoux, that becomes McCarthyite hit squad; a more wide-ranging, reflective one in 1966 and one with his childhood friend Effie Wisdom in 1983. Each of these is performed by actors lipsyncing the dialogue.
It’s a ruse that is only partially effective, but the film delivers real insights. For example, there’s a sequence showing how the sets for some of his scenes were based on the locations from his past in Kennington. The grinding poverty of his childhood was something that never left him.
The film’s great merit is how rounded a portrait it is. He was a monster, who was treated monstrously by the US authorities. His hounding during the McCarthy period by the FBI is truly outrageous – smeared as a commie and having his citizenship revoked when he left the country. The film shows him to be a sex-mad egomaniac and borderline paedophile – "I was too old for him; I was 20," said one leading lady denying any romantic involvement – whose enormous fame insulated him from any consequences. And it's here the film treats you like an adult: giving you the information and leaving you to form your own opinions.
