Unknown Chaplin

It has been quite some time since I have written. These past few months have been exceedingly busy ones. I have been working full time as well as started a masters program in Library Science at the University of Illinois. I have also been trying, sometimes vainly it would seem, to complete a script. I have been thinking also about what I would really want to say in a forum like this.

I have certainly seen movies that are worth talking about and commenting on (The Fantastic Mr. Fox), but for whatever reason, I have not been compelled to do so.

One thing that I have though is the above series produced by Kevin Brownlow for the BBC because it was particularly revelatory for me.

I have to admit I have always had a bias against Charlie Chaplin. I did what a lot of unenlightened film snobs do and compared him against Buster Keaton and found him lacking. Keaton seemed to be of the the future, of absurdism, of the 20th Century, and Chaplin seemed like a sentimental throwback to where movies had come from (the 19th Century stage) and not to where they were going.

But if you think about the little tramp in terms of what it represented (as the most popular image, persona of all time) and as a underdog, a truly relatable character, it is easier to see where his influence lies as well as where we have strayed from it. Think of the amount of current comedy that is based on hatred of the other and how an audience is meant to identify with that. Chaplin was always the other.