Charles Chaplin
1) City Lights
Author
Description
With the aid of a wealthy erratic tippler, a dewy-eyed tramp who has fallen in love with a sightless flower girl accumulates money to be able to help her medically.
Description
In his controversial masterpiece The Great Dictator, Charlie Chaplin offers both a cutting caricature of Adolf Hitler and a sly tweaking of his own comic persona. Chaplin, in his first pure talkie, brings his sublime physicality to two roles: the cruel yet clownish "Tomainian" dictator and the kindly Jewish barber who is mistaken for him. Featuring Jack Oakie and Paulette Goddard in stellar supporting turns, The Great Dictator, boldly going after...
Description
Inspired by notorious French serial killer Landru, Henri Verdoux lures wealthy women by promising them sweet happy-everafters. After the wedding bells chime, however, he murders them for their fortunes. In this particularly dark comedy, Chaplin questions our perception of evil: isn’t this refined criminal a mere amateur compared to weapons suppliers and dictators? We stand ready to condemn a murderer, but when war victims are counted in millions,...
4) Limelight
Description
Calvero, once a famous Music Hall star, now a washedup old man, saves a neighbor from suicide. He nurtures the young ballerina with paralyzed legs back to health, and helps her regain her self-esteem, so that she may return to the stage.In this film Chaplin intimately and poignantly explores the twilight years of glory: what it means to be forgotten, to despair, and how to gather the strength to overcome. Chaplin also offers Buster Keaton a highly...