Charlie Chaplin -Best comedian ever

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Charlie Chaplin

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia





Charles Chaplin
Chaplin in costume as The Tramp Born Charles Spencer Chaplin, Jr.
16 April 1889 (1889 -04-16)
Walworth, London, England Died 25 December 1977 (aged 88)
Vevey, Switzerland Occupation Actor, Director, Producer, Screenwriter, Composer Years active 1895 - 1976[1] Spouse(s) Mildred Harris (1918-1921)
Lita Grey (1924-1927)
Paulette Goddard (1936-1942)
Oona O'Neill (1943-1977) Sir Charles Spencer Chaplin, Jr. KBE (16 April 1889 – 25 December 1977), better known as Charlie Chaplin, was an Academy Award-winning English comedic actor and filmmaker. Chaplin became one of the most famous actors as well as a notable filmmaker, composer and musician in the early to mid "Classical Hollywood" era of American cinema.
Chaplin acted in, directed, scripted, produced and eventually scored his own films as one of the most creative and influential personalities of the silent-film era. His working life in entertainment spanned over 65 years, from the Victorian stage and the Music Hall in the United Kingdom as a child performer almost until his death at the age of 88. His high-profile public and private life encompassed both adulation and controversy. With Mary Pickford, Douglas Fairbanks and D. W. Griffith, Chaplin co-founded United Artists in 1919.
In a review of the book Chaplin: A Life (2008), Martin Sieff writes: "Chaplin was not just 'big', 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 Hitler, he stayed on the job. He was bigger than anybody. It is doubtful any individual has ever given more entertainment, pleasure and relief to so many human beings when they needed it the most."[2]
Contents

1 Early life//



 
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Charlie Chaplin "City Lights" tribute





City Lights is a 1931 American silent romantic comedy film written and directed by Charlie Chaplin, and starring Chaplin alongside Virginia Cherrill and Harry Myers. Despite the fact that the production of silent films had dwindled with the rise of "talking" pictures City Lights was immediately popular and is today remembered as one of the highest accomplishments of Chaplin's prolific career.

The plot centers around Chaplin's Tramp, broke and homeless, and a poor blind girl whom the tramp sees selling flowers on the street. He falls in love with her and when the girl mistakes him for a millionaire he keeps up the charade. Earlier in the film he had talked a drunken millionaire out of committing suicide and a running gag throughout the film is that when the millionaire is drunk he is the best of friends with the tramp right up until he sobers up and cannot remember him.
The tramp learns that the girl's rent is overdue and she and her grandmother are in danger of being evicted from their apartment. He begins working small jobs such as street sweeping and in a memorable scene enters a boxing contest, all to raise money for the girl.

Eventually it is a casual gift of one thousand dollars from the millionaire which will pay for not only the rent but also an operation for the girl's eyes. Unfortunately like many of the tramp's efforts things go wrong and he is mistakenly accused of stealing the money when the millionaire is sober. The tramp manages to get the money to the girl, telling her that he is going away shortly before he is arrested and imprisoned.
Several months later, the tramp has been released and ends up on the same corner where the flower girl, her sight restored, has opened up a flower shop with her grandmother; every time a rich man comes into the shop the girl wonders if he was her mysterious benefactor. When the tramp sees a flower lying in the gutter he bends over to pick it up and is kicked in the seat of his pants by two schoolboys. The girl laughs and when the tramp approaches her to give her the flower she jokes to her grandmother that she has "made a conquest." Seeing the flower fall apart in his hand, the girl hands him one of her flowers, but when she feels his hand, she realizes that it is familiar. "You?" she says, and he nervously nods, then asks, "You can see now?" She squeezes his hand tenderly. She smiles and replies, "Yes, I can see now."

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Reception


Charlie Chaplin and Virginia Cherrill in City Lights.


Chaplin was exceptionally nervous about the reception of the film just prior to its release in 1931. Silent films were a total anachronism by this time, with Hollywood having completely switched to sound films by the end of 1929. However, the film was enthusiastically received by Great Depression era audiences, and was one of Chaplin's most financially successful and critically acclaimed releases. At the gala Hollywood premiere, Chaplin's special guests were Albert Einstein and his wife Elsa. Chaplin wrote in his autobiography that he knew the film would be a success after watching the Einsteins' reactions.[citation needed] The film was theatrically re-released in 1950.[3]
Several well-known directors have praised City Lights. In 1963, the American magazine Cinema asked Stanley Kubrick what he felt were the top-ten films; he listed City Lights as his fifth.[4] In 1972, renowned Russian director Andrei Tarkovsky was asked to list his ten favorite films and also placed City Lights at number five whilst expressing his admiration for the director, "Chaplin is the only person to have gone down into cinematic history without any shadow of a doubt. The films he left behind can never grow old." Celebrated Italian director Federico Fellini has often praised this film and his Nights of Cabiria makes quotations from it. In the 2003 documentary Charlie: The Life and Art of Charles Chaplin, Woody Allen said it was Chaplin's best picture. Allen is said to have based the final scene of his 1979 film Manhattan on the final scene of City Lights. Of the final scene, critic James Agee wrote in Life magazine in 1949 that it was the "greatest single piece of acting ever committed to celluloid."[citation needed]
In 1992, City Lights was selected for preservation in the United States National Film Registry by the Library of Congress as being "culturally, historically, or aesthetically significant." In 2007, the American Film Institute's tenth anniversary edition of "100 Years...100 Movies" named City Lights the eleventh greatest American film of all time (a dramatic change from its original standing of 76), making it the highest ranking silent film.[citation needed]
In the first Sight and Sound film magazine poll of the ten best films of all time in 1952, City Lights was voted the second best film of all time, bested only by Vittorio DeSica's Bicycle Thieves.[5] Though it has not reappeared on subsequent lists (voted on by select critics every ten years) City Lights did receive five votes in the 2002 poll, making its ranking 45th.[6] In 2002, Sight and Sound also polled directors as well as critics; in this poll the film received eight votes and was ranked overall as 19th.[7]
In June 2008, AFI revealed its "ten top ten", the best ten films in ten "classic" American film genres, after polling over 1500 people from the creative community. City Lights was acknowledged as the best film in the romantic comedy genre.[8]
French experimental musician and film critic Michel Chion has written an analysis of City Lights, published as Les Lumières de la ville. Slavoj Žižek also used the film as a primary example in one of his essays on Jacques Lacan, Why Does a Letter Always Arrive at Its Destination?.[citation needed]
Rock singer-songwriter Lou Reed wrote a tribute to Chaplin called "City Lights" on his 1979 album The Bells.[citation needed]

American Film Institute Recognition
 
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