For everyone and everything. Chaplin's World: "Charles and Charlie are two different stories

1. During McCarthyism, Chaplin was accused of being a communist and not telling anyone about it. Particularly active fighters tore off tiles with paintings and prints of Chaplin's feet and hands from the Walk of Fame. It was lost, so it was not possible to return it to its place.

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2. Chaplin, already being worldwide famous actor, took part in the competition for the best Charlie Chaplin lookalike and lost, taking only third place.

3. Chaplin's body was stolen from the grave. The kidnappers demanded a ransom from their relatives and threatened to destroy the prey if they did not get their way. 11 weeks later, the police caught them, the actor's body was returned, but in order to avoid a repetition of events, this time they did not cover the grave with earth, but filled it with cement.

4. Charlie Chaplin became the first actor in history to be featured on the cover of a magazine. On July 6, 1925, Time magazine did it.

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5. Charlie Chaplin never won an Oscar in the acting category. Nevertheless, he became the only person in history who was first awarded two Oscars for their overall contribution to the development of cinema (usually this award is given to those who have already finished their careers), and then another one in the nomination “ The best music to the film ".

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6. Charlie Chaplin was a famous heartthrob. Several women sued him, demanding compensation for the maintenance of their common children, who were not very legally born. In 1940, actress Joan Barry filed a lawsuit, and despite the fact that Chaplin's paternity was not proven, the judge, tired of having to deal with Charlie's women several times a year, forced the actor to pay Miss Barry monthly alimony of $ 75 (a lot of money at the time) until this child comes of age. And Chaplin paid.

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7. The image of "The Tramp" Chaplin considered so successful that he used it in 70 films for 26 years. To all the attacks that he was unoriginal, Chaplin dismissed: "It is your claims that are unoriginal."

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8. In his autobiography, which Chaplin called simply "My Autobiography", the actor prescribed 12 truths, the knowledge of which will make you a happy person:

If you didn't laugh today, consider that the day is lost.

Everything in the world is impermanent - especially troubles.

Life seems tragic only when viewed from too close a distance. Step back and enjoy.

We think too much and feel too little.

To learn how to really laugh, learn to play with what hurts you.

Don't get used to luxury. It is sad.

Failures mean absolutely nothing. You need to be a very brave person to fail miserably.

Only clowns are truly happy.

Beauty is something that doesn't need to be explained. It is always visible and so.

Sometimes you have to do the wrong thing in right time and right things into wrong.

Don't give in to despair. This is a drug that does the worst thing to a person - it makes a person indifferent.

Only a nutcase can survive in this crazy world. Feel free to yourself.

Chaplin's friends believed that his mother was a Gypsy, and they said that he himself knew a little the English version of the Gypsy language, in particular, he was fluent in Gypsy jargon. Chaplin's eldest son, Charles Jr., wrote in his memoirs: "... Father was always unusually proud of this violent gypsy blood" - his other son, Sidney, in his declining years married a gypsy.

Hannah and her two young sons did not live long on East Street. Student registration records for Sydney's school indicate that the family changed address frequently, albeit within the same neighborhood. Moving continued throughout Charlie's childhood. When he was two or three years old, Hannah had a new lover. This time Leo Dryden became her chosen one, popular actor variety show. He composed patriotic songs praising the country and the queen. One of his most famous ballads, "The Miner's Dream of Home", is still performed today. Leo made good money. Probably thanks to this, Hannah and her children moved from the noisy and overpopulated East Street to the relatively quiet and prosperous West Square. The districts were only half a mile apart, but the impression was that they had moved to another country.

A maid appeared in the family. Chaplin remembered his Sunday walks on Kennington Road all his life. He was wearing a velvet suit of blue color and blue, matching gloves. He recalled Westminster Bridge Road with fruit stalls, pubs and music halls, recalled sitting on the second floor of a horse tram and stretching his arms up to touch the branches of Vitex, a flowering tree-like shrub that had lined the street. These moments of pure joy remained with him forever. He also remembered the smell of freshly sprinkled roses sold by the flower girl at the corner of Westminster Bridge. In his films, flowers often served as a symbol of the fragility of life or doomed love.

These pictures do not at all resemble the harsh reality. early childhood held in South London. However, they are not fictional, and these memories testify to the first bursts of Chaplin's imagination. It is quite clear that it comes about a short period - two or three years - when the family was not in poverty. This is probably an important circumstance, since Chaplin's character on the screen, the Tramp, gives the impression of a person who lived much better in the past.

During this happy period, Hannah Chaplin gave birth to a child from Leo, again a boy. Wheeler Dryden was born at the end of August 1892, and in the spring of the following year, Hannah and Leo's relationship came to an end. Dryden left her and took his son with him. Dryden considered Hannah a bad mother. It was then that all her misfortunes began. For several weeks before mother Hannah, Mary Ann Hill, was admitted to a mental hospital. Doctors diagnosed her with "incoherence of thought."

Hannah, who had two sons in her care, had to take care of herself - the family could not provide her with any support. It is not known what she lived on. It is quite possible that she found herself a new lover ... Or several ...

Subsequently, Chaplin, in his book "My Biography", mentioned that in 1894 his mother received a singing engagement at the Canteen Theater in Aldershot. The audience there consisted mainly of soldiers, rude and noisy. During one of the performances, Hannah's voice broke and she was booed, forcing her to leave the stage. Then the director of Canteen brought little Charles onto the stage. The boy sang a popular song. The audience began tossing coins, and Charlie paused to pick them up. This made the audience laugh. After collecting the money, the boy began to sing again, imitating those whom he had heard before. At some point, he even imitated his mother's ripped off voice. Hannah, who once again appeared in front of the audience to take her son away, was greeted with applause. Chaplin wrote that her mother's voice never recovered, although she once again managed to get an engagement with the Hatcham Liberal Club. She was introduced as Miss Lily Chaplin, a singer and dancer.

This curious story may well be true, although there is no mention of a show at Canteen among the many music hall show announcements published in The Era. Chaplin told another version of this story: his father pulled him onto the stage, and the reason for his mother's failure was not a short-term laryngitis, but the fact that she began to look into a bottle. You shouldn't judge Chaplin too harshly by claiming that he lied about his childhood - Charlie was just making up different stories from the past, depending on his mood and the circumstances in which he told these stories. According to the official version, Chaplin was the protector and even the savior of his mother - this role in relation to young women was taken on by the Tramp in his films.

Hannah Chaplin, apparently, continued to visit entrepreneurs, and for a while she managed to get a job as a dancer in the ballet Kathy Lanner at the Empire Theater in Leicester Square - one of the busiest and most popular places in the English capital. Another artist from Empire recalled how little Charlie stopped behind the side decorations and softly sang her part half a line in front ... “The more I frowned, looking at him, the wider he smiled,” she said. This woman also said that even then Charlie had an excellent ear for music and he remembered almost everything she sang. Director primary school on Victory Place in Walworth, which Chaplin did not visit for long, recalled the boy like this: “He had big eyes a head of black curly hair and beautiful hands... He was very sweet and shy. "

Be that as it may, Hannah Chaplin's artistic career is over. She worked as a seamstress, repaired old clothes, but it was hard and low-paid work. Hannah turned to the Lord for support and comfort. In 1895, she became a parishioner of Christ Church on Westminster Bridge Road, recording as "An actress who lives apart from her husband." Additional earnings was sewing clothes for members of the community, but physical stress undermined her health.

On June 29, 1895, Hannah was admitted to Lambeth Hospital, where she stayed for a month. Charlie's mother suffered from extreme stress, which apparently manifested itself in the form of migraines. Her eldest son, Sydney, was sent to a local workhouse, but over time was transferred to a school for the poor in West Northwood. Charlie was taken in by a relative of his paternal grandmother, John George Hodges, who lived in the same area.

In the early spring of 1896, the boys resumed living with their mother, but their address is unknown. They moved from one cheap rented room to another and changed six different attics and basements in three months. Chaplin has preserved mainly sad memories about this period of life. Sydney grew out of her coat, and Hannah made him a new one out of her velvet jacket. He also had to wear his mother's old boots, from which high heels had been cut down. Boys stole food from street hawkers. The family lived on charitable donations from parishioners - "parcels for the poor." They attended free canteens at the church. As a child, Chaplin never tasted butter and cream, and as an adult and a very well-to-do person, he ate them greedily, sometimes he simply could not stop. John Doubleday, author of the 1981 Chaplin monument in Leicester Square, opposite the Odeon cinema, said that Charlie had a poorly developed rib cage malnourished child. By the way, a similar monument by the same sculptor, depicting Chaplin in the image of the Tramp, who made him famous, is installed on the shores of Lake Geneva.

Of course, there were also happy moments. One day little Charlie earned a few pennies dancing at pub doors to the sounds of the accordion coming from there. One day, Sydney, who was selling newspapers, found a wallet with gold coins on the bus. However, it is possible that he did not find it at all ... With this money, the whole family went to Southend, where Chaplin saw the sea for the first time. Previously, they only bathed in Kennington Baths when they could afford it. The mother took the boys to the magic lantern show at Baxter Hall, where it was a penny to enter. Hannah, when she was healthy and in good mood, entertained the children by copying the expressions and movements of people passing along the street. Perhaps it was from her younger son inherited this talent.

It is possible that some of the filmmakers considered such a contract insane. But they were wrong. Twelve films, directed by Chaplin for Mutual in eighteen months, turned out to be not only masterpieces of cinema, but also extremely profitable financial transaction... Even before the end of the war, the capital invested by the company in Chaplin gave 700-800% of the profit. This was just the beginning: another five million dollars were made in five years. Suffice it to say that many years later, in 1945, Charlie Chaplin's Gala was edited out of six old Muechuel films. Shown in newly liberated France, it has brought the firm tens of millions.

Individual chapters from Chaplin's life and his films did not always coincide with the terms of new contracts.

The end of 1916 was marked by a sharp change in the style and in all of Chaplin's work. The business side ceases to dominate art. In the impeccable classic painting "Quiet Street" (also called "Charlie Cheers" and "Charlie the Policeman" in France), the image of Charlie appeared for the first time in all its meaning. The artist refused to indulge the tastes of the public, from cheap effects. He felt himself the master of the image he had created. He crossed the line separating talent from genius.

To reach such heights at the age of twenty-seven, he had to free himself from the vanity that still made itself felt in his name. new studio Mutual Company - Lone Star (Lone Star). The ice shower, which he was doused with shortly after his placement in the studio, forced Chaplin to be self-critical of himself.

“I had only one desire,” he writes about this in 1916, “to please the public, which was so supportive of me. which inevitably caused unrestrained laughter, even if they were not connected with the course of action ...

During this period of ecstasy of success, the day after the premiere of the film "Fireman", I was doused with a real ice shower; some absolutely stranger, whom I have never met in my life, wrote to me:

"I am very afraid that you are becoming a slave to your audience, whereas in many of your previous films the audience was your slave ... And the audience, Charlie, loves to be a slave ..."

After this letter, I tried to avoid what the public demands. I prefer to follow my own taste. Rather, it expresses what the public really expects from me ... "

This confession must be understood correctly. Charles Chaplin is not at all an extreme individualist, who believes that the audience is only a slave to him. On the contrary, he is deeply convinced (and his methods of work eloquently testify to this) that the only meaning of an actor's work is to retell the feelings inherent in the public in the language of art.

But humanity consists of individual people, sometimes good, sometimes evil, whose feelings, like their language, are both good and bad ... Therefore, the point is not to indulge the tastes of the public, but to serve it with their art , tirelessly separate the good grains from the chaff. The point is not to become for the public something like a mirror, endlessly reproducing all the same image. An artist who imitates others or repeats himself in his work undergoes the same changes as the old film after countless reprints - from negative to positive, from positive to negative and so on ad infinitum. At the same time, sharpness decreases, contrasts are smoothed, white and black gradually merge into an expressionless gray tone. In the end, the once vivid picture becomes its pale likeness.

Yes, an artist, if he is a creator in the highest sense of the word, must be an interpreter. Distinctive feature genius - the ability to understand the desires and needs of people before people themselves are fully aware of them. When such a connection arises between the individual and the mass, then only one can speak of the birth of a genius. Each century creates only a few outstanding people both in art and in politics. Having understood this law and based on it a strict reassessment of the techniques of his art, Chaplin crossed the line that separated him from genius.

Let's leave for a while little man on his hard way to Calm Street. Let's return to that Charlie, full of gaiety, to which sometimes mild sadness was mingled, to Charlie of 1915-1916, which brought him unparalleled fame. In those years, Louis Delluc, who had just opened it, wrote: "To this day, there is no figure in history equal to him in glory, - he overshadows the glory of Jeanne d" Arc, Louis XIV and Clemenceau. I do not see who else could compete with him in fame, except for Christ and Napoleon. "

The mocking journalist noted historical fact... All countries, both peaceful and belligerent (with the exception of states Central Europe), were fond of Charlie, his waddling gait, his cane. Masks, dolls, pastries, and illustrated magazines with his image were sold everywhere. The example of the impudent plagiarist Billy Ricci was not slow to follow the dozens of fake Charlie who flooded music halls and screens all over the world.

The general public bestowed fame on the little English actor. The intelligentsia also appreciated him. Pablo Picasso, Guillaume Appoliner, Max Jacob, Fernand Leger, Elie Faure, still very young Louis Aragon did not miss a single film with Charlie. Charlie's first admirers were those who were most interested in the life of the people. They told all their friends about their discovery, they made Chaplin a character in their paintings, poems, articles. Delight for the emerging genius united the "crowd" and the "chosen ones."

1915 Chaplin began by speaking in the film "His new job" my own story... Charlie - no longer a vagabond, but an unemployed one - comes to the Essen studio, hearing that a worker is required in the props department. But he is not the only one to covet this place. The squint-eyed Ben Turpin also achieves it. An acrobatic struggle for a piece of bread is tied up between the rivals. The more cunning and cruel Charlie takes over. Having stepped on the stomach of a defeated enemy and incapacitated him, he receives the position of an assistant carpenter. The brave are lucky. The novice worker is asked right off the bat to replace the first lover who was late for filming. Here he is already stomping, waddling from foot to foot, on the set in a hussar dolman with patches and a shaggy hat. Among the scenery, which depicted a "luxurious" palace, during the film, he had to look after an arrogant noble lady with an ostrich fan and high hair, dressed in a dress with a long train.

Charlie destroys the conventions of high society dramas. He steps on the hem of his partner's dress and rips it off. Noble lady climbs the stairs without noticing it. He leans against the fake marble columns - and they fall and roll like empty barrels... It all ends with the usual scuffle and Charlie's expulsion from the studio.

Not all Esseney films had the virtues of this first film. An Evening of Fun with Ben Turpin or In the Park with Edna Purvance is not much different from Keystone.

However, it is noteworthy that in the movie "Champion" the little man is no longer so confident in his strength as in the old days. Here he is unemployed: he sadly shares a sausage with his dog, bought for the last cent; out of nowhere, the ring boss appears and hires him as a whipping boy for the boxing champion. To develop muscles, Charlie does exercises with clubs and gymnastic equipment. The iron horseshoe is usually a life-saving talisman. Charlie puts it in his boxing glove, thanks to which all opponents are knocked out. He becomes a champion. And the beautiful Edna, in a cap and sweater, looking like a boy, smiles sweetly at him.

In this film, both humanistic and social notes sounded. Chaplin was concerned with more than just the nuances of Charlie's feelings. He emphasizes social status his hero and shows that in all the ridiculous situations in which he finds himself, the society is to blame. This justified the trick with the horseshoe in the eyes of the viewer. Finding himself face to face with the brute attacking him, the unemployed had to and had the right to defend his life.

In The Tramp, Charlie - again unemployed - winds up at the edge of the forest for Edna and saves her from the robbers. The girl's father, a wealthy farmer, hires Charlie to work on the farm. The novice milks the cow, using its tail as a pump handle, watering the trees with a tiny watering can, and collecting the eggs just laid by the chickens in the pockets of his jacket. The robbers appear again. Charlie puts them to flight, but he is wounded in the leg.

His courage and devotion won, as he hoped, the favor of the beautiful Edna. Everyone looks after the wounded hero. The simpleton Charlie believes that he has won his happiness and Edna's heart has been won. Pride, hope - and suddenly a blow, which turned out to be more painful than a rough kick with a foot: the girl introduces him to her adored fiance ... Charlie returns to his former life of an unemployed tramp. And so we see him walking away with his back to the viewer along the dusty road - at first, downcast, discouraged, then again cheerful.

In another film - "Work" - Charlie is again "a tiny pathetic donkey." He drags his Sisyphean stone along the steep slope of the mountain - a cart with rolls of wallpaper, a ladder and a bucket of glue; at the top sits his master, a painter, calmly smoking his pipe.

Charlie Chaplin was one of the few public figures in the United States, who sincerely and actively advocated assistance to the USSR and campaigned for the opening of the Second Front during WWII. However, the FBI and the government did not appreciate his altruism. This once again allowed them to suspect world star in sympathy for communism. Appeals to help the USSR became one of the reasons why they were against Chaplin the persecution began in the United States, which included trumped-up lawsuits, a black PR campaign in the media, etc., which eventually forced him to leave the country.

Here is how he describes one of the episodes of the campaign for the opening of the Second Front in his book "My biography":

The Committee for Aid to Russia in the War in San Francisco invited me to speak at the rally instead of the sick Joseph E. Davis, the former American ambassador to Russia. I agreed, although I was warned literally a few hours in advance. The rally was scheduled for the next day, and I immediately boarded the evening train arriving in San Francisco at eight in the morning.
My whole day was already scheduled by the committee by the clock: here - breakfast, there - lunch - I literally did not have time to think about my speech. And I was supposed to be the main speaker. At lunch, however, I had a glass or two of champagne, and that cheered me up.
The auditorium, which could accommodate ten thousand spectators, was overcrowded. On the stage were American admirals and generals, led by the mayor of San Francisco Rossi. The speeches were very restrained and evasive. The mayor, in particular, said:
“We have to reckon with the fact that the Russians are our allies.
He tried in every possible way to downplay the difficulties experienced by the Russians, avoided praising their valor and did not mention that they were fighting to the death, drawing all the enemy fire on themselves and holding back the onslaught of two hundred Nazi divisions. “Our allies are no more than casual acquaintances” —that's how I felt about the Russians that evening.
The chairman of the committee asked me, if possible, to speak for at least an hour. I was dumbfounded. My eloquence lasted four minutes at the most. But, having heard enough silly, empty chatter, I was indignant. On a card with my name, which lay by my device at lunch, I sketched out four points of my speech and waited to pace back and forth backstage. Finally they called me.
I was wearing a tuxedo and a black tie. There was applause. This allowed me to somehow collect my thoughts. When the noise subsided, I said only one word: "Comrades!" - and the audience burst into laughter. After waiting for the laughter to stop, I repeated emphatically: "This is exactly what I wanted to say - comrades!" And again laughter and applause. I continued:
- I hope that today there are many Russians in this hall, and knowing how your compatriots are fighting and dying at this moment, I consider it a great honor to call you comrades.
A standing ovation began, many stood up.
And then, remembering the argument: "Let both those and others bleed," - and getting excited, I wanted to express my indignation about this. But something stopped me.
“I’m not a communist,” I said. “I’m just a person, and I think that I understand the reaction of any other person. Communists are people like us. If they lose an arm or a leg, they suffer just like us, and they die just like us. The mother of a communist is the same woman as any mother. When she receives the tragic news of the death of her son, she cries like other mothers cry. I don't need to be a communist to understand it. Just being human is enough. And these days very many Russian mothers cry, and many of their sons are dying ...
I spoke for forty minutes, every second not knowing what I was going to talk about next. I made my listeners laugh and applaud by telling them anecdotes about Roosevelt and about my speech in connection with the release of the war loan in the first world war- everything worked out as it should.
“And now this war is going on,” I continued. - And I would like to say about helping the Russians in the war. - After a pause, I repeated: - About helping the Russians in the war. They can be helped with money, but they need more than money. I was told that the Allies in the north of Ireland have two million soldiers languishing idle, while the Russians alone are confronting two hundred divisions of the Nazis.
There was a tense silence in the hall.
“But the Russians,” I stressed, “are our allies, and they are fighting not only for their country, but also for ours. Americans, as far as I know them, do not like others to fight for them. Stalin wants this, Roosevelt calls for it - let's also demand it: immediately open a second front!
There was a wild noise that lasted for about seven minutes. I expressed out loud what the listeners were thinking, what the listeners themselves wanted. They did not let me speak anymore, they applauded, stamped their feet. And while they stomped and shouted and threw their hats into the air, I began to think if I had gone too far, had I gone too far? But I immediately became angry with myself for such cowardice in the face of the thousands who were now fighting and dying at the front. And when the audience finally calmed down, I said:
- If I understood you correctly, each of you will not refuse to send a telegram to the president? Let's hope that tomorrow he will receive ten thousand demands for the opening of a second front!
After the rally, I felt a kind of wariness and awkwardness in the air. Deadley Field Melon, John Garfield and I decided to have dinner together.
“And you are a brave man,” Garfield said, hinting at my speech.

125 years ago, Charles Spencer Chaplin was born - a man who has become synonymous with 20th century cinema. Pioneering film producer Mac Sennett, who first gave Chaplin a job in cinema, claimed that Chaplin would be talked about 100 years later. There will be in 500 - if there is someone. But, unfortunately, in recent decades Chaplin's touchingness, though carefully remastered and reissued in Blu-ray format, has almost no place in modern cinema. However, we have his films, in which laughter so often went hand in hand with tears.

At the age of seven, Chaplin slept on park benches if he was not at the workhouse at the time. His mother, a singer, was held in an insane asylum, and his alleged father, music hall artist Charles Chaplin Sr., drank black and died when Charlie was ten. According to one of the legends, Chaplin was generally born in a gypsy caravan near Birmingham - the artist himself never found a birth certificate. Chaplin seemed to come out of nowhere. His childhood was hellishly difficult.

His path to success can be summed up in one paragraph. Little Charlie did not taste oil, was a shy, sickly child and grew up in an atmosphere of adultery, alcoholism and insanity. To feed himself, he danced with hat in hand on the streets of London. At the age of nine he had already toured Britain with the Lancashire Boys, a group of rural tap dancers, and at 14 got his first role in the theater. During the auditions, he most of all feared that he would be asked to read a few lines - he was illiterate. At the age of 21, he goes on tour to America with the Carnot troupe (it also included the comedian Stan Laurel) and decides to stay there. Just four years later, at the age of 25, he was already a movie star and received astronomical money for those times - $ 1000 a week.

Despite his income, Charlie wore the most seedy clothes and was completely uninterested in his own. appearance or even cleanliness. Accustomed to poverty, he made the strictest economy in everything his second nature, and success did not affect him in any way. He never bought himself a drink or treated anyone. His colleagues in the theater called him strange. And when he finally left the theater troupe to devote himself entirely to the then young cinema, no one particularly missed him.

Chaplin admired Max Linder, the king of French silent films, a corny comedian who had starred in comedies since 1908. When Linder arrived inHollywood, Chaplin gave him his portrait with the inscription "To Professor Max from his student." In the short film "Max's Roman" (1912), the shoes of its owner fell in love with womens shoes hotel neighbors. Chaplin got himself the same tall black ankle boots and wore them for decades after they fell out of fashion. But in his films, Chaplin walked miles around his teacher - he moved incredibly fast, inserted more gags into scenes, and moved the plot forward with gestures and body language. The secret of Chaplin's success probably lay in the fact that he combined both in the image of his Tramp circus clowns, red and white - mannered, elegantly clad Pierrot and awkward Auguste in wide trousers and oversized boots.

Chaplin's personality contrasted very strongly with his cute on-screen image. Chaplin was an egocentric - there is an anecdote that in response to the assistant's remark that the rails for the operator's trolley are visible in the frame, Chaplin replied: "If I am in the frame, the audience will not look at anything else."

In the short film "Woman" (1915), his Tramp disguises himself as women's clothing, shaves off his mustache and becomes no longer even effeminate, but completely loses any masculine features - he flirts, smiles, charms. Chaplin dyed his eyelashes heavily, emphasizing his beauty for the whole world. And the world responded to him in return - especially women and children. Much has been said that Chaplin preferred women much younger than himself. His first love was 15 years old when they met. At the age of 53, Chaplin fell in love with 17-year-old Una O'Neill and was forced to answer in court on charges of immoral behavior. But Chaplin himself did not attach fundamental importance to sex and preferred to completely keep silent about this side of his life in his autobiography.

Chaplinitis epidemic

Until the age of 30, his life was quiet and without any scandals, except for his insane popularity. Long before Beatlemania, in 1915, an epidemic of chaplinite began - toys, dolls and cards were made in the likeness of a comedian. There were also contests for the best imitators of a kinokomik - according to legend, Chaplin took part in one of them and was filmed for lack of realism.

He moved away from slapsticks, in which he deftly weighed kicks to fat barbel, and began to weave dark problems that weighed society into his comedies. Loss of parents and custody of orphans in "Little Boy" (1921), social inequality in "Lights big city"(1931), the world economic crisis in" New Times "(1936), Nazism in" The Great Dictator "(1940). Chaplin clearly and without unnecessary words combined jokes that were understandable to everyone with no less understandable sorrows, skillfully passed from one emotion to another, completely opposite, and was proud that his films were watched even in those regions where they had never heard of Jesus Christ.

Lenin was looking for a meeting with him, Hitler copied the shape of his mustache - the mighty of the world this was admired by his immeasurable power over the audience. Before Chaplin, everyone was equal - politicians, and illiterate Indians, and the architects of the Bauhaus school, who admired the complete lack of humanity in his image. "Aren't those Chaplin mustaches all that Europe has left of her face?" - asked Vladimir Mayakovsky in 1923.

But the world fell out of love with Chaplin as rapidly as it fell in love. For his socialist predilections and open sympathy for communism, he had to answer before the Committee on Anti-American Activities. In restaurants, people deliberately sat down from him. And when he went to London, halfway across the ocean, it turned out that his visa to re-enter the States had been canceled. Hollywood columnist Hedda Hopper asked FBI Director J. Edgar Hoover in writing to provide her with the Chaplin case to attack the superstar: "Give me the materials and I'll hit him." And although Hoover had a puffy dossier on Chaplin with a report on the latter's connections with the German socialists from the arts - emigrants Hans Eisler and Bertold Brecht, the stern FBI director refused her.

Chaplin remained an outcast until the end of his life, retiring in Switzerland next to Vladimir Nabokov (and, possibly, serving as a prototype for the hero of "Lolita"). At this time, he recalled with pleasure early days at Keystone and Essanay Studios when he was free, happy and could easily do whatever he wanted. As he himself said: "All I need for a comedy is a park, a policeman and a beautiful girl."

"Monsieur Verdoux"
(1947)

The script was written by Orson Welles, who wanted to cast Chaplin as Henri Landru, a turn-of-the-century serial killer who was credited with killing more than 300 women. As a result, Chaplin filmed himself, buying the script from Wells for $ 1,500, bringing the action to the present day. The black comedy became Chaplin's first post-war film, and if in The Great Dictator he parodied Hitler, then here Chaplin's universe turned upside down - the little Tramp mutated into a professional bigamist, cunningly justifying himself in court by the fact that his sins look rather modest against the background of weapons of mass destruction: "Compared to them, I'm an amateur."

"Ramp Lights"
(1952)

He worked on the adaptation of a 1000-page novel about an old clown named Calvero and a young ballerina Charlie for many years. The film was supposed to be the artist's farewell bow. Set in 1914, when Chaplin made his first film, and is replete with quotes from Chaplin's early films and nostalgia for the music hall of his parents' era. Charlie invited his longtime rival Buster Keaton to star in the film, thinking that he would do him a great service, but their scene together turned out to be extremely awkward. As a result, "Ramp Lights" turned out to be Chaplin's last, very personal reflection on the nature of laughter and the death of all emotions.

"The King in New York"
(1957)