Charles Chaplin Movies

This documentary video offers a variety of clips from the silent screen's funniest men. ~ All Movie Guide

London, 1914. Calvero (Charles Chaplin), a once-great music hall comedian, weaves drunkenly home to his shabby flat. As he arrives home, he is suddenly sobered by a bad smell. It isn't his shoes, as he originally assumes, but the smell of gas, emanating from behind a locked door. Calvero smashes his way in, finding the unconscious Terry (Claire Bloom). Carrying the girl to his attic apartment, Calvero revives Terry, then asks why she is so determined to kill herself. The girl explains that she has always dreamed of becoming a great dancer, but her legs are paralyzed. Calvero vows to raise enough money to help the girl. He goes back on stage, where his old-fashioned act is greeted with a riot of silence. Now it is Terry's turn to encourage Calvero to go on living-and in so doing, she regains the use of her legs. Hired by the Empire theatre corps de ballet, Terry arranges for the management to hire Calvero as a supernumerary. Impresario Postant (Nigel Bruce), not recognizing the famous Calvero in clown makeup, fires him. Only after Terry pleads with Postant to give Calvero another chance does the producer relent, securing a comeback appearance for the ageing comedian and his old partner (Buster Keaton). Calvero's antics bring down the house, just like the old days, but the effort is too much for the old fellow, and he collapses backstage. As Calvero dies, he proudly watches his protegee Terry carry on the "show must go on tradition" by dancing for the crowd. Thanks to the political climate of the time, Limelight was denied a wide distribution; in fact, it didn't play Los Angeles until 1972, twenty years after its completion. At that time, Chaplin's theme music, which had gained popularity on the "hit parade," was honored with an Academy Award. While the film has moments of unmatched hilarity (especially during the fabled Chaplin-Keaton teaming towards the end), the elegiac tone of Limelight was best summed up by critic Andrew Sarris: "To imagine one's own death, one must imagine the death of the world, that world which has always dangled so helplessly from the tips of Chaplin's eloquent fingers." ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide

"Von Clausewitz said that war is the logical extension of diplomacy; Monsieur Verdoux feels that murder is the logical extension of business." With his controversial "comedy of murders" Monsieur Verdoux, Charles Chaplin makes his final, definitive break with the Little Tramp character that had brought him fame and fortune. Verdoux (Chaplin), a mild-mannered family man of pre-war France, has hit upon a novel method of supporting his loved ones. He periodically heads out of town, assumes an alias, marries a foolish, wealthy woman, then murders her for the insurance money. He does this thirteen times with success, but wife #14, brassy Martha Raye, proves impossible to kill (nor does she ever suspect what Verdoux has in mind for her). A subplot develops when Verdoux, planning to test a new poison, chooses streetwalker Marilyn Nash as his guinea pig. She tells him so sad a life story that Verdoux takes pity on her, gives her some money, and sends her on her way. Years later, the widowed and impoverished Verdoux meets Nash once more; now she is the mistress of a munitions magnate. This ironic twist sets the stage for the finale, when Verdoux, finally arrested for his crimes and on trial for his life, gently argues in his own defense that he is an "amateur" by comparison to those profiteers who build weapons for war. "It's all business. One murder makes a villain. Millions, a hero. Numbers sanctify..." Sentenced to death, Verdoux remains calmly philosophical to the end. As the condemned man walks to the guillotine, a priest prays for God to have mercy on Verdoux's soul. "Why not?" replies Verdoux jauntily. "After all, it belongs to him." The original idea of Monsieur Verdoux originated with Orson Welles, who'd wanted to make a picture about notorious modern "Bluebeard" Landru. Welles wanted to cast Chaplin in the lead; Chaplin liked the idea, but preferred to direct himself, as he'd been doing since 1914. It is possible that Chaplin might have gotten away with the audacious notion of presenting a cold-blood murderer as a sympathetic, almost lovable figure. Alas, Monsieur Verdoux was released at a time when Chaplin was under a political cloud for his allegedly Communistic philosophy; too, it came out shortly after a well-publicized paternity suit involving Chaplin and Joan Barry. Picketed in several communities, banned outright in others, Monsieur Verdoux was Chaplin's first financial flop. Today, it can be seen to be years ahead of its time in terms of concept, even though the execution is old-fashioned and occasionally wearisome. Monsieur Verdoux doesn't always hit the bull's-eye, but it remains one of Charles Chaplin's most fascinating projects. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide

"This is the story of the period between two world wars--an interim during which insanity cut loose, liberty took a nose dive, and humanity was kicked around somewhat." With this pithy opening title, Charles Chaplin begins his first all-talking feature film, The Great Dictator. During World War I, a Jewish barber (Chaplin) in the army of Tomania saves the life of high-ranking officer Schultz (Reginald Gardiner). While Schultz survives the conflict unscathed, the barber is stricken with amnesia and bundled off to a hospital. Twenty years pass: Tomania has been taken over by dictator Adenoid Hynkel (Chaplin again) and his stooges Garbitsch (Henry Daniell) and Herring (Billy Gilbert). Hynkel despises all Jews and regularly wreaks havoc on the Tomanian Jewish ghetto, where feisty Hannah (Paulette Goddard) lives. Meanwhile, the little barber escapes from the hospital and instinctively heads back to his cobweb-laden ghetto barber shop. Unaware of Hynkel's policy towards Jews (in fact, he's unaware of Hynkel), the barber gets into a slapstick confrontation with a gang of Aryan storm troopers. He is rescued by his old friend Schultz, now one of Hynkel's most loyal officers. Thanks to Schultz's protection, the ghetto receives a brief respite from Hynkel's persecution. The barber sets up shop again, developing a warm platonic relationship with the lovely Hannah. But things take a sorry turn when Hynkel, angered that a Jewish banker has refused to finance his impending war with Austerlitz, begins bearing down again on the Ghetto. Near the end of the film, when the dictator is expected to make another one of his hate-filled, war-mongering speeches, the barber steps up to the microphones...and Charles Chaplin drops character and becomes "himself," delivering an impassioned plea for peace, tolerance, and humanity. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide

This episodic satire of the Machine Age is considered Charles Chaplin's last "silent" film, although Chaplin uses sound, vocal, and musical effects throughout. Chaplin stars as an assembly-line worker driven insane by the monotony of his job. After a long spell in an asylum, he searches for work, only to be mistakenly arrested as a Red agitator. Released after foiling a prison break, Chaplin makes the acquaintance of orphaned gamine (Paulette Goddard) and becomes her friend and protector. He takes on several new jobs for her benefit, but every job ends with a quick dismissal and yet another jail term. During one of his incarcerations, she is hired to dance at a nightclub and arranges for him to be hired there as a singing waiter. He proves an enormous success, but they are both forced to flee their jobs when the orphanage officials show up to claim the girl. Dispirited, she moans, "What's the use of trying?" But the ever-resourceful Chaplin tells her to never say die, and our last image is of Chaplin and The Gamine strolling down a California highway towards new adventures. The plotline of Modern Times is as loosely constructed as any of Chaplin's pre-1915 short subjects, permitting ample space for several of the comedian's most memorable routines: the "automated feeding machine," a nocturnal roller-skating episode, and Chaplin's double-talk song rendition in the nightclub sequence. In addition to producing, directing, writing, and starring in Modern Times, Chaplin also composed its theme song, Smile, which would later be adopted as Jerry Lewis' signature tune. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide

This Marion Davies vehicle was loosely inspired by the career of Gloria Swanson. Davies plays would-be starlet Peggy Pepper, who arrives at the gates of MGM Studios with her dad Colonel Pepper (Dell Henderson) in hopes of becoming a great dramatic actress. Instead, she a scores a hit as an ingenue in the slapstick comedies starring the effervescent Billy Boone (William Haines). As the audience rocks with laughter during the preview of Peggy's first film (no one is more enthusiastic than her director Harry Gribbon), she sits in sullen silence, insisting to Billy that some day she'll invoke tears instead of laughter. This doesn't seem likely, inasmuch as Peggy can't even cry on cue (her director is forced to peel onions outside of camera range to achieve the desired emotion), but the tenacious young actress finally manages to win favor in dramatic roles. Inevitably, this causes a strain on her budding romance with Billy, and the couple slowly drifts apart. Now the unchallenged Queen of the Cinema, Peggy -- billing herself as Patricia Pepoire -- prepares to marry her oily leading man Andre (Paul Ralli), but mischievous Billy disrupts her fancy wedding. She angrily tosses Billy out of the house, realizing only when it's too late that she's still in love with him. But in the final scene, the hero and heroine are accidentally reunited on the set of a WWI picture directed by King Vidor (who also directed Show People). Two versions of Show People are currently available for TV; the "stretch-framed" Kevin Brownlow-David Gill restoration, with a new orchestral score by Carl Davis, and the original MGM release version, outfitted with a lively music and sound-effects track. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide

He may be called "The Lone Prospector" in The Gold Rush, but the character played by Charlie Chaplin is the same wistful, resourceful Little Tramp that had been entertaining the world and its brother since 1914. A most unlikely participant in the 1898 Yukon gold rush, Charlie finds himself sharing a remote cabin with two much larger and more menacing-looking prospectors: Big Jim McKay (Mack Swain) and Black Larsen (Tom Murray). Big Jim isn't really a bad sort, but Larsen is a murderer and thief. When the food supply runs out, Larsen heads out in the snowy wastes to hunt, leaving Charlie to prepare a delicious Thanksgiving dinner for Big Jim, consisting of roasted shoe. The days pass: in a delirium, Big Jim imagines that Charlie is a huge chicken, and voraciously takes after him with an axe; Charlie saves himself by inadvertently shooting a bear, thereby providing enough food for ten men (Chaplin's inspiration for this episode was the cannibalistic activities of the Donner Party). When the winds subside, Charlie and Big Jim part company. Charlie heads off to seek his fortune in a nearby gold-rush community, while Big Jim lucks upon a "mountain of gold" -- just before he is ambushed and knocked unconscious by Black Larsen. Larsen himself is then killed by an avalanche, leaving Big Jim to wander aimlessly, his memory gone. Meanwhile, Charlie has fallen in love, from afar, with self-reliant saloon girl Georgia (Georgia Hale) who doesn't know that he exists. By a fluke, Charlie and Georgia meet, whereupon Charlie invites the girl to New Year's Eve dinner in the cabin that he is tending for a local prospector. While preparing for dinner, Charlie imagines that Georgia has arrived with her friends; he entertains the girls by jabbing two forks in two rolls, then performing a captivating little "dance" with the pastries. Awakening from his dream, Charlie disconsolately realizes that Georgia has forgotten all about his little party, and isn't going to show up. The next day, Big Jim arrives in town and is shaken out of his amnesia when he spots Charlie. Hoping that the little prospector will help him find his mountain of gold, Big Jim heads back to the mountains with Charlie in tow. The two men nearly come to grief when their cabin, blown by the wind to a mountain precipice, leans precariously over the edge--a peril intensified when Charlie, clinging to the floor, develops a sudden case of hiccups! Luck of luck, the cabin slides safely down the side of the mountain, landing directly upon Big Jim's gold strike. Now fabulously wealthy, Charlie and Big Jim head back to the States on a freighter. Also on board is Georgia, who is unaware that Charlie has struck it rich and thinks that he's a stowaway. She offers to hide him from the authorities, and it is at this point that Charlie and Georgia discover that they're truly in love with one another. The Gold Rush was the longest (it ran nine reels, cut down from its ten-reel preview length) and most elaborately produced of Chaplin's silent comedies (it took him fourteen months to complete). Even so, critics of the era chastised Chaplin for permitting the Little Tramp to win the girl at the end, arguing that the character's "integrity" was damaged by so happy an ending. Evidently, Chaplin took this criticism to heart: in his 1942 reissue of The Gold Rush, for which he wrote a narration and musical score, Chaplin removed the final embrace between the Lone Prospector and Georgia, fading out on a wealthy -- but still unattached -- Charlie strolling about the deck. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide

This comedy-melodrama, based on the novel by Rupert Hughes (who also directed), blends fiction and reality to tell the story of a young woman's rise in Hollywood; the film uses real stars and productions (even Charles Chaplin filming A Woman of Paris) as its backdrop. Eleanor Boardman plays Remember Steddon, better known as Mem. Mem is a small-town girl who marries slick bad guy Owen Scudder (Lew Cody); Owen insures his brides and then murders them for the money. After the wedding, Mem starts to have her doubts about him and runs away while their train is chugging through the desert. She happens on a film crew and gets work as an extra, later becoming a famous dramatic actress in Hollywood with the help of director Frank Claymore (Richard Dix). Scudder finally tracks her down during a shoot involving a circus tent; when a storm sets the tent on fire, Scudder loses his life saving Mem from a wind machine's propeller. Freed from her marriage, Mem is able to choose between Claymore and her leading man. Boardman, whose first starring role finds her surrounded by a long and impressive supporting cast, wound up at the Goldwyn studios through a "New Faces" contest. Her co-winner, future star William Haines, also had a bit part as the company's assistant director. ~ Janiss Garza, All Movie Guide

Charlie Chaplin's last two reeler recalls earlier comedies such as the Essanay Work, with Chaplin casting himself as a worker rather than a Tramp, but the film shows great advances in film technique. Chaplin is a construction worker, who arrives late for work, bringing a flower as peace offering for his boss, Mack Swain. As a ditch digger, Chaplin leaves something to be desired, but as a brick catcher, he's amazing, due to a very clever reverse action scene.

Lunchtime brings Swain's daughter, Edna Purviance with his lunch and Chaplin seems smitten. He has no lunch, but is lucky enough to partake of some of his co-workers' food due to a very active work elevator, which they all seem to use as a sideboard.

It's pay day and Chaplin argues about his wages, despite being overpaid. His battleaxe wife Phyllis Allen (in their first re-teaming since the Keystone days) shows up at the end of the workday to collect his wages, some of which he's able to retain despite her efforts.

That night, Chaplin and his co-workers go drinking and are quite looped at the end of the evening - bellicose but songful. In a rare night time photography scene, Chaplin tries to catch the last streetcar home but is pushed out one end when huge Henry Bergman pushes his way on at the other. In his drunkenness Chaplin boards a hot dog cart, thinking it's another streetcar, holding onto a suspended salami as a hand strap.

Arriving home at daybreak, Chaplin has just started undressing for bed when the alarm clock rings, waking the wife. Pretending to leave for work, he tries to settle down to sleep in the bathtub, but is caught and sent out to work by his nagging mate.

Payday began life as Come Seven, a story about two rich plumbers. Production was interrupted by Chaplin's trip to Europe after only eight scenes were photographed. ~ Phil Posner, All Movie Guide

The Kid was Charles Chaplin's first self-produced and directed feature film; 1914's 6-reel Tillie's Punctured Romance was a Mack Sennett production in which Chaplin merely co-starred.

The story "with a smile and perhaps a tear," begins with unwed mother Edna Purviance leaving the Charity Hospital, babe in arms. Her burden is illustrated with a title card showing Christ bearing the cross. The father of the child is a poor artist who cares little for of his former lover, carelessly knocking her photo into his garret fireplace and cooly returning it there when he sees it is too badly damaged to keep. The mother sorrowfully leaves her baby in the back seat of a millionaire's limousine, with a note imploring whoever finds it to care for and love the child. But thieves steal the limo, and, upon discovering the baby, ditch the tot in an alleyway trash can. Enter Chaplin, out for his morning stroll, carefully selecting a choice cigarette butt from his well used tin. He stumbles upon the squalling infant and, after trying to palm it off on a lady with another baby in a carriage, decides to adopt the kid himself. Meanwhile Purviance has relented, but when she returns to the mansion and is told that the car has been stolen, she collapses in despair. Chaplin outfits his flat for the baby as best he can, using an old coffee pot with a nipple on the spout as a baby bottle and a cane chair with the seat cut out as a potty seat. Chaplin's attic apartment is a representation of the garret he had shared with his mother and brother in London, just as the slum neighborhood is a recreation of the ones he knew as a boy.

Five years later, Chaplin has become a glazier, while his adopted son (the remarkable Jackie Coogan) drums up business for his old man by cheerfully breaking windows in the neighborhood. Purviance meanwhile has become a world famous opera singer, still haunted by the memory of her child, who does charity work in the very slums in which he now lives. Ironically, she gives a toy dog to little Coogan. Chaplin and Coogan's close calls with the law and fights with street toughs are easily overcome, but when Coogan falls ill, the attending doctor learns of the illegal adoption and summons the Orphan Asylum social workers who try to separate Chaplin from his foster son. In one of the most moving scenes in all of Chaplin's films, Chaplin and Coogan try to fight the officials, but Chaplin is subdued by the cop they have summoned. Coogan is roughly thrown into the back of the Asylum van, pleading to the welfare official and to God not to be separated from his father. Chaplin, freeing himself from the cop, pursues the orphanage van over the rooftops and, descending into the back of the truck, dispatches the official and tearfully reunites with his "son". Returning to check on the sick boy, Purviance encounters the doctor and is shown the note which she had attached to her baby five years earlier. Chaplin and Coogan, not daring to return home, settle in a flophouse for the night. The proprietor sees a newspaper ad offering a reward for Coogan's return and kidnaps the sleeping boy. After hunting fruitlessly, a grieving Chaplin falls asleep on his tenement doorstep and dreams that he has been reunited with the boy in Heaven (that "flirtatious angel" is Lita Grey, later Chaplin's second wife). Woken from his dream by the cop, he is taken via limousine to Purviance's mansion where he is welcomed by Coogan and Purviance, presumably to stay.

Chaplin had difficulties getting The Kid produced. His inspiration, it is suggested was the death of his own first son, Norman Spencer Chaplin a few days after birth in 1919. His determination to make a serio-comic feature was challenged by First National who preferred two reel films, which were more quickly produced and released. Chaplin wisely gained his distributors' approval by inviting them to the studio, where he trotted out the delightful Coogan to entertain them. Chaplin's divorce case from his first wife Mildred Harris also played a part; fearing seizure of the negatives Chaplin and crew escaped to Salt Lake City and later to New York to complete the editing of the film. Chaplin's excellent and moving score for The Kid was composed in 1971 for a theatrical re-release, but used themes that Chaplin had composed in 1921. Chaplin re-edited the film somewhat for the re-release, cutting scenes that he felt were overly sentimental, such as Purviance's observing of a May-December wedding and her portrayal as a saint, outlined by a church's stained glass window. ~ Phil Posner, All Movie Guide

Charlie Chaplin's third film in his First National contract is a simple story of country life, an idyll, which contains two separate dream sequences, a characteristic Chaplin story device. Charlie is a farm hand and general factotum at a combination farm, general store and hotel. His boss, Tom Wilson, drives him hard, waking him early to prepare breakfast while he sleeps in. Charlie has devised some labor-saving techniques, such as sitting a chicken on the frying pan so she can lay an egg in it, or milking the cow directly into the coffee cups. After Sunday breakfast, the boss goes off to church along with most of the town, while Charlie must tend to the cows. Charlie, reading the Bible, loses the herd as they stroll peacefully up a country road. He finds them in town and must shoo them out of various buildings. When the whole parish comes running out of the church, Charlie enters heroically and comes out riding the bull, which eventually dumps him in a stream below a wooden bridge.

Unconscious, Charlie dreams of dancing through the meadows with four lovely wood nymphs, in a scene of balletic grace and humor. Awakened at the bottom of the stream, he's pulled out by four men including his boss, who kicks him all the way home. Sunday afternoon is Charlie's time for visiting his girl, Edna Purviance, bringing her flowers and a ring. Their romantic tryst is hampered by her mischievous teenage brother, until Charlie sends him out to play blindman's bluff in traffic. Then Edna's father (Henry Bergman) interrupts their musical interlude at the pump organ, ordering Charlie away. Back at the store/hotel Charlie is again scolded for being late. A traffic accident outside brings a new visitor, a "city slicker" who is injured and must stay at the hotel. He's attended to by a horse doctor and shown to his room by Charlie, who later sits down to rest. Later, the slicker is preparing to leave when Edna enters the store and attracts the handsome visitor who follows her out of the store.

Worried by the competition, Charlie eventually arrives at Edna's, observing through a window his rival's fashionable ways -- the spats on his shoes, the handkerchief up his sleeve and the cigarette lighter in the handle of his walking stick. Seeing that he's losing Edna, Charlie returns home and tries to emulate his rival by putting old socks over the tops of his shoes and rigging a match to the end of a stick. When he visits Edna she rejects him, giving back his ring. Despondent, Charlie walks out to the street and stands in the way of an approaching car. The impact he feels, however, is from the boot of his boss as he awakens Charlie from his second reverie. The guest is really leaving this time, and when Edna enters the store, she gives the slicker's advances the cold shoulder as Charlie proclaims his devotion to her. He helps the slicker load his baggage into the car and receives a tip. Charlie and Edna celebrate his departure with a loving hug, as the camera irises in. ~ Phil Posner, All Movie Guide

A Dog's Life was Charlie Chaplin's initial release for First National Studios, and also his first three-reeler. Chaplin plays a tramp (duh!), who shambles around the cold, cruel world with his dog Scraps. Unable to land a job, Charlie and Scraps cadge a meal from lunchwagon proprietor Syd Chaplin (Charlie's brother). Things take a turn for the better when Charlie befriends down-and-out singer Edna Purviance. After routing a gang of crooks, Charlie and Edna head down the road "Where Dreams Come True" for a deliberately improbable happy ending. Together with Shoulder Arms and The Idle Class, A Dog's Life is one of the best examples of Chaplin's wildly uneven First National output. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide