Raonaild

Before Chaplin started in films, he was an aspiring musician, practicing violin or cello for hours a day while touring the vaudville circuit. You can see him playing his violin onscreen in The Vagabond.

I believe the first time he wrote the score for one of his films was for City Lights, because it would have been his first film released with a soundtrack (most films were transitioning to sound by then). For every movie he made after that, he composed the music, and then went back and composed scores for his older films like The Gold Rush, The Kid, The Chaplin Revue (a compilation of three older short films) and The Circus later in life. For The Circus, he actually composed a song for the opening that was meant to be sung by someone else, but when the original singer didn't pan out Chaplin himself (in his 70s by then) stepped in and sang the song.

Note too that Chaplin was practically illiterate as a child (he learned to read and write later in life) and he never learned how to read or write music. So to compose these scores, Chaplin worked with an arranger who would transcribe the different parts that he would come up with into sheet music for the orchestra to read.

GardenSirens

I have so much respect for you right now! Thank you for informing me on that. I love to learn and when it's about movies, I really love it!

Raonaild

I'm the sort that doesn't just watch films and TV, I'm also interested in all the DVD/BR extras and commentaries, in finding out more about what went on behind the scenes. I think for some people knowing how something was made spoils it somehow, but for me knowing more just makes me appreciate it more.

A good starting point if you want to learn more about Charlie Chaplin is the Richard Attenborough biopic Chaplin with Robert Downey Jr. It's a good overview of his life, and fairly accurate as far as I can tell. My one complaint with the movie is that they try to cover so much ground in the one film, that they just hint at some things that are actually interesting stories in their own right.

For example, Chaplin's childhood in Victorian London is like something from a Dickens novel, and it's only superficially covered in the first few minutes of the movie. I've read the first part of Chaplin's autobiography, where he goes into detail about his life before films, and it's quite an interesting and heartbreaking story. Knowing a bit about his past, you can see how it influenced his work. The Kid, for example, didn't just come out of nowhere - there are aspects of that story that are not too far from Chaplin's own childhood.

~ Jis_Bon ~

Thank you for all these info about CC

GardenSirens

Ditto. Let's hope more people read. I've met people who won't watch movies from the 90s claiming they don't like classics. I hope they read this.

Raonaild

What a weird statement. I don't think of "classic" movies as a particular period in time, I think there are classic movies from all eras.

I can understand though that people don't like watching older movies, because so much has changed so quickly. Movies are much more sophisticated now in many areas - not just technically in terms of effects and such, but also in writing, acting etc. Because of course, the earlier movies established a baseline that movies since keep trying to build upon. I can sort of sympathize - the acting/writing style of older films seems so stilted and unnatural compared to the more natural and realistic films of today, to say nothing of the visual quality.

But one thing I would say about silent films, particularly Chaplin films is that, in some ways, I find them easier to watch than the films with sound that came later. For one thing, there's no stilted acting or cheesy dialog, because there's no talking - it's mainly a visual experience, and for Chaplin films in particular, it's more like watching dancing. And what they lacked in technical sophistication, they made up for with tenacity - Chaplin was an infamous perfectionist, doing many many takes until the timing was perfect (it's said that for one scene in City Lights, he did over 300 takes). And while I'm certainly a big fan of the technically sophisticated effects movies these days, there's something to be said for watching an old film where you know that everything you see is real and not manipulated with visual effects.

When I first saw some of these restored, HD versions of Chaplin films, I had this weird, surreal feeling that I was watching something that was actually modern and made very recently, but in the style of an old, silent film. As though suddenly it would turn to colour and the actors would start talking. For me at least, it didn't feel like I was watching something that was filmed almost 100 years ago, even though I know that's the case.

GardenSirens

I've watched many movies from the 1800s and don't consider them classic as much as old. Classic definitely, to me, is a GREAT movie that is timeless in its excellence like How Green Was My Valley. Of course, movie store definitions puts Classics as anything from the 60s or before.

AutumnColorsღ

Lots of great discussion and interesting points on here. I know listening to the song "Smile" just makes me feel so good even when I'm having a bad day.

Wonderful video.

GardenSirens

Beautiful video!

Mi||iê Måë

Video won't play for me ....

GardenSirens

You may have to download Flash player

Mi||iê Måë

I did, but says link is broken.

GardenSirens

Weird...well take our word: it's awesome!

Mi||iê Måë

It worked! Such a great video!

Raonaild

It's a YouTube video, you should be able to watch it on YouTube directly here:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?x-yt-t...layer_embedded

Hmm, if we're going to start posting vids, the nice thing with Chaplin films is that there's lots in the public domain. Here's a bit from the Circus ... in the theme of keeping it real, here's Chaplin in a cage with a real lion. And he did many takes of these scenes:



Here's a bit of Chaplin showing off his roller skating prowess in The Rink:



Or a scene from one of my favourites, The Kid: