Chaplin was born in 1889, and his childhood was full of hardships with characters in Dickens' novels. Chaplin was born into an acting family in London, England, his parents were entertainers. His parents separated when he was very young, and Charlie and his half-brother Sidney Chaplin were sent to a school for orphans after their mother lost their jobs. Seven years later, he left the orphan school and became a homeless child. He was a beggar, a newsboy, and a servant, and finally cleaned the floor in an amusement park. The lonely experience of childhood has become the portrayal of the little people in the cities that he later created. In order to make a living, the child who was born in a poor actor's family eventually chose an acting career. At the age of 17, Chaplin entered the British Carnot Theatre Company and became a pantomime actor. At the age of 23, the Carneau troupe went to the United States to tour, and Chaplin's talent in comedy was immediately discovered by Kessel and Seinart, the bosses of Keystone. From then on, Chaplin stepped into the American film industry.
In 1914, Chaplin began the shooting of his first film in "Making a Living" directed by Senat. However, the well-trained pantomime performer with 6 years of acting experience in the Carneau troupe was quick to appreciate the cake-throwing, butt-kicking, and exaggerated expressions and movements on the screen in Senat's films. The clichés feel uncomfortable and bored. He persuaded Seinat to allow him to shoot the way he wanted. He handled the characters with British subtlety and humor, creating a comical "gentleman tramp" in appearance, and he wrote and directed his first film, "Between the Showers." Chaplin initially experimented with the new form of film in Seine, and shot 35 comedy shorts for Keystone in one year.
In 1915, Chaplin turned to Essenay, starring in 14 films, and then turned to Muquil, producing 12 films. In this process, Chaplin was constantly looking for his own themes and exploring the expression of characters, and at the same time, he became more and more mature in formal skills. In these films, however, Chaplin did not get rid of the image of "the harlequin next to the king". The advent of "An Lok Street" in 1917 was a breakthrough and a turning point in Chaplin's creation. The so-called "Anle Street" is actually a slum. The film reveals the severe social realities such as poverty and hunger in a slippery way, and makes an ironic description of the policemen who enforce the law and the priests who educate and do good deeds. The maturity and seriousness, acerbicity and irony that Chaplin showed in this film made him change his creative path.
In 1923, he finally had the ability to create his own Charlie Chaplin film company, becoming Hollywood's first true independent production artist, and he made more than 80 comedy films in his life. Among them, "The Gold Rush" in 1925, "City Lights" in 1931, "Modern Times" in 1936 and "The Great Dictator" in 1940 are considered to be his best masterpieces. In the excellent films, the conflict between the individual and the uncertain fate, the conflict with the social reality, the conflict with the power politics, the conflict with the modern civilization and the conflict with the industrialized culture is profoundly expressed. Chaplin's portrayal of the typical image of the bullied "unemployed" in the film and his questioning and attacking of the values of capitalist society obviously make him and the works of the comedy stars of the same period form a strict relationship. The difference is in stark contrast to the films produced by Hollywood in the same period. People all over the world love Chaplin's films and the screen image of the homeless person he portrayed.
But for many film historians and film theorists, they tend to recognize only the social value of Chaplin's films, that he was a great performance artist. However, if Chaplin is a filmmaker, he has reservations in evaluating his contribution to the concept of film narrative. They generally believe that the photography and editing of Chaplin's films are too simplistic, and that the film exists only as a container for recording. The modern film theory has begun to change the evaluation of Chaplin. For this reason, here we put Chaplin's concept and characteristics of film comedy and his contribution to the film in the development of the evolution of film art concept to make a specific Analysis and generalization.
The creation of characters
Chaplin was very good at grasping and handling the dialectical relationship between comedy and tragedy in the process of expressing the tragic fate of the unemployed tramp and the survival of "seeking safety in chaos". Whether it is Charlo, who is brokenhearted in "Circus", or Charlo, who has won the gratitude of the Fuming girl in "City Lights"; Erlo, or the insane Charlo as a slave to a machine in "Modern Times", the characters all contain sadness, joy, melancholy, and joy. The sadness that Chaplin infects the audience from Charlo's smile is a smile that is much more painful than tears, and the thought he conveys to the audience from Charlo's gloom is more than survival itself. Much harder sadness. Chaplin is not passive. With Charlo's wit and humor, and the character's optimism and stubbornness, he shows the struggle between a weak body and a powerful evil. When viewing his works, the audience can obtain a sense of justice while enjoying comedy pleasure. Chaplin took personalised characters as the basis of film creation, with a realistic creative attitude and outstanding concept of film comedy, he created the first flesh-and-blood screen image in the history of world cinema.
2. The concept of film structure
In Chaplin's films, especially in his many successful feature films, the plot is only a fabricated frame, and the structural basis of the film's actions are those episodes that can exist independently. For example: "Gold Rush" shows a gold rush story and a love story, one is eating broken shoes with a knife and fork in hunger, and the other is dancing with a fork and a bread in a dream. In "The Great Dictator", there is another image of a little barber and an image of Hinger, the leader of the XX Party, one is sharpening his razor according to the rhythm of "Hungarian Dance", and the other is speaking hoarsely about any nationality Also incomprehensible language. In the processing of such films, Chaplin often intertwines two different themes and two unrelated events for performance, which obviously violates the principle of the unity of plot and characters. However, this is the expression of Chaplin's creative development of the film's structural concept without relying on the traditional methods of literature and drama. Chaplin emphasized the concept formed by the visual factors of performance, rhythm, mood and atmosphere within the picture, and the unity of the visual structure achieved. Therefore, in Chaplin's films there are often variations on themes and loose, watered-down performances on the plot.
3. The concept of time and space in the film
Chaplin's concept of structure conceals the existence of the plot structure by means of the visual structure of the action, and does not emphasize the coherent combination of shots and shots to form a specific action or an abstract concept. Instead, it emphasizes the space-time expressive power of a single shot, and the role of mise-en-scene within the picture.
Chaplin is good at using panoramic lens, which is one of the characteristics of his lens, Chaplin once said: "Panorama is absolutely indispensable to me, because when I am acting, my legs, my feet, my The face, everything is performing. Because my acting skills are different from ordinary ones, there is no need to use different camera angles to shoot."
The second feature of Chaplin's lens is that he uses a panoramic lens to explain different and character actions. With a suitable space environment, no matter how far apart the environments are, the audience can obtain visual effects from the space environment of the lens and the conflict between the characters and the environment. For example: in "The Gold Rush" we have seen Charlo and Georgia dancing in the ballroom and mistakenly tied the dog's leash to the pants they were about to drop, and we also saw Charlo and Big Jim That funny struggle in the chalet on the edge of the cliff, and more.
The third feature of the shot is the visual effect and coherence of the comedy conflict of the action itself in the form of a long shot. The most famous scene in "The Pawnshop" where the alarm clock is dismantled is the best example: a poor customer takes an alarm clock as collateral, and Charlot takes it and looks back and forth, listening with his ears and then with a stethoscope. , then he opened the alarm clock like a candy box, took out the mainspring, removed the gears…. In the illusion of repairing the alarm clock created by Chaplin, the alarm clock was actually completely dismantled.
The fourth feature of the lens is the performance of many information inside the screen, such as the famous flower-buying paragraph in "City Lights", using the sound of the car door to solve "the heroine mistakenly thinks the hero is a rich man" The method is simply brilliant, romantic and romantic. subtle. In addition, the overall soundtrack, character emotions, and performances are very subtle, and at the end, Chaplin was splashed with water and returned to comedy, with a relaxed and romantic rhythm. This "sound in the silent place" treatment, this passage can be regarded as one of the greatest scenes of the silent film period.
Since the 1950s, film theory has given new importance to Chaplin's films. They stopped treating Chaplin as just a buffoon. If there is no movie, then Chaplin must be a genius harlequin, but the movie has brought him the opportunity to get rid of the limitation of harlequin and move towards the expression of the higher academic form of comedy art, creating a A stage or a circus is a completely different time and space for performance.
Chaplin shot more than 80 films in total, and he dedicated his life to the art of film. In his later years, he received various honors from all over the world, especially Britain, France, the United States and other countries. In 1962, Oxford University awarded him an honorary degree. In 1971, he was awarded a senior stipend of the Legion of Honor by the French government at the 25th Geneva Film Festival. In 1972 Chaplin returned to Hollywood and accepted an honorary Academy Award. He was knighted by Queen Elizabeth in 1975. On Christmas Eve in 1977, after Chaplin passed away, newspapers and magazines all over the world published the news in prominent positions, and different nations and languages gave the film comedy master high praise and evaluation. . Chaplin is the film artist with the largest audience in the world. At the same time, his exploration and experimentation in the development of film aesthetics is also praised by the American Academy of Motion Picture Arts: Chaplin "has contributed to film art in this century. He has made an invaluable contribution."
Notice
part of this article is excerpted from Zheng Yaling/Hu Bin's "Foreign Film History"
Follow the public account and reply to "Chaplin" in the background to get the collection of Chaplin movies
. Finally, if you like the movie, welcome to follow my WeChat public. No, I only serve dry goods, full of dry goods.
"Joker" Master Chaplin
View more about The Great Dictator reviews
