Charlie Chaplin is one of the most famous movie stars ever and is certainly the most famous movie star with a little toothbrush moustache. He was around when I was growing up as his films were often on television, particularly, if I recall rightly, on Saturday mornings. My sisters and I resented that as we wanted to watch The Partridge Family (or The Brady Bunch) on the other side but my father loved him, and I do remember being struck by his childlike innocence, as well as all the falling over. (Chaplin’s, not my father’s.) I now regret watching this documentary. Not because it’s bad (it isn’t) but because I know things about him that I wish I didn’t. It may even have put me off Chaplin for ever.
The film is by directors Peter Middleton and James Spinney, the same team behind Notes on Blindness. It’s compiled from archive footage, film sequences and stills, audio from an interview Chaplin gave to Life magazine in 1966 and some never-seen-before home footage, particularly covering his later years in Switzerland.
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