Chaplin

In Andy's lessons recently we have gone back to the very start of early cinema and are viewing silent films. At first I was slightly apprehensive about watching a film without any dialogue, after all you rarely find a film containing a scene where nobody speaks let alone a whole movie. The only silent film I have ever watched has been Nosferatu and that was part of a selection of vampire films I had to study at school.

Although most members of the class had heard of Charlie Chaplin very few of us had actually watched one of his films. Therefore I found it really helpful to watch the film 'Chaplin'. This is basically a biographical film depicting the life of Charlie Chaplin, who is played by Robert Downey Jr. It was really interesting to watch this film as it really gave me an insight into not only Chaplin's work, but also his eventful love life and family problems. I have to say I enjoyed this film much more than I expected to. The fact that several clips were also shown from archive footage of actual Chaplin films caught my attention and made me want to go out and watch them. Luckily we had the ability to do this in our next screening the week after.

We started off our screening the following week by watching a short film staring Chaplin. This was only about ten minutes long and appeared to be equivalent to a modern day short film. We were informed that when the public went to watch a Chaplin film at the cinema they were often shown one of his shorts first and then moved on to watching the actual feature film. I liked the fact that our screening was going to be conducted in the same way as a 1920's audience would have viewed the film. I did enjoy the short film as it went for some slapstick humor. However I definitely preferred watching the 1921 film 'The Kid'. I, along with most members of the class who were laughing out loud, found this film really funny. However 'The Kid' also provided a really sweet and touching story which I did not expect to be present within the film. I found the scene where Chaplin's son was taken away from him to be quite heartbreaking and the little boy was such a good actor.

Before watching this film I was apprehensive about just how much I could enjoy a movie without dialogue. However I can now realize that these Chaplin films do contain dialogue, it's just not spoken. Watching 'The Kid' made me understand that so much can be communicated to an audience via body language, movement and facial expressions. The narrative was totally clear within the film and very few titles were actually needed to move the plot forward. I really enjoyed watching this genre of cinema and am excited to watch more silent films in the future.