Original subtitles

In 1921, The Kid was released. Chaplin's first full-length film.

It's 100 years old, yet timeless.

Who is Charlie in the story?

The kid or the tramp?

It's all Chaplin. It's Charlie's childhood,

it's the poverty in England at the end of the 19th century,

it's the slums of London.

At the heart of Chaplin's work lies the wounds from his childhood,

the memory of humiliation and hardship, injustices

and heartbreak.

This scene changed the world forever.

Chaplin was already incredibly famous,

but this film, an emotional rollercoaster,

made him a global star.

However, Charlie Chaplin's best story was in fact his own.

A FILM BY FRANÇOIS AYMÉ AND YVES JEULAND

CHARLIE CHAPLIN THE GENIUS OF LIBERTY

This 120 square ft. attic

is a replica of the one Chaplin shared in London

at 3 Pownall Terrace, Kennington Road,

with his mother, Hannah and half-brother, Sydney,

after being tossed around from backyards to maid's rooms,

each one worse than the one before.

Chaplin often recreated this childhood setting.

It was a Dickensian tale: a rich country full of poor people.

"This was the London of my childhood,

"of my moods and awakenings.

"An era in which wealth and poverty were extreme."

This is what made

Chaplin politically conscious.

It's what his work originates from.

The impoverished childhood of a man

who would soon become the richest actor in the world.

Charles Spencer Chaplin was born in 1889.

His parents were both entertainers, but they were never filmed.

Their love didn't last long, they separated when Charlie was one.

Charlie's father, Charles Senior, earned a good living.

He almost never paid alimony.

Charlie was raised by his mother. Hannah Hill.

"I was hardly aware of a father,

"and do not remember him having lived with us.

"Mother said he looked like Napoleon.

"He drank too much

"and died of alcoholic excess at the age of 37."

Charlie and his older brother adored their mother.

She had blue eyes that were almost violet

and long, light-brown hair. She was slender and attractive.

An actress, impersonator,

singer and dancer,

her stage name was Lily Harley.

Her name was much lower down and much smaller

than Charlie's father's name.

Regardless, she was talented. Her voice was delicate.

One night, she lost her voice in the middle of a song.

Charlie was standing in the wings.

He stepped up to replace her to great applause.

He was five.

Hannah Hill never sang again.

Without a contract, she turned to religion,

sold her belongings,

rented a sewing machine, and lived off her needlework.

The monthly payments became too much

and the machine was taken away.

Hannah and her sons led a joyless existence.

"We lived on parochial charity,

"soup tickets and relief parcels.

"We breathed sadness,

"but Mother always stood outside her environment

"and kept an alert ear on the way we talked,

"correcting our grammar

"and making us feel that we were distinguished."

This distinction can be found

in Charlie's character,

who is aristocratic in his scruffy clothes.

Throughout his childhood, Charlie watched his mother, his idol.

She would imitate passers-by and neighbors.

She told countless stories.

"My mother was one of the greatest pantomime artists

"I have ever seen.

"Watching and listening to her

"taught me not only how to express my emotions

"with my hands and face,

"but also how to observe and study people.

"Mother illuminated to me the kindliest light in the world.

"I owe all of my achievements to her."

His much-loved mother suffered from a mental condition.

"My mother, so cheerful, so full of life,

"how could she have gone crazy?

"I felt like she had abandoned us."

She was locked in a padded cell

and given shock treatment.

At the age of six, Charlie was placed in a workhouse,

separated from his brother who was in a different building.

Six. The same age as the Kid.

Charlie went to school.

"I was taught to write my name, Chaplin.

"Chaplin. The word fascinated me and looked like me, I thought.

His short studies did not reveal much.

Charlie had little taste for education.

He skipped school.

At the end of his life, he admitted:

"If only someone had used salesmanship,

"and taught me the music of poetry,

"I might have become a scholar."

Charlie Chaplin's childhood was similar to that of Oliver Twist.

He went from workhouse to boarding school to orphanage,

at times sleeping outside,

eventually reuniting with his mother who left the asylum

during brief periods of remission.

After constantly moving back and forth,

a twist of fate

sent him back to the workhouse.

With misery comes a procession of humiliation and mockery.

Left to his own devices, Charlie cried, alone,

no longer speaking to anyone,

not daring to eat the food offered to him,

ashamed of his hunger.

But Charlie was resourceful.

After dropping out of school, he took on various odd jobs,

all of which were later used in his on-stage persona.

He was often fired from these jobs,

sometimes after a mere half day.

Of all jobs, the only one Charlie dreamed of

is the one his parents did: being an artist.

This desire would remain.

Later, he would say to his older brother:

"Even when I was in the orphanage,

"roaming the streets in search of food,

"I thought of myself as the greatest actor in the world.

"I had to feel the exuberance

"that comes from utter confidence in yourself.

"Without it, you submit to defeat."

Charlie Chaplin's first real role

was at the age of ten

when he was one of the Eight Lancashire Lads.

He learned tap dancing.

He imagined a double act with his friend:

Bristol and Chaplin, the Millionaire Tramps.

It never came to fruition,

but Charlie tirelessly pursued his dream of being an artist.

He danced, sang, mimed,

and invented gags. He wanted to be a comic juggler.

He changed groups.

At 14, he started performing at the theater as a newspaper seller.

For the first time, his name was in the press.

Soon after, he appeared on the poster of a successful play:

Sherlock Holmes. It toured for three years.

From then on, Charlie earned a living.

"I left behind a life of poverty and was entering a dream,

"a dream my mother had spoken about, had reveled in.

"No longer was I a nondescript of the slums,

"now I was part of the theater. I was to become an actor.

"I wanted to weep."

Theater and pantomime

fascinated Charlie. The old English traditions

were popular and practiced by clowns in London.

"I watched them perform while holding my breath.

"Their movements were imprinted in my brain

"like a photograph.

"When I went home, I tried to recreate everything."

One of the first trademarks of the future Tramp was born.

During this era of the circus and music halls,

in high-speed chases,

he perfected his famous hopping and right angle turns.

Of all the music-hall companies that flourished in England,

Fred Karno's was the most famous.

Karno was the owner of The Fun Factory,

King of English pantomime, entrepreneur of laughter.

At least 10 groups toured the country bearing his name,

even performing over the Channel and across the pond.

When Sydney, who joined the company in 1906,

recommended his younger brother to his bosses,

Karno found him too young, too puny and too sullen,

but took him on for a trial anyway.

Charlie enters the scene

with his back to us, elegantly,

with a cane, he turns around.

Immediate success.

He was hired at 18 years old.

He soon became one of the company's star actors.

Meeting Karno was key.

His personality and high standards impressed Charlie.

Fred Karno had a flair for talent, knew his audience,

and sold his shows.

He could put people to work and find new stars.

He had a sense of rhythm and good business sense.

Chaplin learned from his boss.

From the age of 19 to 25,

he learnt everything he could from Karno.

He'd remember it his whole life.

When he was 62,

he paid tribute to his years in the music hall, the seminal period

when he took to the stage in small theaters around England.

LIMELIGHT 1952

Chaplin's biggest on-stage success was Mumming Birds.

He played an upper-class drunk visiting the theater.

He played the same character in 1915,

in his film A Night in the Show.

Chaplin played two roles,

an alcoholic dandy and a tramp up in the gallery.

A class struggle of sorts,

with the poor man up top and the rich man below.

Thanks to Karno,

Charlie was able to leave England for the first time.

1908, Paris.

He had always dreamed of France.

Born the same year as the Eiffel Tower, his surname is French:

Chaplin.

His father's family had moved to England centuries before.

The troupe performed at the Folies Bergère for a whole month.

Charlie was dazzled. Parisian nightlife,

the lights of the Grands Boulevards, he was in heaven.

"Paris was everything I expected.

"It was the Paris of Monet, Pissarro and Renoir."

A spectator congratulated him:

"You're an instinctive musician and dancer."

Charlie didn't know it, but it was Claude Debussy.

Chaplin was inspired by high-society Paris

when he shot A Woman of Paris, in 1923.

After Paris, another dream soon came true: America.

Charlie didn't hesitate

to join in on a tour of the New World.

Sydney should have gone,

he's who the Americans wanted.

Fred Karno needed his star in England.

Charlie replaced his brother and he was thrilled.

He wanted to forget his childhood on Kennington Road,

his mother's madness, inequality and poverty.

"I dreamed of going to America,

"not just for the adventure of it,

"but because it would mean

"a new beginning in a new world.

In America, anything is possible.

He wanted to move there.

In New York, there are no social classes, he thought.

The height of Manhattan skyscrapers initially scared Chaplin.

He found it hard to adapt to the pace in New York.

Paris was more pleasant, more human.

New York is a business city.

The whirlwind baffled him.

Karno toured all over America,

from the East coast to the Wild West and from Canada to New Mexico.

Two 22-week tours,

three shows a day, sometimes seven days a week.

There was another English actor who was Charlie's age,

with the same job and of the same build.

He was often his understudy.

His name was Arthur Stanley Jefferson.

In a few years,

he'd be known as Stan Laurel.

Stanley remembers his stage partner:

"We shared a room. I must say, he fascinated me.

"Some days he wore an expensive bowler hat,

"two-tone button shoes,

"a fancy suit, gloves, and a cane.

"He carried his violin everywhere.

"He bought a cello.

"The strings were reversed so he could play left-handed.

"He read constantly.

"One day he tried to learn Greek,

"then gave it up and tried yoga.

"We never knew what he'd do next."

Generally shy and reclusive, as showtime got closer,

Charlie became whimsical and extravagant,

as if he wanted to lose his identity.

He was odd and unpredictable.

He stood out.

Although Karno's tour wasn't wildly successful,

Chaplin made an impact.

Americans liked him.

"Diabolically eccentric," noted one review.

"All the characteristics of genius."

It was clear that Charlie wasn't like the others.

While in San Francisco,

Chaplin visited a fortune teller

to have his palm read.

The fortune teller predicted a new job for him.

"New,

well, it's almost the same, but it's different.

"I see tremendous success in this new venture.

"There's an extraordinary career ahead of you,

"but I don't know what it is.

"You will make a tremendous fortune.

"A dollar, please."

The prediction soon came true.

A few days later, the Karno Company received a telegram

from Broadway:

"In your troupe, is there

"a man named Chaffin or something like that?"

Kessel and Baumann were producers.

Three months later Charlie wrote to his brother:

"August 4, 1913. My dear Syd,

"I've received an offer from a film company

"called Keystone.

"We haggled for a while

"and eventually came to an agreement.

"I don't know if you've seen their films,

"but they're very funny.

"There are some pretty girls in them too.

"I hope you're in good health and that mum is doing better.

"I'd love to see you both here.

"Your loving brother, Charlie."

Chaplin said goodbye to the stage

November 28th, 1913 in Kansas City.

The Karno tour continued without him.

After his last performance,

his fellow actor, Stan Laurel, remembers

seeing him crying backstage.

Charlie believed in his own talent.

He knew he had to take the opportunity. He wouldn't miss it.

The cinema would be where he made his fortune.

Maybe he was thinking about the fortune teller.

In two years, he'd be the most famous man in the world.

Welcome to Hollywood,

before Hollywood was Hollywood.

Sunshine, orange groves,

vineyards and palm trees.

Charlie Chaplin made his debut at Keystone on December 16th, 1913.

It was a time of pioneering filmmaking.

They needed people like him.

Cinema was silent and he was a master of pantomime.

Cinema was burlesque, influenced by the circus.

Cinema wasn't even 20 years old, nor was Charlie.

Anything could be invented. What an adventure!

The Keystone Company produced slapstick comedies

with chases, fights

and of course, policemen.

They were known as Keystone cops.

They've got batons, they grimace, they fall.

Keystone, much to Charlie's delight,

also produced the Bathing Beauties,

short films in which young women

in bathing suits

appeared before Mack Sennett.

Mack Sennett was Chaplin's new boss.

He is to film what Karno is to the stage.

His size, his eyebrows and his jawline

impressed Charlie.

A self-taught producer, actor and director,

Sennett was brutal yet intelligent.

He was incredible at his job, never shying away from anything.

Cinema was silent, but its popularity was sky high.

The first time Sennet met the famous Chaplin he'd heard so much about,

he was disappointed.

Again, Charlie looked too young.

He needed to look older, he was used to it.

He was sent to make-up.

"Try to be funny."

"I had no idea what make-up to put on.

"I thought I would dress in baggy pants.

"I wanted everything to be a contradiction:

"baggy pants, a tight coat,.

"a small hat and large shoes.

"I had a cane,

"and a small moustache

"to make me look a few years older.

"I had no idea of the character.

"But the moment I was dressed, the clothes and the make-up

"made me think of all kinds of crazy ideas.

"I swung my cane around,

"comedy ideas racing through my mind."

Mack Sennett burst out laughing.

The actors and stagehands from other sets

laughed even harder. It was a winner.

That day, Charlie decided that no matter what happened,

he'd keep this outfit.

His character was born.

The Tramp. A vagabond, he didn't have a name,

but in France he was known as Charlot.

Laughter in the studio was encouraging.

"Let's hope they'll laugh as much in the cinema,"

thought Charlie.

Before the release of the movie,

Chaplin was able to test his character the following Sunday

in the suburbs of Los Angeles.

Production took advantage of a kids car race

for a free crowd.

No one had seen Charlie on-screen yet.

The spectators were there for the race,

not to see The Tramp for the first time.

Before long,

Charlie became the center of attention.

A revelation. A revolution.

It was a new character

that came from a lot of work.

Chaplin's genius wasn't spontaneous.

Charlie was ready.

He'd been working on his character for a long time.

He already had 15 years' experience in the field.

Choosing baggy pants,

and big shoes, despite his average-sized feet,

he thought about a beggar in London who used to fascinate him as a kid

and who he'd imitate to amuse his mother.

He never forgot him.

"Day after day, I practiced the walk

"to the point where it became an obsession.

"Everywhere, it made people laugh."

Perhaps this uprooted character has other roots.

When Charlie invented his character,

did his grandmother inspire him?

She was a gypsy and they never met.

His character is a nomad.

He may be a traveler, but he doesn't belong to any group.

Stateless, he has no passport, no family, no horse-drawn trailer.

He's an outsider who sleeps under bridges,

in wastelands, or in makeshift shacks.

"My character is a poet, a dreamer, a lonely fellow,

"both a tramp and a gentleman."

Yes, Charlie is an elegant hobo,

as if he carried the class struggle within himself.

He wasn't the first burlesque character in silent film.

A Frenchman beat him to it and inspired Charlie.

The international star was Gabriel Levielle.

His stage name was Max Linder.

A dandy aristocrat,

he was highly recognizable with a top hat and cane.

Chaplin admired Linder and studied him.

But the student would soon outdo the teacher.

They copied each other.

Mack Sennett made films at a frantic place,

filming two movies a week,

without a script, for better or worse.

It was a combination of vitality and tactlessness.

Chaplin enjoyed improvising, but hated chase scenes.

He rejected the rigor of the studios.

For him, Mack Sennett's stories lacked subtlety.

Directors were more like butchers on a production line,

obsessed with the speed of execution.

Knowing their editing methods,

Charlie placed his gags as he entered or exited.

He knew it'd be difficult for the director to cut his scenes.

Chaplin had a reputation as someone who was obnoxious and pretentious.

However, he could predict audience's reactions,

and he could time gags to perfection.

Conscientious and persistent,

he asked to be his own director.

Mack Sennet refused. He forced his girlfriend,

the actress Mabel Normand,

to direct his tenth film,

Mabel at the Wheel.

Chaplin had to replace someone at short notice

and change costume.

All hell broke loose.

Mabel refused all his suggestions.

"We don't have time. Do as you're told."

Chaplin stood his ground. "I won't do as I'm told.

"I don't think you're competent

"and you can't explain what I should do.

"I can't take it, not from such a pretty girl."

Filming stopped. Sennett was furious.

"You'll do as you're told, or get out." He slammed the door.

Charlie was called in the next day.

He expects to be fired.

To his great surprise, not only was his salary increased

but he also got the go ahead to work behind the camera

barely three months after his film debut.

Never again would he hear the words:

"There's no time, do as you're told."

"Sennett's sudden change of attitude baffled me.

"It was months later that I found out the reason.

"Sennett intended to fire me,

"but he received a telegram from the New York office

"telling him to hurry up with more Chaplin pictures

"as they were in demand."

Chaplin's films filled movie theaters.

The Tramp's gags got a lot of attention,

and everyone ended up finding Charlie charming.

Chaplin was in control.

His first film as an actor-director was an immediate success.

CAUGHT IN THE RAIN

Charlie established his silhouette, his imitations, his rhythm.

He slowed down the number of shots in editing.

He made his mark.

At Keystone, to get a laugh, you just had to be clumsy or fall.

Chaplin was more intelligent.

He focused more on the Tramp's expression,

on his feelings.

His stories aren't based on the joke itself

but rather what it provokes.

It's not the incident itself that's funny,

but rather the character's reaction.

"I stood out from the crowd," wrote Chaplin.

But in 1914, the Tramp wasn't quite the Tramp.

He lacked tenderness.

Antisocial and badly raised,

he could be cruel, cynical and violent.

He made people laugh at the expense of others.

Cinema is a release.

Good souls are moved by it, but people want more.

Chaplin slipped into theaters

to watch people's reactions.

"Those joyful little screams that my appearance evoked

"were most gratifying.

"I was on the threshold of a wonderful period.

"I was 25 and I was in love with my work."

Charlie didn't have much love for women.

He didn't have the head for it, nor the heart.

"Like Balzac, who believed that a night of sex meant

"the loss of a good page of his novel.

"I believed it meant the loss of a good day's work at the studio."

Charlie was exhausted by his work.

In one year, he made 36 short films,

much to the delight of audiences and theater managers.

His value skyrocketed.

He became a money making machine with one success after another.

For his last film with Mack Sennett,

Charlie decided to become a stone-age man.

"I started with one gag, which was my first entrance.

"I was wearing a bearskin.

"As I scanned the landscape,

"I began pulling the hair from the bearskin to fill my pipe.

"This was enough of an idea to stimulate

"a prehistoric story,

"introducing love, rivalry, combat and chase.

"This was the method by which we all worked.

"It was so free and easy.

"No literature, no writers, we just had a notion

"around which we made up the story as we went along."

The Keystone adventure came to an end.

Charlie had other artistic and financial ambitions.

He told his producer:

"It's not your name

"that people are lining up for, it's mine."

Sennett threw in the towel

and let Charlie go to another studio.

A rival studio was called Essanay.

Charlie joined them in January 1915.

He wasn't alone anymore.

His brother Sydney had just arrived in Hollywood.

Charlie definitely wasn't alone anymore.

That year, he met

his first on-screen partner and his real-life partner

whose name was Edna, Edna Purviance.

She was a student in San Francisco

and had never made a film before.

She was 20, Charlie was 26.

Chaplin gave her her first camera tests.

"She was more than pretty, she was beautiful.

"She was quiet and reserved, with beautiful large eyes, good teeth

"and a sensitive mouth.

"She seemed sad and serious.

"I learned afterwards that she was just getting over a love affair.

"I doubted whether she could act or had any humor.

"Nevertheless we engaged her.

"She would at least be decorative in my comedies."

Charlie was under her spell,

in love, finally.

They were an iconic movie couple.

Charlie became playful, seductive and sentimental.

Edna had a certain grace that made her a captivating actress.

Edna and Charlie made 35 films together

and lived together for a few years.

With Edna, Charlie would conquer the world.

Less than two years after his film debut,

he became the most recognized and beloved artist in the world.

It was like wildfire.

Thanks to his pranks, the Tramp became familiar.

Most films were less than 30 minutes long,

just one or two reels.

Of all the kinds of cheap entertainment,

cinema became the most popular.

Theaters specialized in Charlie's films.

Every month, people waited to see his new adventures.

The Fireman, One A.M.,

The Bank, By the Sea,

Caught in a Cabaret,

The Champion,

The Adventurer.

The audience's heart beat to the rhythm of Charlie's.

With more than 30,000 screenings worldwide,

Chaplin reached more than 12 million viewers a day.

One journalist wrote: "The Zulus know Chaplin

"better than Arkansas knows Garbo."

That was "chaplinitis."

The Tramp became a hero in comic strips and cartoons.

Books, clothes, candles, cigarettes and toothpaste

were sold with his name.

Toys and dolls that looked like him were made.

Charlie was everywhere.

In 1916, French critic Louis Delluc wrote:

"He's the most famous man in the world.

"Until further notice, he is more well-known than Joan of Arc,

"Louis the 14th and Clemenceau.

"Only Jesus and Napoleon can compare."

In 1916, Charlie was 27.

He had not yet made a feature film.

BARCELONA

In Paris, Carcassonne, Nice and Barcelona,

people celebrated Chaplin.

They danced for Chapin, they sang for Chaplin.

They learned to walk like him. Oh, Charlie Chaplin,

everyone is crazy about him,

as demonstrated by the songs about him.

His look and his walk are celebrated.

At costume parties,

nine out of ten men would dress as Chaplin.

Lookalike competitions took place.

Legend has it that Chaplin entered one

and came in third place.

With such success,

even Stan Laurel, Charlie's former touring partner,

is reduced to dressing up as Charlie.

From New York to Hollywood,

Chaplin was copied and imitated.

Where was the real Charlie hiding?

Enter Billy West,

a Russian-born actor,

who found success, making dozens of short films

with his cane and bowler hat.

Another was Billie Ritchie

who, like Charlie, had played drunks at Karno's in England

and who claimed to have invented the Tramp

long before Charlie.

In 1915, there was even

a female Chaplin.

As the number of fakes increased,

Chaplin eventually took legal action.

At the end of his life, Stan Lauren admitted:

"The difference between Chaplin and all of us who did comedy,

"with the exception of Buster Keaton,

"was that Charlie was only satisfied with perfection."

Charlie tended to each of his films,

rejecting scripts from his producers, drawing inspiration from reality,

freeing himself from conventions and happy endings.

"Comedy must be true to life," wrote Chaplin.

"There must be realism in comedy. It is more necessary than in drama.

"Deviation from the ordinary makes the picture funny.

"A little act that is unexpected makes people laugh.

"This act must be natural and in accordance

"with what the character might do in real life."

Chaplin hadn't forgotten where he came from.

His comedies, often satirical,

are driven by social and political criticism.

He mocks the powerful, representative of authority,

whether religious figures, the police or the bourgeois.

He challenges them, he takes them down.

Charlie Chaplin's films were for the working classes.

"I am working class

"and I work for them more than anyone else.

"I don't want to make films for cinemas

"where tickets cost more than five cents."

People saw themselves in Charlie.

His films were human, they were universal.

Chaplin had chosen between the workers and the bosses.

He was on the workers' side,

denouncing the cruelty of the bosses.

WORK

Even in the most hopeless situations,

the Tramp fights his destiny.

Humor and fighting spirit were his weapons.

It became Chaplin's trademark.

"The theme of life is conflict and pain.

"All my clowning was based on this."

The plot is simple,

consisting of characters getting into trouble

and then getting out of it.

While his character remained poor, Charlie became richer and richer,

with all of Hollywood wanting to woo him.

Producers entered bidding wars.

Between 1914 and 1917,

Chaplin changed companies every year.

Every year, he multiplied his income by ten.

$7,800 dollars for 12 months at Keystone in 1914.

$75,000 at Essanay in 1915.

Mutual paid him $670,000 in 1916.

In 1917, First National paid him over a million dollars.

It's the equivalent of $1.8 million per month today.

His contract with Mutual was widely reported.

"The prospects were dazzling.

"Like an avalanche, money came.

"It was bewildering, frightening... but wonderful."

Chaplin's salary became an advertising technique.

In Times Square, the news flashed on the electric sign:

"Chaplin signs with Mutual for $670,000 a year."

It was unprecedented, unimaginable, astronomical.

Hardly anyone in the world had earned so much.

Charlie looked at his name on the Times building.

"I read it objectively as though it were about someone else.

"The world had gone mad.

"If a few slapstick comedies

"would arouse such excitement,

"was there not something bogus about all celebrity?

"I had always thought I would like being popular, but here it was,

"paradoxically,

"isolating me, making me feel lonely.

"I was young, rich and famous,

"but alone. Everyone knew me,

"but I knew no one."

Charlie Chaplin earned money, and lots of it.

His brother, Sydney, gave up acting

to manage his contracts and his finances.

He scrupulously maintained his finances.

Charlie never wasted his money,

a relic of his impoverished childhood.

"Better than anyone, I knew

"the ephemera of it.

"Within a year, I could be all dried up.

"I had to make hay while the sun shone."

But the fairytale wasn't about to end.

The more successful Charlie was,

the more he had the means to create.

The more creative he was, the more successful he was.

Money gave him freedom.

ONE A.M.

Budgets weren't important,

he tested things, he experimented,

using 20 times the amount of film necessary,

just to see if it worked

or if he could do better.

Doing hundreds of takes was the height of luxury.

He'd use scenes or jokes that had been

patiently constructed.

Everything was rehearsed and timed to perfection.

It was like a laboratory.

"It's not inspiration, it's perspiration."

A fan of boxing and an excellent tennis player,

Chaplin was an athlete and performed many skills.

Sport is nothing without grace.

Choreographer and dancer Vaslav Nijinski,

from the Ballets Russes,

was on the set of Easy Street and said:

"Your comedy is balletic, Charlie. You are a dancer."

A featherweight dancer.

Just like in stories for children, every hero needs a villain.

Eric Campbell was his.

At almost two meters tall, he was frightening and beast-like.

He weighed three times as much as Charlie. He was huge.

Faced with Campbell or Henry Bergman,

Chaplin used his height and his lightness.

He was 1,64m.

His fragility was his strength. The strength of the weak.

"The irresistible charm of the man of the people,"

wrote Hannah Arendt.

THE CURE

Charlie hit the mark.

His silent cinema speaks to everyone,

or almost everyone.

A section of high society protested his crude comedies

which were seen as a trivial pleasure for the working classes,

his character being indecent and vulgar.

At Yale, alarm bells were ringing.

Chaplin was a moral threat,

stopping students from concentrating.

When Charlie dressed as a woman, the Legion of Decency

appalled, took offence.

"It's obscene, it's unseemly."

"No wonder he has a French name."

Chaplin changed American society in other ways.

When he wore police uniform,

his intention was to enforce social order.

A policeman for the poor.

EASY STREET

It was with The Immigrant

that Chaplin openly expressed

a political aim for the first time.

It addresses the myth of New York as the gateway to paradise.

The United States, land of the free

becomes a land of illusions and disillusionment.

Charlie remembered that six years ago

he was one of those immigrants.

He'd remember it all his life.

He'd be reminded of it all his life.

The Immigrant remained his favorite short film.

"Fulfilling the Mutual contract

"was the happiest time in my career.

"I was 27 years old, light and unencumbered."

On April 6th, 1917,

the United States entered the Great War, a global war.

"We were caught in an avalanche of mad destruction,"

wrote Chaplin, whose bright future had darkened.

His love for Edna Purviance had faded.

Now, they were only lovers on screen.

The Great War worried Charlie.

He was British and the press asked him questions.

While his countrymen were fighting,

thousands dying in the trenches,

was it moral for Charlie to continue making

his little films in the California sun?

A leading English newspaper owner,

Lord Northcliffe, wrote:

"Chaplin, although slightly built is very firm on his feet,

"as evidenced by his screen acrobatics.

"It is his duty to offer himself as a recruit

"and thus show himself proud of his British origin."

"Charlie in khaki

"would be popular in the army."

"We shall win without Charlie, but we would rather win with him."

The press campaign was severe.

Chaplin the slacker, the billionaire deserter.

Charlie immediately issued a press statement.

"I am ready and willing to answer the call of my country

"to serve in any branch of the military service.

"Like thousands of other Britons,

"I'm awaiting word from the Embassy.

"I registered for the draft here

"and asked no exemption or favors."

The British Embassy responded:

"He is of as much use to Great Britain

"making big money

"and subscribing to war loans

"as he would be in the trenches."

The attacks and insults continued.

Charlie received anonymous letters and white feathers. Shaken,

bruised, he decided to go to a recruitment office.

He was rejected.

He was underweight.

His value could be measured in dollars and popularity.

Charlie would use them as part of the war effort.

On April 6th, 1918,

there was a huge parade in Washington.

Along with a famous movie couple,

Mary Pickford and Douglas Fairbanks,

Chaplin gave a speech.

Listen. I never made a speech before.

We need money,

money to help Uncle Sam's army.

The Germans are at your door! We've got to stop them!

We will stop them if you buy Liberty Bonds!

Two days later, in New York

a crowd of 35,000 people waited for Charlie on Wall Street.

Douglas Fairbanks carried Charlie,

who was congratulated by the young Assistant Secretary of the Navy,

Franklin Delano Roosevelt.

While Douglas and Mary were campaigning in the north,

Charlie went on a fundraising tour of the southern states.

From Virginia to Texas, via the Carolinas,

Kentucky, Tennessee, Mississippi

and Louisiana. Donations poured in.

With Chaplin at the helm, millions of dollars were raised.

It reassured him.

He was still popular in America and in Europe.

Charlie was international.

He was an outlet for English soldiers,

as seen in this photo

taken in a battlefield in northern France,

a rather macabre setting.

In hospitals,

Chaplin's films were shown on the ceiling

so the injured could enjoy them.

Many soldiers said

seeing him on screen had miraculous effects on the wounded.

After his fundraising tour, Charlie returned to the studio.

He made a propaganda film

in which his brother Sydney played Kaiser Wilhelm II

and he continued his campaign for donations.

The film was given to the government

and distributed to theaters throughout the US.

Against the advice of all his friends,

Chaplin embarked on an ambitious comedy

which was phenomenally successful:

Shoulder Arms.

A comic film about the war shot in wartime.

The nerve, the audacity. Charlie wasn't scared of anything.

One French journalist wrote:

"Chaplin has given us the first real war film

"without having been there.

"The hell of the trenches

"will resonate with the soldiers."

The Tramp is a soldier.

Once again, Charlie sides with the suffering.

It has everything: fear, homesickness

mud, flooding.

Tragedy is burlesque.

Laughter is an antidote to despair

to boost morale.

DO YOU SPEAK FRENCH?

Shoulder Arms is anti-militarist yet patriotic.

When Chaplin comes to the rescue of a young French woman,

played by Edna Purviance,

Chaplin doesn't hesitate to tell the world:

"I am an American soldier."

Shoulder Arms was filmed in the summer of 1918,

in Sunset Boulevard, one of Hollywood's most exclusive areas.

1416 North La Brea Avenue.

This was the address of Chaplin Studios

and would be Chaplin's workplace for the next 34 years.

Built in just three months

on a two-hectare plot of fruit trees,

the studio was entirely designed by Charlie.

Little houses were reminiscent of old English cottages,

there were gardens, a swimming pool, a lab, an editing room,

nothing was missing. It was perfect.

In addition to his Japanese driver,

Charlie had a secretary who never left his side.

An odd court formed around Charlie.

One of his press officers wrote:

"When he arrived in the morning, everyone stopped immediately.

"Actors, camera operators, electricians,

"they all lined up.

"Obviously, Charlie wasn't fooled.

"He knew they were doing it for a laugh.

"He loved it."

That being said, Charles Spencer Chaplin

hated being called "Sir."

At work, everyone had to call him Charlie.

Chaplin was 30. He had his own studio,

but it wasn't enough.

He wanted to be his own producer and distributor.

"I'm tired of being the butt of the joke.

"My films make millions

"for bankers,

"I'd prefer it if the money went to me."

On February 5th, 1919,

Chaplin joined forces with Douglas Fairbanks, a huge star,

and his partner, the actress Mary Pickford,

America's sweetheart,

and the master of cinema, director of The Birth of a Nation,

D. W. Griffith.

Together, they created a corporation:

United Artists.

They wanted complete artistic and financial control.

It shook Hollywood up.

Actors were strategically

taking back power from major film studios.

It was unique in cinematic history.

Warner Brothers and Paramount needed to watch out.

Chaplin, Fairbanks, Pickford and Griffith,

totaled millions of viewers and dollars between them.

They were a formidable force.

From that point, they were their own bosses.

Like he had done in New York,

Douglas lifted Charlie up.

From the first time they met in 1917,

as these clips show, the two stars were inseparable.

Their unbreakable friendship

made Mary Pickford jealous.

In his memoirs,

Chaplin spoke of Doug's magnetism, his charm,

and his sincere, child-like enthusiasm.

"Douglas was the only man who could ever get me on a horse,

"even though I found the beast mean with the mind of a half-wit."

Charlie made people laugh, Douglas made them dream.

Zorro and the Tramp, defenders of the oppressed.

Two heroes who were idolized in the 1920s.

At the end of his life, Chaplin said Fairbanks was without a doubt

his only true friend.

No more short, two-reel stories.

Thanks to United Artists, Charlie could film what he wanted,

how he wanted, when he wanted. He was free.

When he started at Keystone in 1914,

he shot one short film a week.

From this point in time, he made one film every three years,

then every five years.

They would be masterpieces

that changed the world of cinema forever.

City Lights, Modern Times, The Great Dictator.

A series of classic films.

In 1924,

Charlie embarked on his first Hollywood blockbuster

It was an epic.

170 days of filming spread over 15 months,

taking the team to an altitude of 9,000 feet

in the snowy Sierra Nevada mountains.

It was the natural setting for The Gold Rush.

For the opening scene,

A 3,000 foot path was dug. 600 extras walked it.

Four cameras filmed Charlie.

The weather was terrible. The team took refuge in Los Angeles

to shoot the rest of the film in the studio.

Chaplin had huge sets built.

There were 500 workers. The budget was huge.

Alaska was recreated under the Hollywood sun.

Chaplin was so precise with his documentary-like reconstruction

because he wanted to combine slapstick and comedy with despair.

He had been inspired by a news story.

The Donner Party was a group of explorers caught in a snowstorm,

lost in the mountains for months on end

who ended up eating their own cows, their dogs,

and then the leather of their shoes before eating each other.

Once again, Charlie turned conventions upside-down.

Cold, hunger, and cannibalism

would be the subject of comedy.

To shoot this scene, the prop master contacted a confectioner.

The shoe was made of licorice.

20 pairs were needed for the number of takes.

The laxative properties of licorice

did not leave the actors unscathed.

Chaplin filmed the social exclusion

of the Tramp, alone, whose poverty is invisible.

At the end of the shoot, Chaplin tells the crew:

"This is the film I want to be remembered for."

Remembering The Gold Rush.

Remembering The Gold Rush, but forgetting Lita,

Lita Grey, the girl from the set of The Kid.

She was 12.

Just before her 16th birthday,

she tried out for the main part in The Gold Rush

and caught Charlie's eye.

A bystander remembers:

"'It's her!' Charlie exclaimed."

"Most of us thought she was the worst one."

Lita signed a contract.

On set, her mother had to be present.

Lita went from her mother's room

to Charlie's, and became pregnant.

Filming was interrupted and the pregnancy was covered up.

Lita was replaced.

In California, having sex with a minor

is punishable by 30 years in prison.

Chaplin offered money and an abortion.

Lita's grandfather threatened him:

"Marry, or I'll kill you." They married,

in secret, in Mexico at 5 a.m., with journalists on their tail.

It was a nightmare.

The child was born in 1925,

Charles Spencer Chaplin Junior.

Another was born ten months later, Sydney Junior.

Lita blamed Charlie for neglecting her, cheating, and spying.

In 1927, there was a trial and they divorced.

It was Charlie's second divorce.

He had had a similar experience in 1919

with the actress Mildred Harris.

The child he had with Mildred only lived for three days.

Charlie immediately threw himself

into the search for the little boy who would play The Kid.

It was Jackie Coogan.

His divorce from Lita Grey

was the largest settlement ever awarded at the time.

Chaplin was ordered to pay over a million dollars in today's money,

but retained the rights to see his kids.

The couple's private life was made public.

Copies of Lita's complaints sold out in bookstores.

Chaplin became the perfect victim

for puritanical America who despised Hollywood.

He had a nervous breakdown.

It seemed like his career was over.

But Charlie went back to work and returned to his first love,

the circus.

Shooting this film was an ordeal.

On February 12, 1926,

due to a problem in the lab,

everything that had been filmed in the last month was lost.

They had to start from scratch.

On September 28th,

the sets, which had previously been

damaged in a storm,

this time, were reduced to ashes in a fire.

No filming for eight months.

January 12th, 1927,

bailiffs ordered by Lita's lawyers broke into

the studio to collect reels from The Circus.

Charlie had put them in a safe place.

His assets were frozen,

private detectives watched his house and the studio,

24 hours a day.

THE CIRCUS

When the divorce verdict was announced,

the journalists flashbulbs were waiting.

His hair had gone gray, he was gaunt and thin.

The years from 1925 to 1927 were unhappy.

Chaplin would spend his life trying to forget them.

There are only a few lines in his autobiography about this period:

"For two years we were married

"and it ended in a great deal of bitterness.

"Because we have two grown sons of whom I am fond,

"I will not go into any details."

As for the film, Charlie doesn't mention it.

Regardless, The Circus is one of his most beautiful feature films.

January 27th, 1928, in Hollywood,

crowds flock to its Hollywood premiere.

Calls to boycott the film from feminists did not work.

Saved by his audience, Charlie declares:

"I'm happy to contribute

"to the happiness of humanity.

"Cinema is the democracy of art."

Ladies and gentlemen,

I've just returned from Hollywood,

the city of film,

much like Chicago is the city of sausage.

In Hollywood, they don't make cans. They make stars.

When I was there, I had the pleasure of meeting

Mr. Charlie Chaplin,

who told me: "Long live silence!"

"Long live silence," said Chaplin.

On the eve of the 1930s, cinema started to speak up.

Hollywood started making talkies.

The Jazz Singer was the first talking and singing film

in the history of cinema.

It was a triumph.

Journalists wondered

if Chaplin would succumb to the onslaught of talkies.

He told them:

"I can't stand talkies,

"the mechanical atmosphere of the sound studio appalls me,

"the mere sight of a microphone makes me feel sick.

"I have to be free to express emotion in my own way

"through pure pantomime."

How could Charlie speak?

In what language? With what voice? Which accent?

He didn't need words to make himself understood.

Silent by nature. It was universal.

Making Charlie speak would ruin his charm.

"Cinema is made of images and illusions," explained Chaplin.

"You don't need anything else.

"Talkies are ruining the art of cinema.

"They are destroying the beauty of silence

"I will not use speech in my next film.

"I will never use it."

Al Jolson, star of The Jazz Singer,

reacted to Chaplin's statement:

"Charlie is wrong to say he hates talkies,

"because he'll have to make them, like everyone.

"If he doesn't, his fans will abandon him

"and he won't do anything at all."

"The public won't go to see his films.

"Harold Lloyd will make talkies.

"Don't say no, Charlie. You can do it.

"If you haven't made one yet, I know it's because you're shy

"and you're worried you won't succeed."

But Chaplin didn't care. For him,

silence would always be more meaningful and more poetic.

Raising an eyebrow, however slightly,

sometimes says more than 100 words.

The Tramp was mute, and stubbornly remained so,

irreducibly.

Charlie may have predicted

that talkies wouldn't last for more than three years,

but deep down, he knew

the advent of talkies signaled a revolution.

It was a revolution that risked passing him by

as it had Buster Keaton

and many other artists.

Keaton, seen here in 1928,

in one of his last masterpieces,

would be forced to speak two years later

by his producers, Metro Goldwyn Mayer.

It was a painful experience.

He turned to alcohol and became depressed.

The end of the silent era.

In truth, Charlie was anxious. His next film was a challenge.

"Only one star has not yet turned to talkies,"

wrote the Hollywood press.

Everyone was waiting for his next film,

the only actor-director on the sinking ship

of silent film.

The new Chaplin film had sound,

but no words.

It was a way of settling the score with talkies

which, at the beginning, were stammering and stuttering.

"Dialogue films have a rattling sound," Charlie stated.

From the first scene of the film, he mocks both

talking films

and notable people in American society.

Chaplin supervised the soundtrack

and created the music for City Lights.

He now had total control.

He was artistic director,

actor, author, director and producer,

as well as composer and choreographer.

With City Lights, Chaplin achieved perfection.

He took care of every detail, he did everything.

He knew all the roles, every single character.

The actors and actresses performed.

All they had to do was watch and repeat.

There was no room for interpretation.

In the scene where the blind girl meets the Tramp,

he wanted to find the ideal rhythm, the perfect pantomime.

Obsessive, close to neurosis,

he shot 450 takes of the same sequence, tirelessly,

willing to interrupt shooting,

to throw away entire reels,

thus sacrificing weeks of work

until he found the right direction

making it seem like the florist

would believe the poor man was wealthy.

Chaplin's moods were erratic, always changing.

He fired three of his main partners on a whim,

then thought about changing the actress.

To decipher the boss's mood on a given day,

the studio employees would phone his butler in the morning.

What's Charlie wearing today?

If he's wearing a green suit, there will be storms ahead.

If he's wearing gray, the forecast is uncertain.

Blue stripes promise a day that's easy and full of creativity.

The world premiere of City Lights

took place in Los Angeles on January 30, 1931

after nearly two years of filming.

Everyone was excited. All of Hollywood was there.

Charlie Chaplin appeared with his friends,

Professor Albert Einstein and his wife.

Chaplin began to have doubts, he thought himself spoiled,

that he was no longer relatable.

With 2,500 people in the audience his heart was beating wildly.

City Lights, a pantomime romantic comedy,

an anachronism in 1931.

How would the audience react?

He was looking forward to the final scene.

This scene was, for once,

created before the script had been written.

Charlie thought it very important,

as if it were the climax of the film.

The reunion with the florist.

When he leaves prison,

he walks past the store

of the girl who no longer sells in the streets

and whose vision has been restored

thanks to an operation paid for by the Tramp.

The wrongly imprisoned benefactor,

the lover whose face she doesn't know,

who she imagines is wealthy, but who is a tramp.

In his memoir, Chaplin wrote:

"During the final scene I noticed Einstein wiping his eyes,

"further evidence that scientists are incurable sentimentalists."

When the lights came back on, there was a standing ovation.

"A blow to talkies," wrote one critic

Charlie could breathe again.

"I am a pantomime.

"In this field I am unique. Without false modesty, I'm a master.

"This silent film has made more money than previous ones.

"So why would you want me to talk?"

During the filming of City Lights,

Charlie learned that his mother had passed away.

His much-loved mother was 63 years old.

Charlie and Sydney had brought her to Los Angeles

seven years earlier.

Her mental health problems had subsided,

but she still needed to be monitored.

A house by the sea, a nurse at home.

On a visit to Chaplin Studios, she saw

her son dressed as a tramp

and said:

"Charlie, you really need a new suit,

"and your complexion is terrible.

"You need some sun."

Chaplin didn't see her often, there were too many painful memories.

In his autobiography, he wrote:

"How strange that her life should end here,

"in the environs of Hollywood, with all its absurd values.

"A flood of memories surged in upon me.

"I remembered her life-long struggle,

"her suffering, her courage,

"and her tragic, wasted life."

Since his arrival in America 20 years earlier,

Charlie had only gone back to Europe once, in 1921,

for five short weeks.

He never stopped working.

After City Lights, he dreamed of long trips.

He told the press:

"I'm no longer aware of what's happening in the world.

"I want to observe things and get ideas for my next film.

"Like all egomaniacs, I live an inward life.

"I want to relive my youth. I need to go back in time."

On February 13th, 1931,

Charlie boarded the Mauretania.

He planned to spend a little time away from America.

His trip ended up lasting for 16 months, a world tour.

Charlie rarely left his cabin

on the six-day crossing.

He was exhausted from years of working on City Light.

When he arrived in England, he was greeted by a large crowd.

Similar crowds were waiting in Berlin, Vienna and Venice.

Paris cheered:

"We need Chaplin! Idol of the masses!"

"I'm being pushed from all sides, it's like a loving embrace.

"I love it."

In Vienna, on Austrian news,

Charlie was particularly appreciated.

For the first time, his voice was recorded and broadcast.

The speech wasn't long, but it was unprecedented.

Thank you very much.

Europe's intellectual and political elite wanted to meet Charlie.

Charlie wasn't the shy type.

Drowning in invitations, he was both delighted and honored.

It was a festival of social events.

The high life.

In Berlin, he had tea with Marlene Dietrich.

On the Côte d'Azur, he played bowls with Maurice Chevalier.

He visited the beaches in Juan les Pins and Biarritz.

In Switzerland, he skied with André Citroën et Douglas Fairbanks

and dined with the Prince of Wales

and George Bernard Shaw.

"It felt like walking into

"the Hall of Fame at Madame Tussaud's,

"except they weren't wax, they were flesh and blood."

Could the little tramp ever have imagined that one day

he'd be friends with Winston Churchill,

be awarded the Legion of Honor in Paris

and dine at the Quai d'Orsay

with former French Prime Minister Aristide Briand.

He was welcomed as though he were head of state.

Chaplin talked more and more about politics

and economics. He was interested in them,

and was worried about social problems.

Free from clowning around, he took the time to read

and form his own opinions.

He was offered a meeting with Mahatma Gandhi.

India's independence leader was in London.

Many people in the UK wanted to see Gandhi locked up.

It was a strange encounter for the two famous men

who both desperately tried to find something to talk about.

Gandhi was one of the rare people

who had never seen a Chaplin film.

Charlie goes back to his childhood,

his painful past.

He wanted to visit Hanwell orphanage.

"Everything was still there.

"In the canteen, I found my old place,

"the third chair at the fourth table.

"Who sat there now?

"Why does working class London still have a hold on my heart?

"The affection of these people pains me, wonderfully so.

"I am one of them."

He was one of them. He had changed.

London was a far cry from Hollywood.

However, Charles Spencer Chaplin

never really belonged to high society.

No matter how much he tried to educate himself,

he didn't have the right manners, the right grammar.

He hid his shortcomings behind eccentricities.

He loved to please and was happy to play the clown.

Society ate him up.

Charlie hadn't decided to go back to Hollywood yet.

After Europe, Charlie headed to the Far East.

Chaplin was middle-aged.

He wanted to recharge his batteries.

Bali was a revelation.

"I've only been here for a few hours,

"but I feel like I always lived here.

"How easy it is for man to go back to his natural state.

"The rest of the world is so far."

Charlie wondered about his future

He thought about filming in Bali,

an anti-colonial satire.

He eventually decided to attack the root of colonialism:

capitalism. It was destructive and alienating.

When Charlie returned to the United States in 1932,

the country was in crisis.

The American dream was no more. Charlie was disenchanted.

His friends Douglas Fairbanks and Mary Pickford had divorced.

The silent film industry was dead.

The Wall Street Crash in 1929 had taken its toll.

Factories were closing.

A quarter of people were unemployed.

Poverty was winning.

The Great Depression was an economic cataclysm.

In the 1930s,

Charlie Chaplin became a cinema legend.

He didn't want to stop.

"Success had given

my opinions a certain importance."

The Tramp wanted to make history

in modern times.

MODERN TIMES

His sixth feature film would be resolutely political.

Charlie wanted to reveal the truth about America:

poverty, homelessness, strikes,

protests and police violence.

A few years earlier,

Chaplin had visited the Ford factory, a beacon of profit and robotization.

He'd never forget the workers on the assembly line

treated like guinea pigs with no humanity.

He was firm in his conviction.

Humans should not be slaves to machines.

Machines should serve humans.

Progress is not just about profit.

To play the ruthless factory boss in his new film,

Chaplin chose a lookalike of Henry Ford, the car manufacturer,

a notorious anti-communist and anti-Semite

who banned trade unions in his company

and imposed infernal targets.

Chaplin became increasingly critical of capitalism.

After travelling the world, influenced by the UK's Labour Party,

he defended unemployment benefits, reducing working hours,

nationalizing banks,

reducing state expenditure

and establishing a minimum wage so people could live decently.

He wrote:

"The idea that money should be distributed from the top

"in the hope that it will trickle down is a disaster."

That was President Hoover's policy,

who was soundly defeated in 1932

by Democratic candidate Franklin Roosevelt,

who immediately launched his New Deal

While Chaplin was in the middle of Modern Times.

Charlie was a big supporter of Roosevelt.

"The most inspired era in America," he wrote.

Like Roosevelt, Chaplin was accused of spreading

dangerous progressive ideas.

"Communist propaganda",

decreed Nazi Germany and Fascist Italy.

Modern Times, released in 1936,

left a lasting impression on people.

Now, when people talked about assembly line work,

Charlie and this film came to mind.

In a robot world,

only two rebellious spirits remain.

They found each other and fell in love.

The two tramps.

His partner in Modern Times.

"I imagined them meeting

"in a crowded police bus,

"he would offer her his seat.

"That's what the plot

"was built around and where jokes originated."

The actress was Paulette Goddard.

Charlie met her when he returned from his trip in 1932.

She was 22. They fell in love

and it was one of Charlie's happiest relationships.

She would become his third wife

and his muse, his inspiration when he was out of ideas.

"For her and for me,

"it was like Robinson Crusoe discovering Friday."

Like for City Lights,

Charlie still didn't want to give in to the talkies.

However, for the first time,

Charlie's voice in a Chaplin film would be heard.

In a surprise twist,

he didn't speak, but he sang

in an imaginary universal language.

Se montya si la moora

La sontya so gravora

La zontya comme sora

Je la poose a ti la tua

Je notre so la mina Je notre so cosina

Je le se tro savita

Je la tuss a vi la tua

Chaplin, Hitler, 1889.

They were born in the same year, same month, same week.

Chaplin was famous long before Hitler.

"The first time I saw Hitler and his little moustache,

confessed Charlie,

"I thought he was copying me so he could use my fame.

"That's how full of myself I was."

Chaplin hadn't forgotten his trip to Europe.

When he was in Berlin in 1931,

the Nazi party was already powerful.

"Patriotism is everywhere

"and it will result in war," he wrote.

Nine years later, in 1940,

in the propaganda film Der Ewige Jude,

The Eternal Jew,

The Third Reich used images from his tour.

Chaplin, a Jewish man, was greeted enthusiastically in Berlin.

It's hard to believe that German citizens

would applaud a visit from a foreign Jew,

their mortal enemy.

How was it possible?

MODERN TIMES BANNED IN GERMANY

In February 1936,

Goebbels banned Modern Times in Germany

and the Nazi press despised

this repulsive little Jewish man.

Chaplin? Jewish? No. He wasn't Jewish.

Many people saw him that way.

In the midst of anti-Semitic outbursts,

Charlie doesn't want to deny it as it would play into Hitler's hands.

Sometimes, he replies:

"Jewish? No, I don't have that honor.

"I would be proud to be Jewish."

In Los Angeles, Chaplin rubbed shoulders with Jewish artists.

He was passionate about Yiddish theater.

He befriended intellectuals who had fled Nazi Germany.

They told him about the persecution of the Jews.

Very early on,

he was aware of the danger Hitler represented for the world.

Chaplin couldn't remain silent.

He's called upon to speak and gets to work.

It was one of the longest scripts in the history of Hollywood.

Two years of writing, 300 pages.

His first film with dialogue: The Great Dictator.

A film Chaplin decided to make against all odds.

It was a race against time. He finished his script

on November 10th, 1938,

the day after Kristallnacht,

a pogrom organized by the SA all over Germany.

Jews were murdered, imprisoned,

synagogues were burned down, shops were looted by thousands.

THE GREAT DICTATOR

"The is a story of a period between two World Wars,

"a time in which insanity cut loose.

"Liberty took a nosedive, and humanity was kicked around."

These are the first words of the film.

Charlie reconstructed Jewish ghettoes in his Hollywood studio

as seen in this exceptional footage

filmed in color by his brother Sydney.

In the background, cars drive down Sunset Boulevard.

It was September 9th, 1939.

Hitler invaded Poland.

Filming had just started

and a new war had been declared six days earlier in Europe.

Charlie knew his film would go down in history.

The script was increasingly bleak.

It was the story of a small fish in shark-infested waters.

Charlie played two roles: the shark and the fish.

The fish was a Jewish barber.

"Any resemblance between Hynkel and the Jewish barber

"is purely coincidental," warned Charlie before the film.

The dictator and the barber.

Hitler and Chaplin.

A political pastiche.

A duel between two of the most famous people in the world.

The man who made people laugh against the man who scared them.

"Like all actors, I dreamed of playing Napoleon.

"I got rid of this urge

"by combining Napoleon, Hitler

"and a Russian tsar in one character.

"It satisfied my unfulfilled desires."

Chaplin was fascinated by despots.

To prepare for The Great Dictator, he watched

news footage

and films by Leni Riefenstahl

about The Führer.

He was captivated by the hold he had on the masses.

I do not believe

that our enemies who laughed so loudly yesterday

will be laughing today.

"Good lord, he's one of the greatest actors I've ever seen,"

exclaimed Charlie. He was stunned.

"Suddenly, I was inspired.

"In the role of Hitler,

"I could harangue the crowds using jargon I invented."

"I want The Great Dictator to show the folly of mankind

"when a loud-mouthed individual appears on the horizon

"with astonishing ideas,

"backing them up by hitting the table."

"How can you laugh at Hitler and anti-Semitism?"

"Chaplin's SAs look like Keystone cops,"

some people argued.

"The only way to survive our ills

"is to laugh at them," responded Charlie.

Much later, in 1964,

Charlie wrote in his autobiography:

"Had I known of the actual horrors of the concentration camps,

"I could not have made The Great Dictator.

"I could not have made fun of

"Nazi homicidal insanity."

Yet many images from the film

were strikingly accurate

and some dialog was disturbingly prescient.

Chaplin's audacity was worrying.

In a Foreign Office report, the British Consulate noted concern

about his fanatical enthusiasm,

his social and racial sympathies,

and the personalities he ridiculed.

While Roosevelt supported him,

there were many who wanted to stop him.

Anti-Semitic America, of course,

but another America is alarmed,

isolationist and overwhelmingly

unwilling to go to war, seeking to spare the Reich.

They didn't want to make waves.

In Hollywood,

Jewish producers tried to dissuade him.

They did business with Nazi Germany and Fascist Italy.

"Charlie, you're going to make life for our people impossible.

"Hitler will be furious."

Chaplin was adamant.

"Let him get angry, it can't get much worse."

He ignored threats of censorship and boycott

in the US and abroad.

"I'll distribute the film myself, I'll rent theaters if I have to.

"I don't care if I lose money on this film.

"I'm 50,

"what's the point in working all my life, being successful,

"if I can't make films as I want."

Charlie took on this duty.

He refused to soften his words.

He called the Jews by name and confronted the Führer.

This dance is a reminder

that Charlie liked to perform in private in the 1920s.

He has not forgotten pantomime,

but his humor now involves dialog and wordplay,

like Groucho Marx.

On November 15th, 1939,

Charlie was visited by a friend,

Douglas Fairbanks, his dear Doug, his best audience.

"He had aged and seemed preoccupied.

"He was still warm."

Charlie was excited to show him the finished film.

But Douglas Fairbanks never saw The Great Dictator.

He died four weeks later of a heart attack.

Chaplin never had such a close friend again.

Filming continued, as did the war.

France had just surrendered. England was fighting

and the atmosphere on set was getting darker and darker.

No one felt like laughing anymore.

"Finish your film, we're all waiting,"

read a telegram from United Artists.

Faced with Hitler's progress,

Chaplin's face became more serious,

his tone darker.

Current events caught up with him and took over.

He was haunted by his film's message

and by the final scene, with a final speech he obsesses over,

that he can't stop rewriting against his team's advice.

Filming took place on June 24th, 1940.

The day before, at dawn, Hitler entered Paris.

It's neither the Jewish barber

nor the dictator, Hynkel, who took to the podium.

It was Chaplin.

The clown became a prophet.

World events forced Chaplin to speak.

The Great Dictator was the first film

where the story was bigger than the little tramp.

Charlie scarified his character. The Tramp died.

He took off the mask. Another face appeared,

that of Charles Spencer Chaplin.

The film is dedicated to Hannah.

Hannah, the name given to Paulette Goddard's character.

Hannah, Charlie's mother's name.

"I made The Great Dictator for all Jewish people,"

said Chaplin.

It was the first major anti-Nazi film in the history of cinema.

The Great Dictator was a global event,

unparalleled political satire, his biggest success.

The premiere took place in New York

on October 15th, 1940.

The film was released in London two months later.

In the middle of the blitz, Charlie raised morale.

As for the French,

they wouldn't see the film for another five years,

at the end of the war, in April 1945.

A solitary visionary, courageous and obstinate

at a crucial moment in history,

Chaplin stood up for democracy and freedom.

"By definition, my film is anti-militaristic."

His only weapon is laughter.

Laughter as well as his huge popularity

and his wealth, which he used to perfect his ideas.

"Charlie Chaplin helped men to live,"

wrote François Truffaut in 1957.

The Great Dictator may have triumphed on screen,

but the American press was picky,

baffled by the final scene

which they thought was inappropriate and sentimental.

Others considered him a Marxist,

but the only Marx Charlie was interested in was Groucho.

In Hollywood, Charlie was no longer unanimously supported.

Like the beginning of a conflict, Charlie remembers:

"It started to change,

"snide items began to appear,

"stories about my stinginess,

"then ugly rumors about Paulette and me."

He divorced Paulette Godard

after eight years together.

Things kept getting worse for Charlie.

On May 18th, 1942,

he spoke at a meeting for Russian war relief.

He called for America to be more involved

with the Soviet Union.

In front of 10,000 people, he crashed and burned.

"Comrades, communists are no different from us.

"If they lose an arm or a leg,

"they suffer and die like all of us.

"Russians are our allies."

Charlie's audacity had always paid off.

From now on, he would pay.

Since 1922,

the American government had been interested

in Chaplin's communist leanings.

The FBI spied on him relentlessly, tapping his phone,

monitoring his whereabouts and his political and sexual relationships.

Chaplin confessed:

"When I was working, women didn't interest me.

"When I was between films with nothing to do,

"I was vulnerable."

His friends were worried about

another Mildred Harris or Lita Grey affair,

his first wives.

They were right.

The woman was Joan Barry.

She was 22 and adored Chaplin.

"A tall, beautiful woman, she was well-built

"with upper regional domes that are

"immensely expansive,

"which aroused my libidinous curiosity."

For her, Charlie opened the doors of Hollywood and his bedroom.

Joan was unpredictable and soon became uncontrollable.

Drunkenness, harassment on the telephone,

trespassing and broken windows, threatening with weapons,

blackmail for money.

She claimed to be pregnant.

There was a paternity trial.

"The Barry case is a pretext to discredit me,

"to prevent me from making films, and

"drive me out of a country that my sons

"are fighting for.

"This is political persecution."

His fingerprints were taken as he was photographed,

making him furious and humiliated.

He remembered it 12 years later

when he settled his score with America

in A King in New York in 1957.

This film was banned in America until 1973.

Joan Barry's child was born in October 1943

and was presented in court as evidence.

Once again, Charlie's sex life was put on display.

He was accused of embezzlement

and faced 23 years in prison.

The FBI appointed the judge

and secretly paid Joan Barry's lawyer,

who called Chaplin a gray-headed old buzzard,

a little runt, a debaucher, a lecherous hound,

a sordid and sinister showman.

However, the blood tests were clear:

Chaplin was not the girl's father.

He was acquitted.

However, in a mysterious twist of fate

and a second trial,

he was ordered to pay child support until the girl turned 21.

Charlie no longer recognized the America he loved.

A star would come to light up his life.

It would shine until the end of his life.

She was a debutante actress,

Eugene O'Neill's daughter.

Oona O'Neill became Oona Chaplin

on June 16th, 1943.

She was 18, he was 54.

They had eight children together.

Oona gave up her acting career

and didn't appear in Chaplin's next film which was released

in 1947.

It was a new comedy, a murder comedy.

Before it was called Monsieur Verdoux, it was known as

The Lady Killer, Landru, then Bluebeard.

"Verdoux is a paradox of virtue and vice,

"a man who, as he trims his rose garden,

"avoids stepping on a caterpillar

"while at the end of the garden,

"one of his victims is being consumed in an incinerator"

For the first time, Charlie had a real moustache.

He had given up the Tramp's costume.

He swapped slapstick for dark British humor.

Changing character, tone, speech and moral values,

Monsieur Verdoux was the antithesis of the Tramp.

He was elegant, seductive, smooth-talking

but manipulative, polygamous and a criminal.

Chaplin seemed to be driven by misanthropy

coupled with misogyny.

Critic André Bazin said that with Monsieur Verdoux,

Chaplin was getting revenge for the alimony

he had to pay.

"Verdoux is a diabolical satire and violently critical of society,"

wrote Chaplin, "taking malicious pleasure in depicting

"narrow-minded bourgeois life."

It was a joyful game of corrosive massacre.

Filming took place a year after

Hiroshima and Nagasaki.

During the trial scene, Chaplin speaks as Verdoux:

Before going to the gallows, Verdoux shares his message.

"One murder makes a villain,

"millions, a hero. Numbers sanctify."

A success in Europe,

Monsieur Verdoux was a flop in America,

boycotted in a number of states under pressure from Catholic leagues

and the American Legion

who took offence at this new provocation.

At the Broadway premiere on April 11th, 1947,

Chaplin was booed by the audience.

"It pains me to admit,

"but those few whistles hurt more

"than all the bad reviews in the press."

Journalists were critical.

The next day, the press room had never been so crowded.

Chaplin opened fire.

Journalists continued the interrogation:

"Do you know Hanns Eisler?"

"Yes, he's a dear friend and a great musician," replied Charlie.

At that moment, Eisler

was being questioned by the Committee on Un-American Activities.

Jewish, German and Marxist,

Hanns Eisler fled Nazism in 1933.

The Commission investigated communist elements

that were corrupting society, particularly in Hollywood.

The composer was referred to as the Karl Marx of music.

Red Scare, blacklist, in the early days of the Cold War,

America was on a witch hunt.

Actors and filmmakers were informers.

Chaplin's help meant nothing.

Accused of espionage, Eisler was expelled from the US in 1948.

Charlie was grief-stricken.

Next, it was J. Edgar Hoover's turn to be the target.

Destabilization, defamation,

the unshakeable boss of the FBI won't go down.

He's too independent, too popular. Chaplin is his bête noire.

In a war of attrition,

the FBI, the courts, the press,

and America want Charles Spencer Chaplin to go down.

On June 13th, 1947,

a member of Congress officially made a request for him to leave.

"His horrid films must not fall before the eyes of our youth."

Chaplin was ready to answer

questions from the Committee,

but he warned them he'd dress as the Tramp.

The FBI preferred to question him more discreetly

in his Beverly Hills home for four hours.

"Are you a communist? Are you Jewish?"

"Have you ever committed adultery?"

"Why have you never applied for US citizenship?"

"I'm a citizen of the world,

"I hate being told who to kill and why to die

"in the name of patriotism."

Chaplin's house seemed empty.

Invitations were rare.

His son, Charlie Junior, remembers:

"The green lawn and little tennis house that attracted

"so many visitors on Sunday afternoon had become deserted.

"At the time, my father was the loneliest man in Hollywood.

"Those who once worshipped him turned their back on him."

Charlie lived with Oona and their kids.

He had just finished a new film, Limelight.

Chaplin insisted

that this time, the world premiere would be in England.

It would be the perfect chance to show his family

the London of his childhood.

Did Charlie and Oona think this European tour

would take them away from Hollywood forever?

At the Cherbourg stopover

of the liner that was taking them from New York to England

Charlie Chaplin, the Tramp,

with a smile, surrounded by his wife

and children,

learned the US Attorney General

threatened him with an investigation.

Charlie was confident because it was so absurd.

In the middle of the journey

Chaplin learned that his return visa had been cancelled.

After 40 years of working in the US,

he was sent back home. America didn't want him anymore.

In London, it was a real honeymoon for Charlie Chaplin

and his wife Oona.

He hadn't been to his home town for 20 years

but no one seemed to mind.

At the premiere of Limelight, London was waiting for Chaplin.

Limelight is a nostalgic tale of a clown's former glory

who was abandoned by the public.

It was Charlie's obsession. The fear never left him,

that he would lose inspiration, he wouldn't be recognized,

he'd be forgotten, out of fashion, rejected.

"I had the impression that I was hated by an entire country

"and that my film career was over."

Charlie knew that people would always be suspicious.

Trials and scandals had tarnished his image.

But England wasn't America.

Alongside Charlie, in the limelight,

was Buster Keaton, once Charlie's equal.

Limelight may not have been Chaplin's last film,

but it did seem like his last will and testament.

After such a good reception, Charlie decided to stay in Europe.

"I don't want to go back to the United States,

"even if Christ became president.

"For 15 years, I was harassed and called a communist.

"I was persecuted like a criminal.

"I almost got 25 years in prison for white slavery.

"I'll never allow my films to be distributed in America.

"Yes, I'm bitter. It's a gloomy country

"where children are taught hatred and denunciation

"in an atmosphere of religious hypocrisy."

The Chaplins decided that Switzerland

was where they'd move to,

in a beautiful home near Lake Geneva,

not too far from Lausanne.

It was paradise, both scenically and fiscally.

Chaplin lived there for the last 25 years of his life.

He wrote his last two films there,

as well as the music for his first films.

For the rerelease of The Circus,

he recorded the theme song at the age of 80.

Their first four children were born in California

and the next four were born in Switzerland.

Geraldine is the oldest sibling.

Does he write?

Yes, well, for now.

For the last seven years he's been writing his memoirs.

I don't know what he'll do next.

I think he'll do another film or something

because he has to work.

"I can never retire," Charlie used to say.

After A King in New York and his autobiography,

he embarked on his first film in color and cinemascope,

a format he'd criticized.

It would be his last film.

Charlie stayed behind the lens.

He was 77.

The film wasn't well-received by critics.

The romantic comedy may have been charming,

but it paled in comparison

with The Graduate, Bonnie and Clyde,

and Polanski's 1967 film,

The Fearless Vampire Killers and Buñuel's Belle de jour.

Once progressive, Chaplin became conservative.

"My poor Charlie, you really are no longer

"in modern times,"

wrote one cruel London journalist.

"Working is living and I love living," Charlie responded.

Old age attracts tributes and honors,

a shower of decorations and distinctions,

at the Cannes Film Festival, the Venice Film Festival,

Charles was even knighted by the Queen two years before his death.

He had to wait until 1972

for the United States to remember him.

Twenty years after he was banished, he was invited back to the US.

He was to be awarded an honorary Oscar.

It was belated, he was 83 years old.

He was given a visa

for just ten days.

"It's good," joked Charlie, "they're still scared of me."

Two days before the ceremony, a lunch is held in his honor.

The man who was, for decades, the darling of Hollywood

was reunited with his old friend Groucho Marx.

Chaplin was expected to visit his old studios on Sunset Boulevard

for a reception.

The limo drove down La Brea Avenue.

Charlie didn't have the courage to get out of the car.

There were too many memories.

"If only young and old could be the same age," he wrote.

At the Oscars, Chaplin was in agony,

worrying about how he'd be received.

Bravo!

Well done! Bravo!

In the crowd,

there was someone who'd shared the stage with Chaplin 50 years before.

The Tramp's first big hit.

The Kid, Jackie Coogan.

THERE'S SOMETHING JUST AS INEVITABLE AS DEATH, AND THAT'S LIFE.

LIFE IS A MAGNIFICENT THING, EVEN TO A JELLYFISH