Original subtitles

(LAUGHS)

'For as long as I can remember, I've had a love of silent comedies,

from the era of Buster Keaton, Harold Lloyd,

and of course, Charlie Chaplin.'

The timing is so good on this. (LAUGHS)

'I know his films by heart, I've seen them so many times.'

He's chatting the policeman's wife up.

'They are as funny to me now as when I first saw them.'

Look at this brilliant moment when the hands get swapped.

The policeman grabs him.

(CHUCKLES)

'As a comedy writer and director,

I can see what brilliant technique he had.

But I've always thought that there was more to Chaplin than this.

To me he's the greatest comic genius of the 20th century.'

It's just genius.

'He went from the workhouse to being the most famous man on the planet.

He made a staggering 82 films in total, spanning a period of 53 years.

I have been given access to a wealth of Chaplin home movies

and personal archive,

which gives a new and powerful insight into this driven character.

I can see his flaws.

His private life was mired in controversy.

But it never got in the way of the unceasing flow of ideas and films

that came out of him.

This is the Chaplin I want to go in search of.'

"This was the London of my childhood.

Of my moods and awakenings.

Memories of Lambeth in the spring,

of riding with Mother on top of a horse bus,

of melancholy Sundays and pale-faced parents

and their children escorting toy windmills and coloured balloons

over Westminster Bridge.

And the maternal penny steamers

that softly lowered their funnels as they glided under it."

"From such trivia I believe my soul was born."

'For me, the key to Chaplin's art is in his extraordinary childhood.

What happened in his first ten years.

Incredibly, there's no official record

of the birth of one of London's most famous sons.

But Chaplin was convinced he was born in 1889,

not far from East Street Market in South London.'

Charlie Chaplin's mother Hannah and his father Charles Chaplin

were both singers in the Victorian music halls.

They could be found in every city and large town throughout the country.

All the programmes to us now are just so lovely to look at. Yes.

I like The Musical Macaronis. (LAUGHS)

"The Musical Macaronis.

This marvellous party of Viennese musicians

play upon the most extraordinary variety of instruments

ever seen in this country."

What was so wonderful in those days of course

was that when you were an act in the music hall

there were so many other acts that you saw.

You had to wait in the wings and watch everybody else.

So you watched the acrobats and the singers and the clowns

and the...everything.

This is one of our pieces of sheet music with Charlie's dad,

Charles senior. Yeah.

"I love to meet with dear old pals, wherever it may be.

I like a song, a pipe, a glass in jovial company."

'Charles Chaplin Sr liked a glass in jovial company so much

he became an alcoholic, and the marriage fell apart.

Hannah Chaplin found herself bringing up three-year-old Charlie

and his brother Sydney on her own.'

Her work on the stage dried up as her singing voice faltered.

One particular night when it failed

she was booed off at a rowdy theatre in Aldershot.

Charlie, only six at the time, went onstage, sang a popular song,

and was showered with applause and coins.

As he said in his autobiography,

"That night was my first appearance on the stage

and Mother's last."

"When the fates deal in human destiny

they heed neither pity nor justice.

Thus they dealt with Mother.

She never regained her voice.

As autumn turns to winter,

so our circumstances turned from bad to worse."

'The inevitable happened.

Hannah and the children were temporarily forced into

the Lambeth workhouse. Charlie was only nine.'

"On the doleful day I didn't realise what was happening

until we actually entered the workhouse gate.

For there we were made to separate,

Mother going in one direction to the women's ward

and we in another to the children's."

"Sydney and I began to weep, which made Mother weep,

and large tears began to run down her cheeks."

'Worse was to follow for the Chaplins.'

"When I reached Pownall Terrace

I was stopped at the gate by some children of the neighbourhood.

'Your mother's gone insane', said a little girl.

The words were like a slap in the face."

'Hannah was confined for a while to an asylum.

Charlie went to live with his father until his mother was discharged.'

His first ten years were hell. The very fact that he survived it

showed that there was something very extraordinary in the man.

It was not that he just experienced poverty,

but he saw an incredible amount of life.

He saw drunkenness, he saw madness, he saw death,

he saw homelessness, hunger, everything.

And instead of just laying down and dying like most kids would do,

he somehow absorbed all this.

And then when he came to the point where he expressed himself

as an artist, there was all this inside him which he had to express.

Did your father talk about his childhood?

Yes, he talked about his childhood.

He...

He did...he did talk about the poverty.

And, you know, having nothing.

And being hungry and only having an orange at Christmas.

He didn't like Christmas, because he'd see all the...

My mother showered us with presents. She loved the whole ceremony.

But my father was always... he was a bit reticent.

It reminded him of his childhood.

'All this heartbreak and misery

would be enough to break the spirit of most people.

But in amongst the sheer hardship of Charlie's early life

he found he could make people laugh.

Outside the pub his father drank in

there was an old man who looked after the horses.

Charlie would imitate his walk.'

"When I showed my mother how Rummy walked,

she begged me to stop

because it was cruel to imitate a misfortune like that.

But she pleaded while she had her apron stuffed into her mouth.

Then she went into the pantry and giggled for ten minutes.

Day after day I cultivated that walk.

It became an obsession.

Whenever I pulled it, I was sure of a laugh."

Chaplin's walk is his signature.

And he makes it look so simple.

But it's damn difficult to do.

'Charlie's immense drive, along with his undoubted talent,

got him his first break.

He registered with a theatrical agency

and got a part in a 1903 Sherlock Holmes drama.

He was 14.'

Here we have copies of his very first reviews

when he was in Sherlock Holmes.

"One of the brightest bits of acting in the play

was given by Mr Charles Chaplin, who as Billy, Sherlock Holmes' page boy,

displayed immense activity as well as dramatic appreciation."

(CHUCKLES) Then there's the last page there.

"Master Chaz Chaplin is..."

"..decidedly clever." (CHUCKLES)

"I had suddenly left behind a life of poverty

and was entering a long-desired dream.

A dream my mother had often spoken about, had revelled in.

I was to become an actor."

'In 1908, Charlie joined the most successful comedy company of the era,

Fred Karno's Speechless Comedians.

Two years later, he was a leading player.

Fred Karno was obviously a brute.

He ill-treated his artists terribly.

But also a genius at producing comedy.

He always used to like to have a grotesque piece of action going on

but have an elegant 18th century minuet or something going with it!

And he saw this contrast between the comic and the pathetic.

Chaplin acknowledges he learnt a lot from that.

I found a review from about 1908 when he was on the music hall

saying he's a genius.

Chaplin learnt from watching everybody.

From watching people in the street.

And he spent his life in the theatres when he was little,

because he was waiting for his mother or his father,

occasionally his father, mostly his mother.

And so he would have learnt from just watching how everybody did it.

And then when he was himself in theatrical troupes

he practised, rehearsed, rehearsed, rehearsed.

'By now Chaplin was 21

and was looking for a bigger stage for his talents.'

"I was up at six in the morning.

Therefore I did not bother to wake Sydney,

but left a note on the table stating,

'Off to America. Will keep you posted. Love, Charlie.'"

'Charlie had set sail for America with the Karno Company.

They travelled the length and breadth of the continent

performing their English routines.

The cast included a young Stan Laurel.

After two tours, Chaplin's obvious talent was spotted.

If only they could get his name right!'

In the spring of 1913,

a telegram was sent to the manager of Charlie's touring company

from the owners of the Keystone film studio.

It read, "Is there a man named Chaffin in your company,

or something like that? If so, will he communicate with

Kessel and Baumann, Broadway, New York."

Charlie Chaplin was about to leave the stage for the film studio.

It's a rainy afternoon in January 1914.

In the communal dressing room at Keystone Studios, California,

Chaplin is looking for a costume for his second film.

A comedy called Mabel's Strange Predicament.

Chaplin puts together a selection of contrasts.

A pair of voluminous trousers,

a tiny jacket,

size 14 shoes,

a too-small bowler hat,

a cane, and a moustache trimmed to toothbrush size.

The most famous movie character of the century had been born.

The Tramp.

"I had no idea of the character.

But the moment I was dressed

the clothes and the make up made me feel the person he was.

I began to know him, and by the time I walked onto the stage

he was fully born."

"Shuf-shuf-shuffle with ease, pointing your toes out at 90 degrees.

Next you raise your right foot so

and round and round on your left foot you go."

Canes varied a lot.

Well, I mean, he had many.

There are so many throughout the world.

Collectors have canes.

Some people sometimes contact us and say,

"I want to know what film my cane comes from."

So we say, "OK, we'll look at every single photograph

of every single film and try and identify the knobs!"

'The character instantly became known as the Tramp.

But Charlie's son Michael, who has looked into the family tree,

has a different take on the matter,

based on a mysterious letter hidden by Chaplin in a drawer.'

It was found when my mother died

and my sister took the piece of furniture.

And the drawer was locked. No-one could find the key.

She had a locksmith come and open it.

There was a letter inside by a man called Jack Hill,

who had read his autobiography.

This was shortly after his autobiography was published.

And says...you know...

He actually tells him, "You're a little liar,

cos you were not born in Kennington,

you were born in Queen Sentina's caravan on Black Patch."

'The letter puts the place of Chaplin's birth in a gypsy caravan

in Birmingham. There's no other evidence to support this claim.

But it got Michael thinking about who Chaplin's alter ego really was.'

You know, you look at his early films,

it's not a tramp, it's a gypsy.

Because a tramp is usually quite humble or down.

Or he's in the street because he's failed in some way.

The character he invented is not at all that.

He's someone who goes into these bourgeois milieus,

especially in the early films, and he takes over.

He's not at all intimidated. He's got that cheek

that really belongs to gypsies. You can see that.

'With this character set, Chaplin produced film after film -

82 in all - showcasing his talent at physical comedy.

But this was more than just shoving a pie in someone's face.'

In Chaplin films the slapstick is nuanced.

Even violence is balletic.

His understanding and execution of physical gags

showed an artist in total command of his craft.

But if a talent for slapstick was the only weapon in Chaplin's armoury,

like Buster Keaton's,

then he would have been one among many talented artists

of the silent era.

He wouldn't have changed the face of movie comedy.

Which is what he did.

'When Charlie Chaplin started in the movies

silent comedies were knockabout farces.

Anything for a laugh.

Chaplin changed all that.

He took the comedy and added another ingredient to it.'

"I did not have to read books to know that the theme of life

is conflict and pain.

Instinctively all my clowning was based on this.

My means of contriving comedy plot was simple.

It was the process of getting people in and out of trouble."

'The Kid, the story of an abandoned baby

raised at first unwillingly by the Tramp, and their life together,

before the reunion of the boy with his mother

perfectly illustrates this.

It pulls off the previously unheard of feat

of being both hugely funny and profoundly moving.'

"Please love and care for the orphan child."

(WHIMPERS)

Gets to like him.

I'm still moved by it.

It's full of sentiment and... I just really love it.

'Released in 1921, The Kid was an instant success,

distributed to 50 countries,

from Norway to Malaya, Egypt to Australia.'

In the world of silent films, realism, drama, and sentiment

were kept well apart from comedy.

Comedy was about being kicked up the arse

or being hit on the head by a brick.

But Chaplin was always striving for more,

always driven to break convention.

He wanted to make raw slapstick and sentiment work together.

He wanted them to complement each other

in a way that strengthened his art.

When we have a sweet moment, he undercuts it by slapstick.

I like the way he kicks the child away from him.

(LAUGHS)

Bolts round the corner!

Chaplin really did have something special as an artist,

had an incredible understanding of human nature, of what is human.

And that, added to the fact that he was a great actor

so he admits you to his thoughts, he admits you to his feelings

in a way that very few actors can do.

'Chaplin had created that rarest of creatures -

the Tramp had universal appeal.'

"Man who makes the whole world laugh."

What is still mysterious to me is how fast it happened.

By mid-1915 he's already a universal figure,

after less than two years in films.

That's extraordinary, because you have no television, no radio.

It was only done from the screen.

'In 1916, on the way to New York from California to sign a new contract,

vast crowds mobbed Charlie's train at every stop.

Chaplin-mania had arrived.'

"The formalities of signing the contract followed.

I was photographed receiving the $150,000 cheque.

That evening I stood with the crowd in Times Square

as the news flashed onto the electric sign

that runs round the Times building.

It read 'Chaplin signs with Mutual at 670,000 a year.'

I stood and read it objectively, as though it were about someone else.

So much had happened to me, my emotions were spent."

'It was during the First World War that he truly became a global star,

with a salary to match.'

In all, 675,000, which was more than the president,

which was more than anywhere.

And Mutual actually advertised in the press

that Chaplin was more expensive than the war.

(LAUGHS)

'Chaplin came from abject poverty in South London

to become one of the highest paid actors in Hollywood.

That's amazing enough, but for me the really remarkable thing about him

is what he did with his money.

He went as far as to build his own studio.

He set up his own distribution company, United Artists,

with Mary Pickford and Douglas Fairbanks Jr,

the superstars of their day.

He ploughed profits back into his own films,

which meant he could exercise complete artistic freedom.

As a child he'd been powerless in the face of misfortune.

Now, as an adult, he wanted and got total control

over his art and career.'

This is the daily production report,

where they write down who was employed that day,

how much film footage they shot,

what sequences they were shooting, and the weather.

This day it happened to be fair.

And sometimes little anecdotes.

For example, I was looking at the one for Dog's Life the other day

and it said that the shooting was delayed

because "pocketbook was run away with".

So the dog must have just run off with the wallet.

And you can imagine... But it was a very sort of serious thing.

His position was unique, because he made the films with his own money.

Nobody else in Hollywood was putting up their own money

to make their own films.

He had his own studio.

And it was a big risk. Fortunately, it almost always paid off.

Chaplin was always trying to push the boundaries of his art.

Not just to get bigger laughs, always important,

but to see where these innovations would take him.

With The Kid he made the first full-length comedy of the silent era.

He proved there was an appetite for something more

than the old two-reelers.

'In The Gold Rush, made four years later in 1925,

he hit new heights of innovation.

In this scene he used a combination of elaborate stage set, models,

and beautifully choreographed slapstick

to create a seamless piece of film comedy

that also adds a thrill factor to the mix.'

Oh, no! It's... (LAUGHS)

Oooooh!

(LAUGHS)

(LAUGHS)

How innovative was Chaplin technically?

Well, over the years people have...

Critics and historians have been inclined to say,

"Oh, well, he maybe is very funny,

but he's a very primitive filmmaker."

It's not true at all.

It's fascinating really to look at the Keystone films.

It's almost like a film school.

He'll be teaching himself what happens

if you throw somebody out of a shot and they come in the other side.

He really is learning it.

And by 1916/17, when he's got much more independence,

the shots are very, very sophisticated.

'In search of what he had in his head,

Chaplin could be an absolute monster on set,

flying into rages with cast and crew if things weren't going his way.

One scene in City Lights, from 1931,

features a blind flower seller offering the Tramp a flower.'

The scene took 342 takes before he was satisfied with it.

Chaplin worked himself up into a state of nervous exhaustion

in the search for perfection.

People say, "What was the genius of Charlie Chaplin?"

And my conclusion at the moment is

his genius was that he knew when he'd got it right.

(LAUGHTER) However many times...

"Ah! I've got it!" You know?

'Chaplin was such a good mimic, he would often act out

each part for his cast,

showing them exactly the way he wanted them to play it.

This even applied to the extras.'

This is something that we found quite recently

in The Great Dictator papers, which is somebody who's transcribed

Chaplin directing Paulette Goddard at the end of The Great Dictator.

I think that what he says was rather beautiful.

"This scene is the poetry of this picture.

You have to be happy - hope!

I want to see that smiling spirit.

I want this as music, not as a human being.

It's got to be joy, but not fake joy.

You'll find you'll get it more if you relax.

As long as you believe it, when you express real joy, they'll cry."

'I couldn't direct like Chaplin. I like actors to do their own stuff.

But it shows his uncrushable self-belief

that his way was best.

Chaplin the artist went from success to success.

His private life was another matter, mired in unhappiness and scandal.

Like so many things in his life,

I think this can be traced back to his childhood.'

"The intensity of my emotion must have bewildered her,

for all during the drive I kept repeating,

'I know I'm going to regret this. You're too beautiful.'

I tried vainly to be amusing and impress her.

I had drawn three pounds from the bank

and had planned to take her to the Trocadero,

where, in an atmosphere of music and plush elegance,

she could see me under the most romantic auspices.

I wanted to sweep her off her feet,

but she remained cool-eyed, and somewhat perplexed at my utterances.

To meet elegance and beauty in my station of life was rare."

'Charlie's first love was Hetty Kelly, a 15-year-old dancer.

Chaplin was 19, a music hall comedian.

The romance lasted all of 11 days,

but left an indelible mark on him.'

He did like very young, still in their teens,

and...well, one might dream virginal young girls.

'The age difference between him and Hetty had been four years.

But as Chaplin got older, the age of his partners stayed the same.

His wealth and charm meant he could pick and choose whoever he wanted.

His marriages and relationships fell into a predictable pattern.

His first wife, Mildred Harris, a child actress,

was 16 when they first met - Chaplin, 29.

Ill-matched, they were divorced two years later.

Lita Grey, his second wife, was 16

and pregnant when Chaplin married her.

He was 35. The marriage only lasted three years.

It was, however, his involvement with another young actress, Joan Barry,

in the early 1940s that really hit the headlines.

It involved a court case and paternity suit,

where the messy details of their affair were dragged into public view.

In the middle of the trial, he met his fourth wife, Oona O'Neill,

daughter of the American playwright Eugene O'Neill.

Only with her did he find any sort of happiness.

Despite the age difference - she was 18 and he 51 -

the marriage lasted until his death.

Chaplin's private life had long provoked moral outrage

in right-wing America.

But it was his films and politics that really sparked their anger.

Part of Chaplin's genius was to take risks.

He didn't shy away from sending up controversial subjects.

In 1918, with soldiers dying in their thousands on the Western front,

Chaplin released Shoulder Arms,

in which he made life in the trenches a source of comedy.'

(CHUCKLES)

'Bad taste? Unfunny?

Not according to the soldiers who saw it.

They thought it hilarious.

20 years later he decided to send up

one of the greatest monsters of the century.'

Excellency, here are the notes for your speech. Thank you.

'In The Great Dictator he made Adolf Hitler an object of ridicule.'

Nobody in Hollywood dared to take off Hitler.

(MUTTERS IN GERMAN)

'Pro-Nazi Americans weren't the only people who hated it.'

"The Chaplin picture is barred in Germany,

ostensibly because it has communistic tendencies.

But this official announcement is sceptically received elsewhere.

The real reason, the doubters suspect,

is that Charlie's twitching moustache looks too much like Der Fuhrer's."

(LAUGHS)

I don't know why anyone hasn't thought of this before.

The world as a balloon.

(LAUGHS)

It's just genius.

'When it opened in London at the height of the Blitz,

audiences lapped it up.

Back in the US, Chaplin threw himself into the war effort,

drumming up support for Russia.

Getting carried away giving a speech at a rally,

he uttered a phrase that was to come back and haunt him.'

"I was wearing a black tie and dinner jacket.

There was applause, which gave me a little time to collect myself.

When it subsided, I said one word - 'Comrades.'

And the house went up in a roar of laughter.

When it subsided, I said emphatically, 'And I MEAN comrades'.

There was renewed laughter, then applause."

He wasn't alone though, look.

"Artists Front to win the war."

There were lots of them there.

"Ladies and gentlemen, comrades - I mean comrades -

any people who can fight as the Russian people are fighting now,

fighting and dying for our democracy,

then it is time, a pleasure, and a privilege

to refer to them as comrades."

What's bad about that?

(LAUGHS) That's what he thought!

And that was that, really, wasn't it? Yes!

From that moment the FBI began compiling evidence

of his supposed communist sympathies.

Even a favourable review of one of his films

in a communist newspaper from 1923

was proof to the paranoid head of the FBI, J Edgar Hoover,

that Chaplin was a dangerous anti-American radical.

Hoover took every opportunity to hound Chaplin subsequently.

And by 1952 the FBI file on him ran to 115 pages.

In the Communist witch hunts that consumed American public life

after the Second World War, Chaplin became a prime target

for red baiters, though they could never prove that he'd been a member

of the Communist Party.

But Hoover was determined to bring him down.

In 1952 he decided he would premiere his film Limelight in London,

and planned a trip to Europe with his new family.

Little did he know when he got on the vote in New York,

he wouldn't be coming back.

The Queen Elizabeth had been at sea for two days

when Chaplin received a message from the attorney general's office.

"It stated that I was to be barred from the United States

and that before I could re-enter the country

I would have to go before an Immigration Board of Enquiry

to answer charges of a political nature and of moral turpitude."

He decided to have the premiere in London.

I'm not quite sure why, actually.

I think the whole atmosphere on the set was very tense

all the way through.

And so they decided to go to London for a holiday,

and then his re-entry permit was rescinded.

I remember... What I do remember was going to the premiere.

And there was a massive crowd.

And I think it's the first time I realised just how famous he was.

Amazing crowd shouting and screaming

that we had to walk through to get into the cinema.

And it was a shock, yeah. It was quite a shock.

'Limelight was set in the world that gave birth to Chaplin as a performer.

That of the Victorian music hall.

It's full of autobiographical references,

and Chaplin plays Calvero, an ageing clown afraid of losing his audience.'

How did your father react to not going back to the US?

I think it was a huge blow to him.

I've seen newsreel of a press conference he gave in London,

and you can see he's really... His voice is cracking with emotion.

He's trying to put on a brave face

and say "goodbye, good riddance", that sort of thing.

But I think it was a huge blow.

He hadn't realised it would come to that.

They had really no right to do it.

They were terrified that he would come back,

because there would have been such a huge scandal and embarrassment.

But he didn't give them that embarrassment,

because he said, "I'm not going back." He left.

'Once Chaplin had been untouchable because of his fame.

Now he was banished from the country he had lived in for 40 years.

He was going to have to make a new life.'

'Once Charlie Chaplin had been the most famous person on earth.

Now, in his 60s, he had been hounded out of his adopted homeland,

America, and vilified for his political views.

But in amongst all this turmoil and enforced exile,

he found a new happiness with his family.

He finally settled in Switzerland, on the shores of Lake Geneva.

He and Oona and the children took residence near Montreux.

It was here he could, for the first time in his life,

devote proper time to his family.'

What was the nature of their relationship, your father and mother?

(SIGHS)

I think they were very much in love.

I think my mother hadn't had a family,

and he gave her a family, he gave her eight children.

(LAUGHTER)

And...

That's almost too much!

Yes! Yes, I think probably it was.

This man had a very turbulent love life

and...I think he found peace with her.

She gave herself totally to him

and seemed to be enjoying herself.

And he seemed to worship her.

What was he like with his large family?

Close or distant?

Well, he was a bit of... a bit of a Victorian gentleman.

At supper we'd all gather round the table

and he'd tell us stories and we'd have debates.

He enjoyed our company.

But the rest of the time we didn't see him.

He was working. And we had to toe the line.

He was, I think, quite strict in that sense.

You know, he wanted us to behave.

We couldn't really be too rowdy in his company.

Here he is picking a flower.

And eating it! (LAUGHS)

That was one of his old music hall gags.

He's marching off. (LAUGHS)

He'd do things for us. He'd do little magic tricks,

or funny things like having his hats flip off his head.

You know, music hall tricks which he'd do.

But he didn't really talk much about his films, as I remember.

He was maybe easier on my sisters.

I think maybe he himself, he never really knew his own father.

He met him once or twice,

but they certainly didn't have any lasting relationship.

"The Three Stags in the Kennington Road

was not a place my father frequented.

Yet as I passed it one evening, an urge prompt a great to peek inside

to see if he was there.

I opened the saloon door, and there he was, sitting in the corner.

He looked very ill. His eyes were sunken

and his body had swollen to an enormous size.

That evening he was most solicitous, enquiring after mother and Sydney.

And before I left he took me in his arms

and for the first time, kissed me.

That was the last time I saw him alive."

It was the first time his father had hugged him or kissed him. Yes.

Well, you know, I think some of that sort of passed down.

He was awkward. He didn't quite know how to behave with a son.

But he certainly did with daughters.

But he loved us. I feel he really...he did love us.

He seems to be drawn to the places of his childhood.

This is West Square, I think.

Yes. West Square. It's all in Lambeth.

He was right at the end of his life.

Nobody recognised him with his mackintosh and his hat pulled down.

He'd get on a bus or a tube and go down to Kennington.

I think one of the extraordinary things about Chaplin

is that although he was so famous,

although he was wooed by kings and prime ministers,

he kept his, sort of, ordinariness

and his link with real life and real people and ordinary people.

I think he knew that that was essential to him.

One had the feeling that he went to Kennington not from nostalgia

but because he knew that that was the food...

This was what had nourished him.

He liked going to Kennington, and people respected him there.

They didn't mob him or fuss him.

"I stopped the taxi a little before 3, Pownall Terrace.

A strange calm came over me as I walked towards the house.

I stood a moment taking in the scene.

3, Pownall Terrace.

There it was, looking like a gaunt old skull.

I looked up at the two top windows,

the garrett where Mother had sat weak and undernourished, losing her mind.

The windows were closed tight. They were telling no secrets.

Yet their silence communicated more than words.

Eventually some little children came up and surrounded me

and I was obliged to move on."

'Following in Charlie's footsteps around South London,

seeing where he and his mother had endured terrible poverty

and humiliation, has made me realise what an incredible life he had.

From sleeping rough on the streets of London as a child

to a figure loved all over the world.'

He's not essentially the little American,

he's not a little Londoner or anything, he's a human being.

Which did seem to be universally recognised.

Every country in the world adopted Chaplin, loved Chaplin.

And there was in him a universality to which the whole responded.

'Chaplin's fame gave him fantastic freedom as an artist.

He took physical comedy to new heights,

making films that moved you and made you laugh at the same time.

He was a one-off, a genius.

But like a lot of geniuses, he had his flaws.

And while I love his work, I'm not so sure about the man.

He could be a bit of a monster when he chose to be,

especially in his private life.

But his legacy, his films, are timeless.'

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