Toulouse Cinémathèque – Cycle Charlie Chaplin
The film library pays tribute to Charlie Chaplin
He is known to all for having made many silent films and for his role of Charlot. Young and old alike have seen one of his films once in their life. For those who wish to discover or rewatch the feature films of the British actor, director, screenwriter, producer and composer, the Toulouse film library dedicated a cycle to Charlie Chaplin from January 4 to February 16, 2022.
“Venice, California, 1914. As a film crew films a run-of-the-mill soapbox race, a crowd gathered on the sides of the road looms in the frame a funny fellow with strange behavior. Wearing a frock coat and bowler hat, trousers that were too wide, a small mustache and a thin cane, the importunate was insistent. We push him out of the field, he comes back. On the repress, it becomes encrusted. This is the first appearance of Charlot. And it will forever mark the cinema with its silhouette, ”says Franck Lubet, head of programming. He adds: “There is fragility in Charlie Chaplin films without Charlot, as if he had fallen off an armor to expose himself. More refocused on him, when Charlot was universal. Inspired less by the world than by its own history. The fragility of an artist who wanted to give everything to the cinema and that the cinema ended up vampirizing. You worshiped Charlot like an idol, we know these movies, but I can only give you me, a man: Charles Chaplin. It is the cinematographic trajectory of this man, from Charlot to Chaplin, that we can see here, the struggle between Dr. Chaplin and Mr. Charlot ”.
Thus, it will be possible to see among the films offered The Kid released in 1921. As a reminder Charlot discovers and adopts a baby, abandoned by his miserable mother. The vagabond raises and takes care of the child as best he can, and five years later they are associated: the kid breaks windows that his adoptive father, who has become a glazier, then proposes to repair. So much for the laughs. But the police and the locals convince the lawyers to take the kid to an orphanage. So much for the tears. Chaplin’s first feature film. An immediate triumph for an instant classic that wanders between twirling slapstick and heartbreaking family drama. For those who wish, on Saturdays January 15 and February 12 the Dictator will be screened. In 1940, when the United States had not yet entered the war, Charlie Chaplin attacked the Nazi regime head-on with his only weapon: derision. A first entirely speaking film which precisely poses, in the most virulent of manners, the question of speech and of retransmitted speech. The brilliant actor goes so far as to play on his resemblance to Hitler to give birth to the character of a Jewish barber, a perfect double of the tyrant Hynkel! Mythical visual gags shot like shells and above all the unforgettable and moving final speech where the barber gives way to Chaplin himself.
“The Circus” in cine-concert
On January 18 and 26, Monsieur Verdoux will be screened. Moreover, Chaplin himself judged Monsieur Verdoux as “the most intelligent and brilliant film of his entire career”. It is in any case the darkest of his comedies inspired by the sad exploits of the French serial killer Henri Désiré Landru. And from this macabre subject (originally suggested by Orson Welles) Chaplin, perfect as a sociopathic gentleman, draws a somewhat anar, cynical and incisive tragicomedy which literally torpedoing good society, its representatives and its values. Come to think of it, doesn’t the wildest capitalism breed its own monsters?
The film library also offers the screening of “A King in New York” on January 19 and February 12. Ruined by his prime minister, driven from his country because of a revolution, King Shahdov went into exile in New York where he discovered the omnipotence of the media and the hunt for anti-American activities. With A King in New York Chaplin settled his accounts definitively with his adopted country. If The Fires of the limelight eased tensions while sounding the death knell for the vagabond, this penultimate film definitely set fire to the powder. Anger filtered through humor for a scathing satire of America, its Puritanism, its anti-Communist hysteria and its witch hunts.
“Chaplin is above all an idol. The first idol of cinema. And maybe even the only one of this stature. It is first Charlot, vagabond poet as the tramps are celestial, ill-bred gentleman, clumsy and resourceful, aristocratic anarchist, the heart on the hand and the kick in the ass. A universally popular character (silent cinema is an international language) in which all the declassified of the world have been able to recognize and find themselves. Charlot gives sight to those whom society does not want to see, ”says Franck Lubet. He concludes “Charlot is the grain of sand in the machinery of a” compliant “society. Both biting and tender, able to make people cry as he knows how to make people laugh, Chaplin brings the social to the burlesque ”.
Note that on Saturday 11 and Sunday 12 June 2022, the Cinémathèque de Toulouse and the City of Tournefeuille will offer a film-concert Le Cirque de Charlie Chaplin at L’Escale (Tournefeuille). The film will be accompanied by the Symphony Orchestra of the School of Artistic Teaching of Tournefeuille, conducted by Claude Puysségur.