Word: chaplinitis
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...Great Dictator. Chaplin, it seems, can do nothing inconsequential. Even this, which many people don't find very funny, seems to delineate the conflicts between silent and talking pictures as clearly as anything ever will. It's so much slower and more static than his silent features, and his persona does not translate well to sound. Once he began to talk, the Tramp was no longer very funny, but Chaplin's Hitler figure, Adenoid Hynckel, stumbled onto the fact that much of sound comedy has to do with an assault on the ear. The Dictator's nonsense talk strikes...
...most arresting heroines in 20th century drama. As a Communist, he proselytized for the poor, but he was as tightfisted as the socialist Bernard Shaw when it came to his own money. And this coolheaded didact of "epic"theater and "alienation" effects was a sentimental idolater of Charlie Chaplin movies...
Some titles are harder to live up to than others. Take Prince Charles, who last week received the right to list himself as a Companion Rat in the Grand Order of Water Rats, a venerable fraternity of comedians whose peers include Danny Kaye, Charlie Chaplin and Peter Sellers. After his investiture, the Royal Rat fell in with the tone of the organization by noting that next year he will assume command of a Royal Navy minesweeper. "Let me say," he warned, "that if any of you here today are considering sailing in the North...
...limitless palette made it the studios' favorite. The proof is on view in the pages of this opulent valentine: sections on "The Stars" ("More than there are in heaven" boasted MGM), "The Buildup," "The Movies," "The Studios" and "Behind the Scenes"; pictures of every player from Charlie Chaplin to Dustin Hoffman; stories of scandals, sex and scenarios. Between the book's oversized covers are enough memorabilia to turn the most indifferent Late Show viewer into an instant nostalgia buff-and bring the whole of Hollywood's fabulous past to LIFE...
...Malle's Souffle de Coeur is one of the funniest films ever made, and certainly the Funniest Film About Incest ever made. It captures French bourgeois life with the accuracy of a Palestinian guerrilla looking for hostages. The spinach throwing scene is the best piece of cinematic slapstick since Chaplin. The subtler pieces are all there too: the way the mother, for example, sits down on the bed in the hotel room before agreeing to take the room is a gesture peculiar to the European bourgeoisie. Souffle du Coeur is at heart a comedy of sexual manners, but a tender...