Word: chaplinitis
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William Randolph Hearst was a "son of a bitch." Charlie Chaplin was "so shy" at a whorehouse. Joe DiMaggio was "a washed-up ballplayer" when he married Marilyn Monroe, and he "used to sit home every night watching television " Strong stuff? Too strong for Groucho Marx, who did indeed say those things but wishes that a duck had dropped from the ceiling to stop him. Groucho cited the examples- and more- in court papers filed in his $15 million damage suit against Darien House Inc., publisher of The Marx Bros. Scrapbook ($13.95) for failing to sanitize some of his grouchier...
...good opportunity to see two sides of Charlie Chaplin: The Gold Rush (1925) at the Orson Welles, M. Verdoux (1947) at Central Square. I think The Gold Rush is his funniest movie--and it may even be more insightful than the more serious Verdoux. Verdoux represents a Chaplin embittered by the depression and the war. Chaplin was eager to strike at the hypocrisy of the governments of the world for crimes which, as he explains at the end of Verdoux, hurt far more people than did the unscrupulous lady killer of the title. M. Verdoux is a subtle and unsettling...
Monsieur Verdoux was seen as an immoral film simply because it dealt with an immoral man. What people could not understand is that everything in Monsieur Verdoux grows out of Chaplin's earlier, immensely popular comedies. In nearly all of them, he was concerned with the troubles of his time, and the concern he felt explains how his comedies could be so full of pathos even while they were funny. He felt a greater range of emotion than he needed for his slapstick roles, but deeper and deeper feeling gradually found its way into his work...
Between the great silent comedies and Monsieur Verdoux, Chaplin witnessed world depression and a world war. His old comedy had not kept pace with the workings of his mind: It was too full of hope, too innocent, too ignorant of all but a caricatured evil to express Chaplin's worries for mankind...
Monsieur Verdoux is Chaplin's last great film. With Limelight (1952), he descended into stiff, nostalgic melodrama. But in Verdoux Chaplin is still in his prime, questioning life in a way outside the scope of his earlier masterpieces, redirecting the passionate feelings which ennobled The Gold Rush, Modern Times, and City Lights...