Word: chaplins
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Dates: during 1970-1979
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...most familiar image of Charlie Chaplin remains that of the little tramp turning away from the camera, shaking off his disappointments like so much lint and jigging off toward some more benign horizon...
...fitting comment on Chaplin's past 20 years. During much of that time he has turned his back on the U.S. He saw his work picketed in the '50s and his verbose new talkie (A Countess from Hong Kong) panned in the '60s. Though such indisputable masterworks as The Gold Rush and Modern Times have been sporadically revived, the tramp is now customarily seen in scraps and splices in anthology films. They seldom probe an aspect of the clown that was once the most universally acknowledged: his genius...
...return of his 1928 film, The Circus, may correct the imbalance. Refurbished with a new score and an opening song croaked personally by the 80-year-old director/ composer/ producer/star, the film is incontrovertible proof of Chaplin's protean ability to eliminate absolutely everything outside the confines of the screen. Armed with nothing but cane and bowler, the tramp sets out like Quixote with lance and armor. His enemy is the cruel owner of the big top; his love, the villain's misused stepdaughter (Merna Kennedy...