Word: tramp
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Dates: during 1970-1979
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...America as a vaudeville clown in 1910, and the country did not respond warmly. Charlie's comic flare failed to ignite enthusiasm until the epochal one-reeler in which he tried on Fatty Arbuckle's pants and Chester Conklin's jacket. In that moment The Tramp was born, and with him a long parabola of triumph and humiliation. The arc described a career bred of deprivation and encompassing nearly every cinematic skill, from producing and directing to the writing of scenarios and scores, gags and tragedies...
...alcoholic; his mother sewed blouses for 1½ pence each. Charlie's great character was a memory of that Dickensian experience, a waif in the tradition of Oliver Twist and David Copperfield. Comedy derives from the Greek kōmos, a dance. And indeed, as The Tramp capered about with his unique sleight of foot, he created a choreography of the human condition. In classics like Modern Times, The Gold Rush, The Great Dictator, objects spoke out as never before: bread rolls became ballet slippers, a boot was transformed into a feast, a torn newspaper enjoyed a new career...
...rise in show business, even to so stratospheric a level as The Tramp's, and there comes an evening of the Long Knives. For Chaplin, night came early and stayed late. He became embroiled in a series of affairs. He married and divorced two teen-agers and earned a reputation as Hollywood's outstanding satyr. His dalliances shocked the nation and nearly ruined his career. But Chaplin always managed to rescue himself with new apologies and fresh performances...
...style has a touch of Raymond Chandler; the Fazenda case has a fleeting similarity to the unsolved 1940s Black Dahlia murder in Los Angeles. The novel continually echoes tabloid history to enliven its central incident: a 28-year-old murder known as the "case of the Virgin Tramp...
...pick Diane Keaton as his star. In the role of Theresa Dunn, a Catholic schoolteacher who cruises singles bars at night, Keaton is everything the rest of this movie is not: provocative, affecting, scary. She creates a heroine who is at once sexual aggressor and victim, lady and tramp, and she relentlessly savages most pat notions about the nature of womanhood. It is a spectacularly daring performance whose meaning sadly eludes this film...