Charlie Chaplin Essays - American Comedy Films, Charlie Chaplin

Charlie Chaplin Charles Spencer Chaplin was born on April 16, 1889 in Walworth, London, and lived a Dickensian childhood, shared with his brother, Sydney, that included extreme poverty, workhouses and seeing his mother's mental decline put her into an institution. Both his parents, though separated when he was very young, were music hall artists, his father quite famously so. But it was his mother Charlie idolized and was inspired by during his visits backstage while she performed, to take up such a career for himself. He achieved his ambition when he joined a dancing troop, the Eight Lancashire Lads, and this eventually led onto parts in Sherlock Holmes and Casey's Court Circus. Sydney, meanwhile, had joined the famous Fred Karno Company and quickly became a leading player and writer therein. He managed to get Charlie involved, and he too became a Karno star. For both boys, Karno was almost a college of comedy for them, and the period had a huge impact on Charlie especially. In 1910 Charlie toured the U.S. with the Karno group and returned for another in 1912. It was on this tour that he was head hunted by Mack Sennett and his Keystone Film Company, and Charlie was thus introduced into the medium of film. His first film, in 1914, was aptly titled Making A Living, and it was directed by Henry Lehrman. He starred in many of his Keystones along side Mabel Normand, who also directed three of his films, but it wasn't until Twenty Minutes of Love that he had a taste of directing himself, and this quickly became the only way he worked. His success was such that he was able to move from one company to another, each time into a better deal. In 1915, after thirty-five films, he moved to Essanay, and it was here he really found his feet, not to mention his longest serving leading lady, Edna Purviance. Notable films during this period include The Champion, The Tramp and The Bank. In 1916 he moved to Lone Star Mutual, with even greater control and financial rewards. Here he made the definitive Chaplin short comedies, The Rink, Easy Street, The Cure and The Immigrant. First National were next, and it was here he constructed his full length masterpiece, The Kid. Shorter comedies of note at this time included Sunnyside and The Idle Class. Along with his great friend, Douglas Fairbanks, as well as Mary Pickford and D.W. Griffith, Chaplin formed United Artists in 1919. He made his first film for them in 1923, the Edna Purviance vehicle, A Woman of Paris, perhaps the least known of his films, but it was followed by the Chaplin classics - The Gold Rush, The Circus, City Lights and Modern Times. It wasn't until 1940 that he made his first talkie, The Great Dictator, to be followed by the more refined Monsieur Verdoux and Limelight, a look back to the music hall world of his youth. Limelight (1952) was the last film he made in America. McCarthyite political maneuverings effectively ejected him from the country and he wasn't to return until 1972, when he received a special Academy Award. In the meantime, though heartily welcomed back to Britain, he moved to Switzerland with his wife, Oona O' Neill, and their children. He made two more films, A King In New York (1957, with Dawn Addams) and A Countess From Hong Kong (1967, with Sophia Loren and Marlon Brando) and spent his final years writing music for his films and enjoying his family life before he died, at 4 A.M. on Christmas Day in 1977. Bibliography Robinson, David. Charlie Chaplin: The Art of Comedy (1995) Mitchell, Glenn. The Chaplin Encyclopedia (1997) Karney, Robyn and Cross, Robin. The Life and Times of Charlie Chaplin (1992) Gifford, Denis. The Comic Art of Charlie Chaplin (1989) McCabe, John. Charlie Chaplin (1978) Payne, Robert. The Great Charlie (1957)

The Great Gatsby Quotes and Analysis

The Great Gatsby Quotes and Analysis The following quotes from  The Great Gatsby  by F. Scott Fitzgerald are some of the most recognizable lines in American literature. The novel, which follows the pursuit of pleasure by the wealthy elites of the New York Jazz Age, deals with themes of love, idealism, nostalgia, and illusion. In the quotes that follow, well analyze how Fitzgerald conveys these themes. â€Å"I hope shell be a fool – thats the best thing a girl can be in this world, a beautiful little fool.†Ã‚  (Chapter 1) Daisy Buchanan is talking about her young daughter when she makes this seemingly-unfeeling statement. In reality, this quote demonstrates a rare moment of sensitivity and self-awareness for Daisy. Her words show a deep understanding of the world around her, particularly the idea that society rewards women for being foolish rather than smart and ambitious. This statement adds greater depth to Daisys character, suggesting that perhaps her lifestyle is an active choice rather than the result of a frivolous mindset. â€Å"It was one of those rare smiles with a quality of eternal reassurance in it, that you may come across four or five times in life. It faced – or seemed to face – the whole eternal world for an instant, and then concentrated on you with an irresistible prejudice in your favor. It understood you just as far as you wanted to be understood, believed in you as you would like to believe in yourself, and assured you that it had precisely the impression of you that, at your best, you hoped to convey.†Ã‚  (Chapter 3) The novel’s narrator, young salesman Nick Carraway, describes Jay Gatsby thusly when he first encounters the man in person. In this description, focused on Gatsby’s particular manner of smiling, he captures Gatsby’s easy, assured, almost magnetic charisma. A huge part of Gatsby’s appeal is his ability to make anyone feel like the most important person in the room. This quality mirrors Nick’s own early perceptions of Gatsby: feeling unusually lucky to be his friend, when so many others never even meet him in person. However, this passage also  foreshadows  Gatsby’s showmanship and ability to put on whatever mask someone wants to see. In his blue gardens men and girls came and went like moths among the whisperings and the champagne and the stars. (Chapter 3) Although  The Great Gatsby  is often held up as a celebration of Jazz Age culture, it’s actually the opposite, often  critiquing the era’s  carefree hedonism. Fitzgerald’s language here captures the beautiful but impermanent nature of the wealthy’s lifestyle. Like moths, they’re always attracted to whatever the brightest light happens to be, flitting away when something else grabs their attention. Stars, champagne, and whisperings are all romantic but temporary and, ultimately, useless. Everything about their lives is very beautiful and full of sparkle and shine, but disappears when the harsh light of day- or reality- appears.   Ã¢â‚¬Å"No amount of fire or freshness can challenge what a man will store up in his ghostly heart.† (Chapter 5) As Nick reflects on Gatsby’s opinion of Daisy, he realizes how much Gatsby has built her up in his mind, so much so that no real person could ever live up to the fantasy. After meeting and being separated from Daisy, Gatsby spent years idealizing and romanticizing his memory of her, turning her into more illusion than woman. By the time they meet again, Daisy has grown and changed; she is a real and flawed human who could never measure up to Gatsby’s image of her. Gatsby continues to love Daisy, but whether he loves the real Daisy or simply the fantasy he believes her to be remains unclear. â€Å"Can’t repeat the past?†¦Why of course you can!†Ã‚  (Chapter 6) If there’s one statement that sums up Gatsby’s entire philosophy, this is it. Throughout his adult life, Gatsby’s goal has been to recapture the past. Specifically, he longs to recapture the past romance he had with Daisy. Nick, the realist, tries to point out that recapturing the past is impossible, but Gatsby utterly rejects that idea. Instead, he believes that money is the key to happiness, reasoning that if you have enough money, you can make even the wildest dreams come true. We see this belief in action with Gatsbys wild parties, thrown just to attract Daisy’s attention, and his insistence on rekindling his affair with her. Notably, however, Gatsbys entire identity stemmed from his initial attempt to escape his poor background, which is what motivated him to create the persona of Jay Gatsby. â€Å"So we beat on, boats against the current, borne back ceaselessly into the past.†Ã‚  (Chapter 9) This sentence is the final line of the novel, and one of the most famous lines in all of literature. By this point, Nick, the narrator, has become disillusioned with Gatsbys hedonistic displays of wealth. He has seen how Gatsby’s fruitless, desperate quest- to escape his past identity and recapture his past romance with Daisy- destroyed him. Ultimately, no amount of money or time was enough to win Daisy, and none of the novels characters were able to escape the limitations imposed by their own pasts. This final statement serves as a commentary on the very concept of  the American dream, which claims that anyone can be anything, if only they work hard enough. With this sentence, the novel seems to suggest that such hard work will prove futile, because the â€Å"currents† of nature or society will always push one back towards the past.