Chaplin (1992)

(In French, On TV, April 2019) Considering the influence that Charlie Chaplin had on cinema, it’s obvious he deserved his own big-budget glossy Hollywood biography. Not the warts-and-all one, though: the mononymous inspirational one: Chaplin. It begins, at it should, with an enjoyable look at early Hollywood history, from filming Keystone Cops shorts to hanging at parties with Douglas Fairbanks to going backstage at the first Academy Awards. Robert Downey Jr. ends up being an inspired choice to play Chaplin throughout his adult years, along what feels like a who’s who of early-1990s actresses (including a very young Milla Jovovich). The flashback-heavy structure of the film keeps things interesting, but there’s no denying that this is an old-school, lavishly executed biography with the pitfalls inherent in trying to cram decades within two hours. The film very lightly touches upon Chaplin’s least savoury personality traits such as his fondness for younger women, infidelities and cruel treatments of past lovers, but shies away from a full understanding of the character, and barely mentions the business savvy (including re-editing silent pictures as audibly-narrated ones, or his co-founding of United Artists) that contributed to his enduring popularity throughout the following decades. Having spent the past few years diving head-first in the archives of Classic Hollywood and seeing many of Chaplin’s best-known films along the way, I got quite a bit more out of the film than had I seen it a few years ago. But despite the lavish production means and Downey’s incredible performance playing Chaplin (especially toward the end of his life), there’s something missing here. Especially in the second half of the film, increasingly focused on Chaplin’s legal problems, exile from the United States and creative slowdown. Chaplin tries to put on a happy face on a life that doesn’t quite fit the pattern, and the tension is noticeable. Perhaps a slightly better film would have stopped earlier.