Candace wrote:
> I was discussing Chaplin movies with a colleague today. He thinks
> Chaplin's movies are all "dated." I requested specifics because I was
> pissed off to hear this opinion. Had he mentioned that Countess, KONY,
> The Great Dictator or even Limelight were dated, I could have accepted
> it. Instead he said that The Circus, City Lights and especially Modern
> Times were examples of how dated Chaplin's material is. When I told him
> with contempt that City Lights is cinematic perfection, he poo pooh-ed
> this and said most of Chaplin's films after The Gold Rush had simply
> not aged well and were not longer relevant.
>
> Can this assinine opinion be substantiated by anyone in this group?
Oh wow, I don't even know what to say to that one. Ironically, I was
just arguing on another newsgroup about how all comedy eventually
becomes dated to the point where it takes a bit of effort sometimes to
appreciate the humor, but Chaplin is definitely not dated. Unless this
person has another concept of "dated" (which I use to refer to a
product very much rooted in its own time-usually things that date
easily can seem dated merely 5-10 years later), I would say I disagree
completely.
To me (this is just my own take on this), many (if not all) of
Chaplin's films are set in sort of a hybrid urban world, half-Victorian
London , half-modern American city/"anyplace". When I see Chaplin's
films, I don't see him using the same type of easily recognizable urban
locations that other comics were using; he created most of his city
sets in his studio, lending them a sort of fairy-tale quality (even the
big city in MODERN TIMES has sort of a METROPOLIS/1984 kind of feel to
it in many scenes). Second, many of the characters in Chaplin's films
are not presented as ordinary everyday types, but rather as grotesques
and extensions of stage tradition (in the earlier films, at least). His
themes are certainly universal-perhaps no other artist in any medium
has been concerned with such universal themes on a consistent basis
(lonliness, hunger, survival, abandonment, love).
Tom-what you say about CITY LIGHTS being cinematic perfection sums up
my feelings about that film perfectly. Not a single misplaced moment in
the entire film. Chaplin decided to shoot it silent precisely to keep
it universal and timeless. I always view Chaplin's "silence" as an
artistic choice, like the decision to shoot a film in black and white
today.
In what way specifically did he find the films dated? That would help
me understand where he was coming from, because personally, I don't see
anything dated about them at all.
Matt
>> Stay informed about: Is Chaplin "dated?" 
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