Charlot, this visionary of modern times

FRANCE 5 – FRIDAY JANUARY 7 AT 9 PM – DOCUMENTARY

The first surprise that reserves Charlie Chaplin, the genius of freedom is its format: almost two and a half hours. The second, the effect of which is reinforced by this exceptional duration, is the undeniable renewal of the subject, while a plethora of films and books have already been shot and written about the British actor and director.

François Aymé and Yves Jeuland, co-author and director, had already proposed a film of the same type with A Frenchman named Gabin (2016), which lasted “only” an hour and forty-five minutes, but which had managed to take a fresh look at this myth of French cinema – in particular thanks to numerous private documents, unknown or unpublished, made available by the actor’s family.

According to Yves Jeuland, in an interview with François Aymé for France Télévisions, the field of documentary research about Charlie Chaplin was “Extraordinarily broadened and refined, in particular thanks to the Internet, which reveals photographs, press clippings, films, even, which had escaped investigation ten, twenty, thirty years ago”.

Presence and modernity

So that Charlie Chaplin, the genius of freedom rises to the level of the exceptional documentary by Peter Bogdanovich dedicated to Buster Keaton, The Great Buster: A Celebration (2018), with this difference that Aymé and Jeuland do not bring in any witnesses or specialists and have preferred the development of an uninterrupted seam of archives commented in voiceover by Mathieu Amalric.

There are many generous extracts from films by and with Charlie Chaplin, from his first appearances for the Keystone studio, with whom he signed a contract in 1913, to his last feature film, The Countess of Hong Kong (1967). We will be delighted by the extreme quality of these images to which a recent restoration gives a presence, a life – we would even dare to say “a modernity” – blowing.

Charlie Chaplin, the genius of freedom takes the bias of a chronological biographical account, but the weaving and the assembly of the filmed extracts, the accompaniment of the music – for the most part by Charlie Chaplin, also musician and composer -, the quality of the text and its analyzes contribute to a result of rare fluidity.

This documentary, decidedly very moving, should establish itself in the long term as a reference, thanks to a fine portrait of Chaplin’s extraordinary tenacity, his humanity, his empathy and his courage – on his unfriendly sides, too. So many character traits that made him, in the field of politics and manners, an outcast and finally a reprobate, in the United States, a country to which, for forty years, he had given so much.