Originally from London, Chaplin enjoyed success in Hollywood. He became the first international star thanks to his character with the too tight jacket, the too wide pants and the saggy faces. The bowler hat, the cane and the little mustache complete Charlot’s outfit! But, after the Second World War, the filmmaker was suspected of communist sympathies. He had to go into exile and bought, in 1952, a mansion in the canton of Vaud, in Switzerland, from where he contemplated “the vast expanse of green lawn and the lake in the distance, and, beyond the lake, the reassuring presence of the mountains”he wrote in his autobiography Story of my life (Robert Laffont, re-ed. 2022). Becoming a museum in 2016, its residence above Vevey has changed little, as has the grandiose panorama of Lake Geneva and the snow-capped peaks.
Chaplin’s World is an educational destination for those who have everything to discover about the man with irresistible pranks. It is also a setting where the atmosphere of the last years of the artist’s life vibrates, surrounded by his tribe: he and his wife Oona will have eight children in total. After a poverty-stricken childhood and the creative excitement of the music hall, silent and then talking cinema, Charlie Chaplin calmed down. “It’s as if he’s finally discovering normal life”testifies his son Eugène, born in 1953 in Vevey.
Mesmerizing mansion
An accomplished lover and father, the creator continues his work. He wrote his last three feature films, one of which was never made, The Freak, and rewrote the music from his old films. At the entrance to his house, we are greeted by his wax statue, as at the Grévin Museum. In the library, his desk is still there. The large living room is as the family left it, after the departure of Eugène and his brother Michael, who took a long time to tear themselves away from the place of their childhood. In the dining room, the table was set: Chaplin sat at the end of the table and forbade anyone to speak French there – he never learned this language. Upstairs, Oona’s super-8 films are playing on a loop. They document the arrival of babies, big meals on the terrace and dips in the pool. White-haired Chaplin smiles, makes faces, poses and gesticulates like a Charlot.
We leave the manor with regret, then quickly cross the rooms of a contemporary building, where visitors have fun slipping into the workings of the Modern timesto put on the costume of the tramp or to vacillate in the house of The gold Rush shaken by the blizzard.
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