When Charlie Chaplin passed away on Christmas Day in 1977, aged 88, he left the screenplay for a last unfinished film titled “The Freak,” a passion project about a young woman with wings named Serapha who is exploited in all kinds of ways.
Italy’s Cineteca di Bologna archives, which have long been in charge of the preservation and restoration of Charlie Chaplin’s oeuvre, has just published a book that for the first time unearths the final version of Chaplin’s complete “The Freak” script. The book also comprises previously unseen materials, such as preparatory notes, drawings, photos and stills from filmed rehearsals of the film that Bologna archives chief Gianluca Farinelli calls Chaplin’s “artistic testament.”
Born to a couple of British missionaries, Serapha winds up in Patagonia, where she becomes an angel-like figure at a pilgrimage site for invalids seeking to be cured; she is then kidnapped and brought...
Italy’s Cineteca di Bologna archives, which have long been in charge of the preservation and restoration of Charlie Chaplin’s oeuvre, has just published a book that for the first time unearths the final version of Chaplin’s complete “The Freak” script. The book also comprises previously unseen materials, such as preparatory notes, drawings, photos and stills from filmed rehearsals of the film that Bologna archives chief Gianluca Farinelli calls Chaplin’s “artistic testament.”
Born to a couple of British missionaries, Serapha winds up in Patagonia, where she becomes an angel-like figure at a pilgrimage site for invalids seeking to be cured; she is then kidnapped and brought...
- 12/25/2020
- by Nick Vivarelli
- Variety Film + TV
I've been fascinated with the life and work of legendary filmmaking pioneer Charlie Chaplin ever since I was a teenager. I read so many books about him and his life and I love the Robert Downey Jr. biopic Chaplin. The stuff he was doing with filmmaking in Hollywood was innovative, entertaining, and the stories he told were wonderful.
Altitude and Showtime have announced that they will be developing a documentary called Chaplin, from directors Peter Middleton and James Spinney, three-time BAFTA nominees for Notes on Blindness. The doc is described as follows:
Chaplin is both the ultimate rags-to-riches story and a revealing, poignant and definitive portrait of cinema’s most iconic figure. Groundbreaking, controversial, outspoken, visionary; for decades he was the most famous man in the world – but who was the real Charlie Chaplin?
The doc is getting support from the BFI National Archive’s world-class collections and Chaplin’s World by Grévin.
Altitude and Showtime have announced that they will be developing a documentary called Chaplin, from directors Peter Middleton and James Spinney, three-time BAFTA nominees for Notes on Blindness. The doc is described as follows:
Chaplin is both the ultimate rags-to-riches story and a revealing, poignant and definitive portrait of cinema’s most iconic figure. Groundbreaking, controversial, outspoken, visionary; for decades he was the most famous man in the world – but who was the real Charlie Chaplin?
The doc is getting support from the BFI National Archive’s world-class collections and Chaplin’s World by Grévin.
- 5/1/2018
- by Joey Paur
- GeekTyrant
People tend to forget that Charlie Chaplin was more than The Tramp, his iconic mute character of physical peculiarity. Seven years after his baffoonic incarnation of Hitler in The Great Dictator, Chaplin bought the rights to a murderously bleak black comedy from Orson Welles and went to work on his most controversial work, Monsieur Verdoux. As a cunning killer of well-to-do middle aged housewives, Henri Verdoux showcased Chaplin’s crisp, flamboyant diction by playing against type. Never before had he played a deceitfully murderous man, slyly articulate and devilishly selfish in his conquest for corpses.
Subtitled ‘A Comedy of Murders’, Chaplin’s outspoken dark horse begins at the end, on Henri Verdoux’s grave stone with him speaking frankly about his late life career as a bluebeard. After 35 years behind the counter as a banker, he lost his job to the depression and found himself in need of a new...
Subtitled ‘A Comedy of Murders’, Chaplin’s outspoken dark horse begins at the end, on Henri Verdoux’s grave stone with him speaking frankly about his late life career as a bluebeard. After 35 years behind the counter as a banker, he lost his job to the depression and found himself in need of a new...
- 4/2/2013
- by Jordan M. Smith
- IONCINEMA.com
Blu-ray & DVD Release Date: March 26, 2013
Price: DVD $29.95, Blu-ray $39.95
Studio: Criterion
Charles Chaplin is Monsieur Verdoux.
Charlie Chaplin (Modern Times) plays against his classic type in the 1947 dark comedy Monsieur Verdoux, which is generally considered to be his most controversial film.
In this film about money, marriage, and murder, Chaplin is a twentieth-century Bluebeard, an enigmatic family man who goes to extreme lengths to support his wife and child, attempting to bump off a series of wealthy widows (including one played by the ever-lively Martha Raye).
Both wildly entertaining and deeply philosophical, the quite-sophisticated Monsieur Verdoux is a multi-level work for its asking of heavy-duty moral questions and for its deconstruction of its superstar’s loveable on-screen persona.
The Criterion DVD and Blu-ray editions of the film contain the following features:
• New 2K digital restoration, with uncompressed monaural soundtrack on the
Blu-ray edition
• Chaplin Today: “Monsieur Verdoux,” a 2003 program on the film’s production and release,...
Price: DVD $29.95, Blu-ray $39.95
Studio: Criterion
Charles Chaplin is Monsieur Verdoux.
Charlie Chaplin (Modern Times) plays against his classic type in the 1947 dark comedy Monsieur Verdoux, which is generally considered to be his most controversial film.
In this film about money, marriage, and murder, Chaplin is a twentieth-century Bluebeard, an enigmatic family man who goes to extreme lengths to support his wife and child, attempting to bump off a series of wealthy widows (including one played by the ever-lively Martha Raye).
Both wildly entertaining and deeply philosophical, the quite-sophisticated Monsieur Verdoux is a multi-level work for its asking of heavy-duty moral questions and for its deconstruction of its superstar’s loveable on-screen persona.
The Criterion DVD and Blu-ray editions of the film contain the following features:
• New 2K digital restoration, with uncompressed monaural soundtrack on the
Blu-ray edition
• Chaplin Today: “Monsieur Verdoux,” a 2003 program on the film’s production and release,...
- 12/26/2012
- by Laurence
- Disc Dish
Handwritten manuscript shows actor's early faltering attempts at dialogue in a satire on colonialism
A manuscript revealing Charlie Chaplin's first shot at a "talkie" has come to light in the family archives.
Fifty handwritten pages outline the dialogue for a satire on colonialism, inspired by the British-born star's visit to the Indonesian island of Bali in 1932.
Chaplin agonised over his future in a new world of film sound, and the manuscript reveals his initial faltering steps in dialogue. He planned a film, titled Bali, lampooning European arrogance on the paradise island and the invasion of a people's idyllic life. He poked fun at colonials taxing natives to build roads they did not need and making them harvest more rice than they could eat.
Chaplin was the comic genius who created the little tramp, society's eternal victim, with derby hat, toothbrush moustache and impossibly large boots – one of entertainment's most universally recognised characters.
A manuscript revealing Charlie Chaplin's first shot at a "talkie" has come to light in the family archives.
Fifty handwritten pages outline the dialogue for a satire on colonialism, inspired by the British-born star's visit to the Indonesian island of Bali in 1932.
Chaplin agonised over his future in a new world of film sound, and the manuscript reveals his initial faltering steps in dialogue. He planned a film, titled Bali, lampooning European arrogance on the paradise island and the invasion of a people's idyllic life. He poked fun at colonials taxing natives to build roads they did not need and making them harvest more rice than they could eat.
Chaplin was the comic genius who created the little tramp, society's eternal victim, with derby hat, toothbrush moustache and impossibly large boots – one of entertainment's most universally recognised characters.
- 6/22/2011
- by Dalya Alberge
- The Guardian - Film News
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