Charlie Chaplin :: essays research papers

When Charlie Chaplin was a little boy, a sheep escaped on its way to a slaughterhouse near where he lived. Charlie and other youngsters chased the sheep around, laughing and having fun. But when it was taken away, Charlie realized the sad finality of death and cried to his mother. That incident paved the way for the theme of Charlie’s future filmmaking career. Comedy mixed with pathos made perfect sense to him. He was also an everyman character, a lost soul, a wanderer - he embodied the American soul. He could be anyone. Chaplin was born Sir Charles Chaplin after his father on April sixteenth, 1989. His mother, Hannah Chaplin, was often put in mental houses and his brother Sydney and him were put into children’s workhouses. His father whom he almost never saw died of alcoholism. Charlie’s childhooCharlie directed and produced it. Its length is six reels, roughly an hour long. The Kid expertly showed Charlie’s use of pathos in his work, if perhaps too much pathos this time The Gold Rush. This 1925 film was a favorite of Chaplin’s. Charlie plays a lone prospector on a gold seeking quest in the Sierra Nevadas. Seeing shelter, he stumbles into a cabin where the villainous Black Larson lives. Black Larson doesn’t like this new guest and tells him to leave, rifle in hand. Charlie tries to leave, but a hilarious wind keeps blowing him back into the cabin. During this escapade in blows another luckier prospector, Big Jim McKay. Jim and Larson fight, and Larson goes off to find food for the trio. Meanwhile, the starving Charlie and Jim have the trademark meal of Charlie’s cooked boot. In this scene, Charlie eats the boot like it were a fine meal at a fine restaurant, twirling the laces around a fork like spaghetti. Later on they bid farewell, and Charlie finds a town with a love interest of his, Georgia. He invites her to a New Years Eve dinner, which she doesn’t come to. At the dinner, we see Charlie dozed off at the table, and he dreams that the Georgia came. Here is another trademark scene, the dance of the dinner rolls. Charlie spears two dinner rolls with his fork, and bowing his head down over them, he makes them dance and twirl. Big Jim shows up at the town now, and sees Charlie, telling him if he they find Black Larson’s cabin, they will find gold and be rich.