character sculpting
Griffith's hallmark is to shape epic practices in the form of movies, such as: the birth of a nation, the division of the same party. And Chaplin used movies to create individual characters. The grief that Chaplin brought to the audience from Charlot's smile was a smile that was more painful than tears. The thought conveyed to the audience is a sadness that is more difficult than survival itself. Chaplin created the first flesh-and-blood image in the history of world cinema.
film structure
Griffith's narrative form is clearly influenced by Dickens' novels, expressing the plot as the most important narrative element. In Chaplin's films, especially in his many successful feature films, the plot is just a fabricated frame, and the structural basis of the film's actions are those episodes that have meaningful meaning and can even exist independently. For example, in Gold Rush, there is a gold rush and a love story, one eats old leather shoes in hunger, and the other dances bread with a fork in his sleep. In the processing of such films, Chaplin often intertwines two different themes and unrelated events, and creatively develops the concept of film structure. Chaplin emphasized the unity of performance, rhythm, mood, and atmosphere within the picture. Therefore, variations in plot and looseness in theme often appear in his films.
film space concept
Griffith uses the lens and the coherence of the lens to form a specific action or an abstract concept in a way of decomposing time and space. Chaplin, on the other hand, emphasized the expressive power of a single shot and the scene scheduling within the picture. Chaplin is good at using panoramic lenses, which is one of his lens characteristics. He once said: Panoramic shots are essential for me because when I perform, my head, my feet and my whole body are performing. The second feature of Chaplin's lens is that he is good at using panoramic lens to explain different spatial environments that are adapted to the actions of the characters. For example, Chaplin, who was embarrassed in Gold Rush, mistakenly tied the dog's rope to himself. The third shot is: the visual effect and coherence of the dramatic conflict of the action itself by means of a long shot. The fourth feature of the lens: the multi-information performance inside the screen. For example, in the city lights, Charlot came to a window and was attracted by the mannequins inside. At this time, the camera cut into the window, and through the store we saw that Charlot was imitating the models. Chaplin's exploration of the spatial form of comedy films has formed an important feature of the spatial form of drama, that is, the dramatic conflict formed by the action, space and environment of the characters is often completed in one shot.
The concept of time in film
Compared with Griffith's narrative time, Chaplin's narrative time often focuses on the actual time performance of specific actions, in other words, it pays more attention to the performance of the instantaneous effect of narrative time. In the circus, Charlot is used as a thief, and his dodging in front of the prism is a wonderful time segment performance when he is chased by the police and the owner.
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