films , there is also a sentence in the opening title: A picture with a smile, and perhaps a tear. Before this movie was released, Chaplin was already well-known, and this movie also turned Jackie Coogan into a star.
Many critics say that this film is the most personal of all Chaplin's films.
Chaplin suffered a divorce during the editing process of this movie. His wife's lawyer asked him for the negative (presumably understood as income from the movie's pre-sales) of the movie as compensation for the divorce. This is almost all of Chaplin's property and it is very likely to ruin the film (knowing that this is his first feature film). Chaplin was unwilling and impossible to agree to such unreasonable demands.
At three o'clock in the morning one day, Chaplin and his friends packed the film rolls of the movie into 12 large boxes. Each box was filled with film with coffee boxes and fled to Salt Lake City. You know, these films are all flammable and explosive materials! They completed the post-editing of the film in a hotel in Salt Lake City (please imagine a closed bomb house).
In the end, his wife did not get the movie she wanted.
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I went to the theater to watch this movie because I heard that Geraldine Chaplin, Chaplin's daughter, was coming to Houston to introduce the movie. She is also an actress.
Geraldine was born in 1944 and is the child of Chaplin and his fourth and remaining partner Oona Chaplin (Oona O'Neil before marriage). Her grandfather Eugene O'Neil was a playwright (Nobel Prize in Literature in 1936, four Pulitzer Prizes in 1920, 1922, 1928, and 1957), and his grandfather James O'Neil was a stage actor. Geraldine graduated from the London Ballet Academy, was discovered by David Lean while dancing in Paris and starred in Doctor Zhivago in 1965. She has been nominated for the Golden Globe Award three times and has won many awards, including the Goya Award (Spain's most important film award, presumably to commemorate the pride of the Spanish-painter Goya).
The theater in the Houston Museum of Art is small and full. Because it was a family movie, many children came to the scene. Geraldine is tall and thin wearing a yellow cartoon T-shirt with sunglasses on top of her head. The speech and movements make people feel very energetic, and the whole feeling is just in their early fifties. As usual, Geraldine, as a guest, gave a brief introduction to the movie before it started. Uncommonly, Geraldine had a Q&A session after watching it. I sorted out some interesting questions. Many questions come from children aged five or six: D
(little girl) asks: How did you become a star?
Answer: Because I am his daughter. Great help.
(Little boy) Q: How can he do special effects without using a computer?
Answer: Be imaginative! You need to use hanging wires to fly people, and the effect of using light makes those wires invisible. But what are the special effects you are talking about?
(Little girl) Ask: How did he directly change the devil into the movie?
Answer: Um... I don't know. I wish I had asked him. Very interesting question.
(Little boy) Q: The section where Chaplin ran on the roof looked dangerous. Was the roof fake when I filmed it?
Answer: All are true. It's really dangerous.
(Little girl) Q: Why do you like SpongeBob? (Geraldine wears a SpongeBob T-shirt)
(laughs at the scene)
Answer: I love this color but I don't know who it is. Someone keeps coming to tell me today that what I wear is related to the sponge.
(Little girl) Q: Is Charlie a good father?
Answer: He is a great dad. She loves us very much and always stays with us at home. But he is also very strict. If you don't write your homework, you will suffer. But his own father is not a good father. In this movie, the tramp is the image of the perfect father in my father's heart. He is the father he dreams of, able to protect his children fearlessly. Because he didn't get the father's love he deserved when he was a child, he made us a good father.
Little girl: I was an orphan once, but now I am adopted.
Geraldine: You are lucky.
(Little girl) Q: Have you ever starred in your dad's movies?
A: There is no me in this movie, because this movie was shot in 1917 and I was born in 1944. But I participated in some of his later movies: Limelight, A King in New York, The Countess of Hong Kong. He is always the first one to arrive on the set and the last one to leave.
(Little girl) Q: Have you seen the actors in this movie?
Answer: Yes! I met Jackie Coogan. When I saw him he played a villain in a movie. Let me tell you the story of Jackie. When he was a child, he appeared in various movies and made a lot of money, but his parents spent all the money. After him, there was a rule named after him in the United States, called Jackie Coogan Law, and parents were not allowed to use the property of their minor children.
(Little boy) Q: Why is this movie in black and white and no one speaks?
Answer: Because this was before the appearance of sound films and before the appearance of color films. And people all over the world can understand the black and white silent film without speaking.
The following questions are from adults.
Question: What are your parents' attitudes towards your career as an actor? Do they support it?
Answer: I have never asked, because I know their answers. I guess it was because he was worried that his daughter would fall into trouble. It wasn't until my first movie came out that he realized that maybe his daughter was not that bad.
As the child of a star, you may hardly imagine how many times I have been rejected. To be successful in this industry, you must be able to endure all kinds of dissatisfaction, be thick-skinned, and be able to put your sensitive and delicate side up. If one of the 100 auditions is successful, then it is a kind of luck.
(Geraldine proudly) My own daughter is performing in Game of Throne! She plays the role of Talisa (Rob Stark's wife).
Q: Have you watched this movie with your dad?
Answer: Of course, and many, many times. Before watching it, he was very nervous, saying that this film was not good enough, and there could be improvements here and there, and so on. But once he started watching, he became the best audience, clapping his hands and said: The people inside are really good!
Q: You mentioned earlier that some scenes in this movie were deleted?
Answer: That's right. There are three scenes: one is that the orphan's mother wants to return to the orphan's biological father; the other is that the orphan's mother wants to jump into the river from the bridge; the third is that I can't remember. But the reason my father deleted them was that these scenes were too emotional.
Another thing you might be interested in is that because this movie is a silent film, many people are smart enough to match this movie with all kinds of very bad music, such as playing dynamic music during romantic times. After having these bad experiences, my father composed his own music for the film.
In fact, my father personally scored all his films. His last movie (he was already in his 70s): The Countess of Hong Kong. Although the box office of the movie was average, its music was so beautiful (Geraldine couldn't help but hum directly). The theme song was at the time. Overtaken the Beatles on the leaderboard.
Q: What is your favorite movie of your father?
A: The last one I watched is this one (laughs). If we are showing the light of the city, then I will say it is the light of the city. But I really like this one. I love the little tramp, when I love him a little evil, I love his cunning side.
Question: Many artists find themselves contradictory internally and externally, between mind and technology. Has your father ever talked about his troubles in this area?
Answer: No, he would rather not mention them (he'd rather poo-poo them).
He is an extremely hard worker. The ratio of raw film to positive film used to shoot this movie is 53:1. If the main film is 60 minutes, then he shot 3180 minutes. If the moment the shutter is pressed is a few tenths of a second inappropriate, he can know. He pursued a theory: Talent is not important, many people have talent, and what really lacks is hard work. Only talented people who work hard enough can succeed.
Q: Do you know any unfinished movies of your father? (My question: D)
Answer: Oh, of course, he has a movie The Freak, which is very exciting, but it was not completed. If you let me explain the ins and outs of this story clearly, I can tell you about it for three days and three nights. To make a long story short, my father was in his eighties at the time, and he couldn't find anyone to insure the film. The insurance company said: You must find a successor to replace you as the director if you can't finish the filming in the end. My father sternly refused this request. He cannot accept anyone to take over his own work. If it could be shot, it would really be a good movie.
Q: Have you read "My Biography"?
Answer: Is it my father's? (The original question of the questioner is: Do you read My Biography? It does sound ambiguous) Yes, I have read it. Very good book, not all of it is true. But this book is really good, especially the first part, which is almost Charles Dickens-level text.
I personally think that the best book written is Chaplin and His Time by David Robinson. (There is an error here, Geraldine is confused. The book written by David Robinson is called Chaplin: His Life and Art; the book written by Kenneth Lynn is called Charlie Chaplin and His Times. Both books and two authors are here, here I don’t know which one except I ask. But David’s book on Amazon was rated five stars, and Kenneth’s only three stars, so I guess it’s the former.)
Question: Which of his personal favorite movies are related to himself The most different style?
Answer: Did you know that when we were young, my brother and I were not allowed to watch other movies. This is very interesting. One day, my brother and I escaped from the house and went to see a movie called Covatis (probably). It was the 1950s. After returning home, my brother and I told dad that we watched a "real movie" today, in color, with a lion eating Christians. This is a "real movie", not the rubbish you made. (Audience clapping and laughing)
Q: Why does your dad want to be a star?
Answer: I can only imagine. Both his parents are actors in stage plays. His mother was considered lunatic in that era (our modern people would use the word insane) and was arrested as a lunatic. In order to make a living, his father could only continue to perform, and let his son, my father, start performing at a very young age (five or six years old). One day, my dad was discovered while performing on stage and invited him to the United States. So he wrote a letter to his brother and said: Someone told me to try a new thing, called a movie, and I’m going to Go to Los Angeles to try your luck, I'll come back if I'm not sure.
Thankfully, he never came back to play the stage in the end.
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