Charlie Chaplin rose to popularity in the slums of Victorian London and became one of Hollywood’s most recognised and beloved actors for decades until his shocking demise. His explosive media depiction and stage persona shaped how he was seen, but his personal life has always been cloaked in mystery – until now. Never-before-heard recordings, personal home videos, and freshly restored classic films portray a side of Chaplin that the rest of the world never saw.
The title “The Real Charlie Chaplin” is enticing for a documentary on the man who was undoubtedly the greatest comedy artist in the world’s history. (I could be mistaken about that; I wasn’t alive in 1230 or 5600 B.C.) But I’m sticking to my guns.) The title implies that we’ll get an unvarnished glimpse at the guy behind the curtain, Charlie Chaplin, the brilliant and complex human being who was both a charmer and a scoundrel, a darling and a monster, not to mention a superstar with scandalous tastes. All of this is brilliantly covered in “The Real Charlie Chaplin.”
Despite this, the documentary does not shy away from immersing us in Chaplin’s craft, a subject that has been addressed previously. We learn a lot about him and his films, including how he put them together.
The film’s secret is that Chaplin was such an obsessive artist who set his comedies in such a compulsively intimate way that the films were actually a funhouse mirror reflection of who he was on the inside. The actual Charlie Chaplin was a combination of the off-screen and on-screen Chaplins, who danced together.
Peter Middleton and James Spinney, the film’s co-directors, gathered audiotape recordings of people who knew Chaplin, including Effie Wisdom, 92, who used to play with him on the streets of London in the late 1800s, and Chaplin himself, who we hear in a rare interview he gave to Life magazine in 1966.
There aren’t many archival artefacts from Chaplin’s upbringing because he grew up in poverty, but we can see the cramped attic garret he shared with his family and the workhouse where he worked. There are also incredible images and film clips of his performance on stage with Fred Karno’s company, where he mastered the brutal art of knockabout slapstick.
Portraits of him has been taken at the time show him with a mesmerizing look. His fellow performers referred to him as a strange debonair hermit who trained himself to play the cello, ancient Greek, and yoga. He wore shabby clothes except when he was dressed to the nines (in one photograph he wears a tux as dashingly as James Bond). Even when he was unknown, he was a celebrity.
Will the movie be available on Amazon Prime?
No, the movie is not destined to release on this platform. Some best documentary from the platform would be: “Time”, “Gleason”.
Will the movie be available on Hulu?
No, the documentary is not going to be available on Hulu. However, here are some of our best documentary picks from the platform as in: “Kid 90”, “Collective”.
Will the movie be available on Netflix?
The movie is not planned to release on Netflix. The best documentaries on Netflix offer important perspectives on our strange world. However, with over 36,000 hours of video to pick from, it might be difficult to know where to begin. Is it finally time to see “Seaspiracy” (and possibly abstain from eating fish) or is it time to rev up your metaphorical engine and crank up Formula One focus- “Schumacher”.
Where to watch this movie?
The movie is planned to release on December 8, 2021 at 8 pm and is all ready for a theatrical release. No OTT releases have been confirmed yet.