Offscreen Notes
Charlie Chaplin: From Laughter to Tears: Dec. 10-23
Charlie Chaplin does not really need an intro, but his major retrospective playing at the Cinema du parc comes at a good moment for the world of film comedy, which has lost two giants in the weeks leading up to the retrospective: Leslie Nielsen and Mario Monicelli (see obits in Offscreen below). So we can all use a good laugh. And who better than Mr. Chaplin to provide it. The retro is showing restored 35mm prints of all Chaplin’s major feature films (except for A Countess in Honk Kong, which is being projected digitally). This alone is a cause of celebration, to have the opportunity to see these classics of (mainly) silent cinema in good 35mm copies, and with a crowd (comedy is, if anything, a social gesture and thrives, excels when seen in a large group). It is hard to pick out which films to see from the group, but for this viewer, the ones not to miss are The Gold Rush, Modern Times, my personal pick for his masterpiece, and The Great Dictator, his most debated, discussed, and talked about film at its time of release. But they are all great films, each having their own specific historical and cultural reason for being included.
