Charlie Chaplin: His Life & Work [DVD]

While the footage is plentiful and invaluable, there are a lot of boring stretches, especially at the beginning where the Crocodile Dundee narrator spends a lot of time describing a statue of Chaplin next to Shakespeare while trying to make it sound exciting. In a 90 minute documentary this should have been 10 seconds.Movies like City Lights and Great Dictator get about a minute each, so you are never sure what angle the director was taking.Basically, Chaplin's life has so many parallel threads, so many personal tragedies and he lived so long and worked so long (88 when he died) that it's impossible to do anything substantial in 90 minutes, although this doc doesn't even try.I wish I recommend something better, but really isn't anything."The Unknown Chaplin" covers one aforementioned thread mostly about his life in Switzerland, but it assumes you know quite a bit about him already.Too bad, Chaplin deserves a Ken Burns-type documentary over several nights where each element of his life can receive some real depth and insight.

Enjoyed and entertained.

I think this DVD is interesting only for real fans because for a beginner or casual fan here there's not the adecuate information.The only really interesting is that you can see the English Chaplin places and see some photos of the Victorian England where Chaplin lived and grew.

This 90-minute documentary is a reasonably good attempt at a fair and honest presentation of the life of the man known the world over as `the tramp' and one of the world's greatest clowns, Charles Chaplin. Instantly recognizable in his baggy pants, over-sized clown-like shoes and too small hat and jacket, this pitiful screen character drew huge crowds way back in 1914, throughout the silent era and beyond, and still wins audiences even today. It's fitting therefore, that this documentary begins with scenes of Chaplin's statue in a London park next to Shakespeare and near other famed Englishmen, and begins the `rags to riches' story from his birthplace nearby. Although working within a small budget, the Delta label strives to reach a good standard, and this is perhaps most evident in the well-prepared script and research. The narration by an Englishman might take a little getting used to at first, but I soon got used to the deliberate, slow but genuinely enthusiastic pace of speech. There are not as many old photographs or old film footage as I personally would like to have seen, but at times this may not be possible or practical. Instead, there are many scenes of the areas of London where Chaplin grew up, and of course a number of scenes and excerpts from his films. The first half of the documentary carefully examines Chaplin's childhood in London slums, abandoned by his alcoholic father and sent back and forth to schools and workhouses as his mother went in and out of mental asylums. It is worth taking in this sad story of Charlie's youth because he himself had said that his work in films reflects his origins, not only in the sad and poor character of the tramp, but in the plots and scenes depicted in many of his films as well. There is only brief reference to some of his most important films, but his phenomenal rise to instant, enormous success is explained, as well as the general course of his career. His personal life, namely several unsuccessful marriages, is treated factually without sidetracking into gossip or speculation. As an introduction to the life of the man, this documentary serves nicely, but anyone wanting more in-depth information, especially about his work and films, might be disappointed. In any case, after watching this, I'm sure I will watch Chaplin's films with more appreciation and insight than before.