Synopsis: Charles Chaplin was an English vaudeville actor who emigrated to the United States in 1914 and made a career in film. The FBI persecuted him and eventually expelled him from the country.
Appraisal: After Saint Gandhi, meet Saint Chaplin. "I am not a communist. I am a humanist", our hero declares to a (fictitious) friend in his old age days in Switzerland. Hell no, the guy was just a movie maker with no intellectual aspirations; well, his films were about humans, not cats or dogs (well, there were some dogs too), so perhaps he was a humanist in that sense, but saying more than that is just reverential image-making. Anyway, this is the general tone of the movie. It has good production values, and good acting, and does inform us, at a superficial level, of Chaplin's life. But no, it is not a good movie; and it gets duller and duller as it advances towards Chaplin's old age. Note: the copy I saw lacked the scene containing the following exchange: "-You know what? I've alway had that gift. After a man makes love to me, he just goes wild from happiness. -I am happy. -Then I don't want to be around when you're sad."
Rating: 44
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