【素材】Unit 3 文本 Charlie Chaplin （人教）.doc

Expand Support Wikipedia: a non-profit project. Donate Now Expand Support Wikipedia: a non-profit project. Donate Now Charlie ChaplinCharles ChaplinChaplin in costume as The TrampBornCharles Spencer Chaplin, Jr.16 April 1889 (1889 -04-16)Walworth, London, EnglandDied25 December 1977 (aged88)Vevey, SwitzerlandOccupationActor, DirectorYears active1910 - 19761Spouse(s)Mildred Harris (1918-1921)Lita Grey (1924-1927)Paulette Goddard (1936-1942)Oona ONeill (1943-1977)showAwards wonAcademy AwardsAcademy Honorary Award1929 The Circus1972 Lifetime AchievementBest Original Music Score1952 LimelightOther awardsNYFCC Award for Best Actor1940 The Great DictatorCareer Golden Lion1972 Lifetime AchievementSir Charles Spencer Chaplin, KBE (16 April 1889 25 December 1977), better known as Charlie Chaplin, was an Academy Award-winning English comedic actor and director. Chaplin became one of the most famous actors as well as a notable filmmaker, composer and musician in the early to mid Classical Hollywood era of American cinema. He is considered one of the finest mimes and clowns ever captured on film. He greatly influenced other performers.Chaplin acted in, directed, scripted, produced, and eventually scored his own films as one of the most creative and influential personalities of the silent-film era. His working life in entertainment spanned over 65 years, from the Victorian stage and the Music Hall in the United Kingdom as a child performer almost until his death at the age of 88. His high-profile public and private life encompassed both adulation and controversy. With Mary Pickford, Douglas Fairbanks, and D. W. Griffith Chaplin co-founded United Artists in 1919.Chaplins principal character was The Tramp (known as Charlot in France, and the French-speaking world, Italy, Spain, Andorra, Portugal, Greece, Romania, and Turkey, Carlitos in Brazil and Argentina, and Vagabund in Germany). The Tramp is a vagrant with the refined manners and dignity of a gentleman. The character wears a tight coat, oversized trousers and shoes, and a derby; carries a bamboo cane; and has a signature toothbrush moustache.Early lifeChaplin, c. 1920Chaplin was born on 16 April 1889, in East Street, Walworth, London. His parents were both entertainers in the music hall tradition; his father being a vocalist and an actor and his mother, a singer and an actress. They separated before Charlie was three. He learned singing from his parents. The 1891 census shows that his mother, the actress Hannah Hill, lived with Charlie and his older brother Sydney on Barlow Street, Walworth. As a child Charlie also lived with his mother in various addresses in and around Kennington Road in Lambeth, including 3 Pownall Terrace, Chester Street, and 39 Methley Street. His maternal grandmother was half-Rom, a fact of which he was extremely proud,2 but also described as the skeleton in our family cupboard.3 Chaplins father, Charles Chaplin, Sr, was an alcoholic and had little contact with his son, though Chaplin and his brother briefly lived with their father and his mistress, Louise, at 287 Kennington Road where a plaque now commemorates the fact. The brothers lived there while their mentally ill mother resided at Cane Hill Asylum at Coulsdon. Chaplins fathers mistress sent the boy to Kennington Road School. His father died of alcoholism when Charlie was twelve in 1901. As of the 1901 Census, Charles resided at 94 Ferndale Road, Lambeth, with The Eight Lancashire Lads, led by John William Jackson (the 17 year old son of one of the founders).A larynx condition ended the singing career of Chaplins mother. Hannahs first crisis came in 1894 when she was performing at The Canteen, a theatre in Aldershot. The theatre was mainly frequented by rioters and soldiers. Hannah was badly injured by the objects the audience threw at her and she was booed off the stage. Backstage, she cried and argued with her manager. Meanwhile, the five-year old Chaplin went on stage alone and sang a well-known tune at that time, Jack Jones.After Chaplins mother (who went by the stage name Lily Harley) was again admitted to the Cane Hill Asylum, her son was left in the workhouse at Lambeth in south London, moving after several weeks to the Central London District School for paupers in Hanwell. The young Chaplin brothers forged a close relationship in order to survive. They gravitated to the Music Hall while still very young, and both of them proved to have considerable natural stage talent. Chaplins early years of desperate poverty were a great influence on his characters. Themes in his films in later years would re-visit the scenes of his childhood deprivation in Lambeth.Chaplins mother died in 1928 in Hollywood, seven years after having been brought to the U.S. by her sons. Unknown to Charlie and Sydney until years later, they had a half-brother through their mother. The boy, Wheeler Dryden, was raised abroad by his father but later connected with the rest of the family and went to work for Chaplin at his Hollywood studio.AmericaMaking a Living (1914), Chaplins film debut.Chaplin first toured America with the Fred Karno troupe from 1910 to 1912. After five months back in England, he returned to the U.S. for a second tour, arriving with the Karno Troupe on 2 October 1912. In the Karno Company was Arthur Stanley Jefferson, who would later become known as Stan Laurel. Chaplin and Laurel shared a room in a boarding house. Stan Laurel returned to England but Chaplin remained in the United States. In late 1913, Chaplins act with the Karno Troupe was seen by film producer Mack Sennett, who hired him for his studio, the Keystone Film Company. Chaplins first film appearance was in Making a Living, a one-reel comedy released on 2 February 1914. At Keystone Studios, Chaplin became an instant success.4 Chaplin once entered a Charlie Chaplin look-a-like contest in San Francisco and, quite humorously, could not make it to the final round.5Pioneering film artistKid Auto Races at Venice (1914): Chaplins second film and the dbut of his tramp costume.Chaplins earliest films were made for Mack Sennetts Keystone Studios, where he developed his tramp character and very quickly learned the art and craft of film making. The tramp was first presented to the public when Chaplin was age 24 in his second film Kid Auto Races at Venice (released Feb. 7, 1914) though Mabels Strange Predicament, his third film, (released Feb. 9,1914) was produced a few days before. It was for this film that Chaplin first conceived of the tramp. The character would immediately gain huge popularity among theater audiences.4 As Chaplin recalled in his autobiography6:I had no idea what makeup to put on. I did not like my get-up as the press reporter in Making a Living. However on the way to the wardrobe I thought I would dress in baggy pants, big shoes, a cane and a derby hat. I wanted everything to be a contradiction: the pants baggy, the coat tight, the hat small and the shoes large. I was undecided whether to look old or young, but remembering Sennett had expected me to be a much older man, I added a small moustache, which I reasoned, would add age without hiding my expression. I had no idea of the character. But the moment I was dressed, the clothes and the makeup made me feel the person he was. I began to know him, and by the time I walked on stage he was fully born.Chaplins early Keystones use the standard Mack Sennett formula of extreme physical comedy and exaggerated gestures. Chaplins pantomime was subtler, more suitable to romantic and domestic farces than to the usual Keystone chases and mob scenes. The visual gags were pure Keystone, however; the tramp character would aggressively assault his enemies with kicks and bricks. Moviegoers loved this cheerfully earthy new comedian, even though critics warned that his antics bordered on vulgarity. Chaplin was soon entrusted with directing and editing his own films. He made 34 shorts for Sennett during his first year in pictures, as well as the landmark comedy feature Tillies Punctured Romance.The Tramp character was featured in the first movie trailer to be exhibited in a U.S. movie theater, a slide promotion developed by Nils Granlund, advertising manager for the Marcus Loew theater chain, and shown at the Loews Seventh Avenue Theatre in Harlem in 1914.7In 1915, Chaplin signed a much more favorable contract with Essanay Studios, and further developed his cinematic skills, adding new levels of depth and pathos to the Keystone-style slapstick. Most of the Essanay films were more ambitious, running twice as long as the average Keystone comedy. Chaplin also developed his own stock company, including ingenue Edna Purviance and comic villains Leo White and Bud Jamison.In 1916, the Mutual Film Corporation paid Chaplin US$670,000 to produce a dozen two-reel comedies. He was given near complete artistic control, and produced twelve films over an eighteen-month period that rank among the most influential comedy films in cinema. Practically every Mutual comedy is a classic: Easy Street, One AM, The Pawnshop, and The Adventurer are perhaps the best known. Edna Purviance remained the leading lady, and Chaplin added Eric Campbell, Henry Bergman, and Albert Austin to his stock company; Campbell, a Gilbert and Sullivan veteran, provided superb villainy, and second bananas Bergman and Austin would remain with Chaplin for decades. Chaplin regarded the Mutual period as the happiest of his career, although he also had concerns that the films during that time were becoming formulaic owing to the stringent production schedule his contract required. Upon the U.S. entering World War I, Chaplin became a spokesman for Liberty Bonds with his close friend Douglas Fairbanks and Mary Pickford.4Most of the Chaplin films in circulation date from his Keystone, Essanay, and Mutual periods. After Chaplin assumed control of his productions in 1918 (and kept exhibitors and audiences waiting for them), entrepreneurs serviced the demand for Chaplin by bringing back his older comedies. The films were recut, retitled, and reissued again and again, first for theatres, then for the home-movie market, and in recent years, for home video. Even Essanay was guilty of this practice, fashioning new Chaplin comedies from old film clips and out-takes. The twelve Mutual comedies were revamped as sound movies in 1933, when producer Amadee J. Van Beuren added new orchestral scores and sound effects. A listing of the dozens of Chaplin films and alternate versions can be found in the Ted Okuda-David Maska book Charlie Chaplin at Keystone and Essanay: Dawn of the Tramp. Efforts to produce definitive versions of Chaplins pre-1918 short films have been underway in recent years; all twelve Mutual films were restored in 1975 by archivist David Shepard and Blackhawk Films, and new restorations with even more footage were released on DVD in 2006.Filmmaking techniquesChaplin never spoke more than cursorily about his filmmaking methods, claiming such a thing would be tantamount to a magician spoiling his own illusion. In fact, until he began making spoken dialogue films with The Great Dictator, Chaplin never shot from a completed script. The method he developed, once his Essanay contract gave him the freedom to write for and direct himself, was to start from a vague premise - e.g., Charlie enters a health spa or Charlie works in a pawn shop. Chaplin then had sets constructed and worked with his stock company to improvise gags and business around them, almost always working the ideas out on film. As ideas were accepted and discarded, a narrative structure would emerge, frequently requiring Chaplin to reshoot an already-completed scene that might have otherwise contradicted the story.8 Chaplins unique filmaking techniques became known only after his death, when his rare surviving outakes and cut sequences were carefully examined in the 1983 British documentary Unknown Chaplin.This is one reason why Chaplin took so much longer to complete his films than did his rivals. In addition, Chaplin was an incredibly exacting director, showing his actors exactly how he wanted them to perform and shooting scores of takes until he had the shot he wanted. (Animator Chuck Jones, who lived near Charlie Chaplins Lone Star studio as a boy, remembered his father saying he watched Chaplin shoot a scene more than a hundred times until he was satisfied with it.9) This combination of story improvisation and relentless perfectionism - which resulted in days of effort and thousands of feet of film being wasted, all at enormous expense - often proved very taxing for Chaplin, who in frustration would often lash out at his actors and crew, keep them waiting idly for hours or, in extreme cases, shutting down production altogether.8Creative controlCharlie Chaplin Studios, 1922At the conclusion of the Mutual contract in 1917, Chaplin signed a contract with First National to produce eight two-reel films. First National financed and distributed these pictures (1918-23) but otherwise gave him complete creative control over production which he could perform at a more relaxed pace that allowed him to focus on quality. Chaplin built his own Hollywood studio and using his independence, created a remarkable, timeless body of work that remains entertaining and influential. Although First National expected Chaplin to deliver short comedies like the celebrated Mutuals, Chaplin ambitiously expanded most of his personal projects into longer, feature-length films, including Shoulder Arms (1918), The Pilgrim (1923), and the feature-length classic The Kid (1921).In 1919, Chaplin co-founded the United Artists film distribution company with Mary Pickford, Douglas Fairbanks and D.W. Griffith, all of whom were seeking to escape the growing power consolidation of film distributors and financiers in the developing Hollywood studio system. This move, along with complete control of his film production through his studio, assured Chaplins independence as a film-maker. He served on the board of UA until the early 1950s.All Chaplins United Artists pictures were of feature length, beginning with the atypical drama in which Chaplin had only a brief cameo role, A Woman of Paris (1923). This was followed by the classic comedies The Gold Rush (1925) and The Circus (1928).After the arrival of sound films, Chaplin made City Lights (1931), as well as Modern Times (1936) before he committed to sound. These were essentially silent films scored with his own music and sound effects. City Lights contained arguably his most perfect balance of comedy and sentimentality. Of the final scene, critic James Agee wrote in Life magazine in 1949 that it was the greatest single piece of acting ever committed to celluloid.Chaplins dialogue films made in Hollywood were The Great Dictator (1940), Monsieur Verdoux (1947) and Limelight (1952).While Modern Times (1936) is a non-talkie, it does contain talk usually coming from inanimate objects such as a radio or a TV monitor. This was done to help 1930s audiences, who were out of the habit of watching silent films, adjust to not hearing dialogue. Modern Times was the first film where Chaplins voice is heard (in the nonsense song at the end, being both written and performed by Chaplin). However, for most viewers it is still considered a silent film and the end of an era.Although talkies became the dominant mode of movie making soon after they were introduced in 1927, Chaplin resisted making such a film all through the 1930s. He considered cinema essentially a pantomimic art. He said: Action is more generally understood than words. Like Chinese symbolism, it will mean different things according to its scenic connotation. Listen to a description of some unfamiliar object an African wart hog, for example; then look at a picture of the animal and see how surprised you are (Time Magazine, 9 February 1931).It is a tribute to Chaplins versatility that he also has one film credit for choreography for the 1952 film Limelight, and another as a singer for the title music of The Circus (1928). The best known of several songs he composed are Smile, composed for the film Modern Times and given lyrics to help promote a 1950s revival of the film, famously covered by Nat King Cole. This Is My Song from Chaplins last film, A Countess From Hong Kong, was a number one hit in several different languages in the 1960s (most notably the version by Petula Clark and discovery of an unreleased version in the 1990s recorded in 1967 by Judith Durham of The Seekers), and Chaplins theme from Limelight was a hit in the 1950s under the title Eternally. Chaplins score to Limelight was nominated for an Academy Award in 1972 due to a decades-long delay in the film premiering in Los Angeles making it eligible.The Great DictatorChaplins first dialogue picture, The Great Dictator (1940), was an act of defiance against German dictator Adolf Hitler and Nazism, filmed and released in the United States one year before the U.S. abandoned its policy of isolationism to enter World War II. Chaplin played the role of a Hitler-like dictator Adenoid Hynkel,10 Dictator of Tomainia, clearly modeled on Hitler. The film also showcased comedian Jack Oakie as Benzino Napaloni, dictator of Bacteria. The Napaloni character was clearly a jab at Italian dictator Benito Mussolini and Fascism.Paulette Goddard filmed with Chaplin again, depicting a woman in the ghetto. The film was seen as an act of courage in the political environment of the time, both for its ridicule of Nazism and for the portrayal of overt Jewish characters and the depiction of their persecution. Chaplin played both the role of Adenoid Hynkel and also that of a look-alike