Charlie Chaplin : Your favourite Chaplin film? Short and/or feature.

Your favourite Chaplin film? Short and/or feature.

I've been a fan of his work for over 15 years & have nearly all his work on DVD.
And of all the films from the Keystone days to A countess from Hong Kong I rate The Circus as my all-time favourite, the gags are great & his comic timing is flawless.
The scene where he traps himself with the Lion has me in stitches every time.
My other favourites are One A.M, City Lights, The Idle Class & Behind the screen.

Re: Your favourite Chaplin film? Short and/or feature.

I've been a fan since before I was ever really old enough to grasp who he was. My dad a super 8 of The Rink he used to show on the wall was just a pup. It's hard not to choose The Rink as my fave short because of that. As an adult, it's hard for not to choose Payday though. For a feature, one day it's The Kid and one day it's City Lights. Depends on my mood that day, I guess. There are a bunch of close 2nds or 3rds in both categories. Decisions, decisions.

"It's not the ups and downs that make life difficult, it's the jerks." Charles Chaplin

Re: Your favourite Chaplin film? Short and/or feature.

I'd say "The Circus" is the closest Chaplin feature to being a 'pure comedy'. The 'tragic' is minimal compared to most.

City Lights, 1 AM, The Immigrant.

I do love Monsieur Verdoux.

Re: Your favourite Chaplin film? Short and/or feature.

The Circus just for the great physical comedy, like the tightrope scene. I'm nitpicking I'll admit but one of the things that bothers me about City Lights is that it's like 85 years later and they still haven't found a cure for blindness but it existed in 1931? And the whole rich guy not knowing him when he's sober but knows him when he's drunk just isn't plausible.

"No! That’s not true at all. Elvis takes fifty percent of everything I earn." Col. Parker

Re: Your favourite Chaplin film? Short and/or feature.

In "The Circus", I really like the scene where he's running from the cops, and winds up hiding as a puppet in the arcade.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pbADKnTCCyI

Re: Your favourite Chaplin film? Short and/or feature.

I'm enjoying the love for 'The Circus' in this thread. It's never one that gets mentioned as his best, but I agree with the OP, I think it is his funniest and closest to pure comedy feature film.

As for 'City Lights', I watched it again the other day and the qualms you have about it, don't bother me because the films is so good. I find the comedy with the rich guy brilliant.

It's really hard to say what my favourite Chaplin film is. I would have to say one of his features, because there is more of an arc with the characters and development. It would have to between 'The Gold Rush' and 'City Lights' I think. I've watched Chaplin films periodically in the last 12 years or so, but I'm still yet to see the following features films:

Limelight
A Woman in Paris
A King in New York
The Countess from Hong Kong

I've probably only seen about 40% of his shorts and up to 4 reelers. My favourite short is probably 'A Dog's Life' or 'Easy Street'.

Re: Your favourite Chaplin film? Short and/or feature.

To me "Modern Times" has to be his masterpiece. The Kafka-esque descent into a dystopian society anchored with a comic escapism like only Chaplin could execute, for me, makes it a cut above the rest. I'd like to pick something less popular, but there you have it. I think "Modern Times" is his masterpiece. My personal favorite, however, might be "The Great Dictator", most likely because it was the first Chaplin I discovered. It and "Modern Times" will always take the cake for me.

That being said, it's worth mentioning that I think "The Circus" is among his very best work, and has been oddly underrated. The disaster of the production notwithstanding, it's about as good as Chaplin gets, I think. I also think "Monsieur Verdoux" is a classic, despite operating on its own wavelength, separate from Chaplin's Tramp films. As for his shorts, seeing him with the Keystone guys (Arbuckle, Sterling, Normand, Sennett, Swain, Conklin, et cetera) is always a treat, and it's for that reason that I highly prefer his Keystone films to his Essanay or Lone Star work. The one exception, however, and my favorite pre-First National Chaplin film, is without a doubt "Th da0 e Immigrant". This is probably the one short film from his Keystone/Essanay/Lone Star days that can, in my opinion, hold up to his later work.

I also love his early First National stuff ("A Dog's Life", "Shoulder Arms", "Sunnyside", "A Day's Pleasure", "The Kid", et cetera). And then of course you can also throw "The Gold Rush" and "City Lights" in there, since those are about the only films I've left out. I even think "A Woman of Paris: A Drama of Fate" is a quality drama. I wouldn't rate it among Chaplin's best -- but it was much better than what I'd expected.

Basically everything between "The Immigrant" and "Limelight" was golden (the one exception being his final Lone Star film, "The Adventurer" -- "The Immigrant" had been his penultimate film for that studio). I even think little Chaplin "side dishes" (as I call them), like "How To Make Movies" and "The Bond", are wonderfully enjoyable films in their own right.
Top