Charlie Chaplin

Sound arrived in 1927 and Chaplin kept the Tramp silent for another decade. City Lights came out in 1931 with no dialogue and a blind flower girl who takes her benefactor for a rich man; Modern Times followed in 1936, with the Tramp wanting only to set up a home with a young woman and getting in his own way every time. The routines are choreography, escalating a move at a time, and the sentiment is planted directly beside the slapstick with no apology for either. The Great Dictator put a Jewish barber against a dictator expanding his empire in 1940, when very few people in Hollywood would say it out loud. You laugh at a man being ground down, and then notice you are doing it.

Signature

• Gags built as long escalating physical routines.
• Pathos placed directly beside slapstick.
• Silence held for a decade after sound arrived.
• Open political argument about machinery, hunger and fascism.