Charlie Chaplin

Physical precision in service of sentiment and politics. Chaplin built gags with the rigour of choreography and used the Tramp — dignified, poor, and permanently outside — to say things about poverty and industry that dialogue would not have survived.

Signature

• Gags constructed as extended, escalating physical routines.
• Pathos placed directly beside slapstick.
• Sustained resistance to sound long after it arrived.
• Explicit social argument — machinery, hunger, fascism.

Films here also carry Class Warfare, Found Family, Underdog Triumph, Forbidden Love, Loneliness & Isolation.