Charles Chaplin gets all choked up when he hears about movie festival at Film Forum (courtesy Janus Films)
Film Forum
209 West Houston St.
Through August 5
212-727-8110
www.filmforum.org
As part of Film Forum’s ongoing fortieth anniversary celebration, the famed institution is featuring many outstanding programs throughout the year. Currently, Charles Chaplin’s relatively little-known 1928 comedy, THE CIRCUS, is in the midst of a one-week run, along with the 1922 short THE IDLE CLASS. That double feature is just the appetizer in a three-week cavalcade of Chaplin classics that continues through August 5, consisting of some of the Little Tramp’s most famous and influential works. Born in London in 1889, Chaplin had a troubled childhood that perhaps paved the way for his unique view of the world. One of cinema’s earliest multidisciplinary artists, Chaplin wrote, directed, starred in, and composed original scores for his films, which mix slapstick comedy with incisive social and political commentary. Film Forum will be screening nine of his full-length works in addition to several shorts, all in new 35mm prints, beginning July 22-25 with one of his masterpieces, 1931’s CITY LIGHTS, one of the most heartbreaking films ever made. The series then shifts gears to more sophisticated fare with A WOMAN OF PARIS (1923) and MONSIEUR VERDOUX (1947) before heading to Alaska for THE GOLD RUSH (1925). Chaplin burst through the limitations of film while commenting directly on the impact of sound in 1936’s MODERN TIMES, then took on no less a figure than Adolf Hitler in 1940’s THE GREAT DICTATOR. Five years after Herbert Hoover exiled Chaplin from the United States for his Communist leanings, Chaplin made KING OF NEW YORK (1957), not afraid to take on America on celluloid. The series ends with quite a bang, with Chaplin’s first big hit, THE KID (1921), on August 4, followed the next day by LIMELIGHT (1952), in which he and Buster Keaton mourn the death of the silent film era. Chaplin was one of cinema’s true originals, a man who created a genre-busting visual language that was way ahead of his time.