'Master of Masters' Little Things about a Great Man

Limelight (1952)

“The genius of Chaplin is like an iceberg - you only see what’s above water, but you sense the depths. Humour above the water, tragedy below.“

Limelight (1952)

Charlie Chaplin in 1969. Charlie spent some time in London exploring ways to capture scenes of a strange bird in flight.

The film, titled "The Freak," is a fantasy about "a beautiful creature with wings... a bird with a human body."

Charlie Chaplin wrote about an otherworldly being named Sarapha who has the power to cure disease and bring peace to the world.

"Pierre Smolik guides us through the process of preparing this project to which the “master of masters”, as Renoir called him, devoted his last years, and whose beauty lies in its incompletion. Chaplin left the film nearly ready for shooting, since everything is there: script, preparatory notes, development, music, drawings and even some filmed rehearsals that constitute the last production by this giant of the cinema.

These heretofore unpublished documents pull the reader into a universe that blends aspects of the fantastic tale, dreams, poetry, myth and tragedy—a universe where humour is not left out: “Offering an egg to a bird—how very tactless!”

It was during a meal in the 1960s that Chaplin told his family the story of a strange creature—a bird woman who falls, injured, onto the roof of a professor-writer’s house in a remote area of the Tierra del Fuego. Who is she? An angel? A monster? A chimera? The best choice is to let our imagination survey the possibilities.

A testament film that illuminates all of Chaplin’s work, The Freak would have been, among other things, a playful satire on the almighty power of money and commerce, on the influence of advertising and the rise of religious fanaticism and its media exploitation.

The work of a free man, The Freak proves Chaplin — again and as always— to be a creator ahead of his time."

Source :

Edna Purviance as Carmen and Charles Chaplin as Darn Hosiery in Carmen (also known as Charlie Chaplin’s Burlesque on Carmen and A Burlesque on Carmen)

A love letter from Charlie Chaplin to Edna Purviance dated March 1, 1915. It remains in Chaplin’s archives so may not have been sent:

“Despair is a narcotic. It lulls the mind into indifference."  Monsieur Verdoux

Sir Charles Spencer Chaplin, KBE - 16 April 1889 – 25 December 1977

“The world is not composed of heroes and villains, but of men and women with all the passions that God has given them. The ignorant contemn, but the wise pity.”

“Nothing is permanent in this wicked world; not even our troubles.”

Remembering Sir Charles Spencer Chaplin on his birthday.

April 16th 1889 — December 25th 1977