A Year of Chaplin

Whenever we went to new rooms, Charlie would ask the landlady, “Have you got a dark room, ma?”

Edith Scales, theatre costume mistress and Chaplin’s touring guardian in youth, quoted in Empire News, 1903

I showed [A Woman of the Sea] exactly once at one theater … and that was the end of that. The film was promptly returned to Mr Chaplin’s vaults and no one has ever seen it again.

Josef von Sternberg, Fun in a Chinese Laundry

The moment we met we ignited; it was mutual, and my heart sang. How romantic were those morning’s turning up fro work with the anticipation of seeing her each day.

Chaplin, My Autobiography

Keystone comedies directed by Sennett are perhaps the best examples of the studio’s true vision. Tango Tangles is particularly boorish and violent, while the characters are merely one-dimensional caricatures. Oddly enough, this is precisely the brilliance behind many of the best Keystone comedies.

James Neibaur, Early Charlie Chaplin: The Artist as Apprentice at Keystone Studios

My character was different and unfamiliar to the American, and even unfamiliar to myself. But with the clothes on I felt he was a reality, a living person. In fact he ignited all sorts of crazy ideas that I would never have dreamt of…

Chaplin, My Autobiography

The films are successful agitations, successful explorations of elaborate visual possibilities; if laughter once accompanied them, it has to have been the laughter of breathlessness.

Walter Kerr, The SIlent Clowns

I went from set to set watching the companies at work. They all seemed to be imitating Ford Sterling. This worried me, because his style did not suit me.

Chaplin, My Autobiography

I had no idea of the character. But the moment I was dressed, the clothes and the makeup made me feel the person he was. I began to know him, and by the time I walked on stage he was fully born.

Chaplin, My Autobiography

He is elbowing his way into immortality. … And he is doing it by calling attention to the camera as camera. He would do this throughout his career, using the instrument as a means of establishing a direct and openly acknowledged relationship between himself and his audience. In fact he is, with this film, establishing himself as one among the audience, one among those who are astonished by this new mechanical marvel … He looked at the camera and went through it, joining the rest of us.

Walter Kerr, The Silent Clowns

Had I seen a Keystone comedy? asked Mr Kessel. Of course, I had seen several, but I did not tell him that I thought they were a crude mélange of rough and rumble.

Chaplin, My Autobiography