Chaplin, Downey and synchronicity
Thanks to a twitter alert from lalittle, I caught Charlie Chaplin's "Modern Times" on TMC tonight.
For us corporate drones, it is surprisingly just as relevant today as it was in 1936.
As you can see in the first 9 minutes...
The rest of the movie is available in segments on youtube and I would encourage you to watch it all. If for no other reason than for Paulette Goddard. Great Googly Moogly that woman was hot!
But I also could not help but be reminded of Robert Downey, Jr's portrayal in Richard Attenborough's "Chaplin".
Keep in mind that all of those references to "the scandal that surrounded him" and "everyone has a wild side, even a legend", were just talking about Chaplin! This was before Downey went nuts.
Chaplin co-founded United Artist pictures with Mary Pickford, Douglas Fairbanks, and D. W. Griffith in 1919. A studio that still exists and is producing motion pictures today.
The early impact of Chaplin on movies and American culture, and then the impact of Downey on the legacy of Chaplin, and the resonant pattern in history of Chaplin's flaws and Downey's flaws, and the subsequent redemption of Downey with the portrayal of Tony Stark who has all of the Chaplin/Downey flaws...it's all just a surrealistic story arc that spans a century of movies, comic books and real life.
Incredible synchronicity.
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4 comments:
Did you like Metropolis too? I am going to have to watch all of this movie.. it looked good.
I don't know much about Chaplin except that he was an intellectual and a Communist... they were quite fashionable at the time.
Chaplin's movies were approved in the USSR obviously because he was communist (or at least he was accused of being such) and his movies were showing "a plight of a little man in a capitalist society". So Chaplin was probably more famous there than here in 70's. Plus until mid-seventies we had black-and-white TV's so his movies looked normal.New movie added to my Blockbuster Q.
LOL! I woke up this morning and watched the first two parts of it again on YouTube and considered blogging about it, but you did a most wonderful job!
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