Quote:
Charlie Chaplin plays shockingly against type in his most controversial film, a brilliant and bleak black comedy about money, marriage, and murder. Chaplin is a twentieth-century bluebeard, an enigmatic family man who goes to extreme lengths to support his wife and child, attempting to bump off a series of wealthy widows (including one played by the indefatigable Martha Raye, in a hilarious performance). This deeply philosophical and wildly entertaining film is a work of true sophistication, both for the moral questions it dares to ask and for the way it deconstructs its megastar’s lovable on-screen persona.

	
Charles Chaplin - (1947) Monsieur Verdoux.mkv

General
Container:  	Matroska
Runtime: 	2 h 4 min
Size: 	2.23 GiB
Video
Codec: 	x264
Resolution: 	768x576 
Aspect ratio:  	4:3
Frame rate: 	23.976 fps
Bit rate: 	2 370 kb/s
BPP: 	0.223
Audio
#1:  	English 1.0ch AC-3 @ 192 kb/s

https://nitro.download/view/D64B2ED6DB330B0/Charles_Chaplin_-_(1947)_Monsieur_Verdoux.mkv

Language(s):English
Subtitles:English

The post Charles Chaplin – Monsieur Verdoux (1947) first appeared on Cinema of the World.

Quote:
I don’t have much patience with colleagues who dismiss Charlie Chaplin by saying that Buster Keaton was better (whatever that means). To the best of my knowledge, with the arguable exception of Dickens, no one else in the history of art has shown us in greater detail what it means to be poor, and certainly no one else in the history of movies has played to a more diverse audience or evolved more ambitiously from one feature to the next. The opening sequence in Chaplin’s second Depression masterpiece (1936), of the Tramp on the assembly line, is possibly his greatest slapstick encounter with the 20th century, and as Belgian filmmakers Luc and Jean-Pierre Dardenne have brilliantly observed, the famous shot of his being run through machinery equates him with a strip of film. Still, there’s more hope here than in Chaplin’s preceding City Lights, perhaps because this time the Tramp has Paulette Goddard, another plucky urchin, to keep him company.

Quote:
Heralding the Return, After an Undue Absence, of Charlie Chaplin in ‘Modern Times.’
The hands of the cinema clock were set back five years last night when a funny little man with a microscopic mustache, a battered derby hat, turned up shoes and a flexible bamboo cane returned to the Broadway screen to resume his place in the affections of the film-going public. The little man—it scarcely needs be said—is Charlie Chaplin, whose “Modern Times,” opening at the Rivoli, restores him to a following that has waited patiently, burning incense in his temple of comedy, during the long years since his last picture was produced.

That was five years ago almost to the day. “City Lights” was its name and in it Mr. Chaplin refused to talk. He still refuses. But in “Modern Times” he has raised the ban against dialogue for other members of the cast, raised it, but not completely. A few sentences here and there, excused because they come by television, phonograph, the radio. And once—just once—Mr. Chaplin permits himself to be heard, singing some jabberwocky of his own to the tune of a Spanish fandango.

Those are the answers to the practical questions. They do not tell of Mr. Chaplin’s picture, or of Chaplin himself, or of the comic feast that he has been preparing for almost two years in the guarded cloister in Hollywood known as the Chaplin studio.

But there is no cause for alarm and no reason to delay the verdict further: “Modern Times” has still the same old Charlie, the lovable little fellow whose hands and feet and prankish eyebrows can beat an irresistible tattoo upon an audience’s funnybone or hold it still, taut beneath the spell of human tragedy. A flick of his cane, a quirk of a brow, an impish lift of his toe and the mood is off; a droop of his mouth, a sag of his shoulder, a quick blink of his eye and you are his again, a companion in suffering. Or do you have to be reminded that Chaplin is a master of pantomime? Time has not changed his genius.

Speak then, of the picture, and of its story. Rumor said that “Modern Times” was preoccupied with social themes, that Chaplin—being something of a liberal himself—had decided to dramatize the class struggle, that no less an authority than Shumiatsky, head of the Soviet film industry, had counseled him about the ending and that Chaplin, accepting that advice, had made significant changes.

Mr. Chaplin’s foreword to his picture was dangerously meaningful. “‘Modern Times,'” it reads, “is a story of industry, of individual enterprise—humanity crusading in the pursuit of happiness.” Verily, a strange prelude to an antic.

Happily for comedy, Mr. Chaplin’s description is only part of the truth and we suspect he meant it to be that way. Hollywood has quoted him as saying, “There are those who always attach social significance to my work. It has none. I leave such subjects to the lecture platform. To entertain is my first consideration.”

We should prefer to describe “Modern Times” as the story of the little clown, temporarily caught up in the cogs of an industry geared to mass production, spun through a three-ring circus and out into a world as remote from industrial and class problems as a comedy can make it.

It finds Charlie as a worker on an assembly line in a huge factory. A sneeze or a momentary raise of his head is all that is needed to disrupt the steady processional of tiny gadgets whose nuts he must tighten with one swooping twist. At lunch hour his boss places him in an experimental automatic feeding machine. Like Charlie, the device goes berserk. Bowls of soup are tossed in his face, a corn-on-the-cob self-feeder throws moderation to the winds and kernels to the floor. The machine alternately grinds corn into his face and wipes his mouth with a solicitous, but entirely ineffectual, self-wiper. Charlie recovers in a hospital. When he returns, discharged as cured, he runs into the unemployment problem.

So much for the industrial crisis. Finished with it for the time, the picture involves its hero in a radical demonstration, a prison riot, several police patrol wagons, a gamin (Paulette Goddard, his new leading lady), who is homeless and helpless as he; a job as night watchman in a department store, more trouble with the law, a new job as a singing waiter in a restaurant and still more trouble with the law. There is, for good measure, a return to the factory, but no longer as a piece of human machinery on the assembly line.

Sociological concept? Maybe. But a rousing, rib-tickling, gag-be-strewn jest for all that and in the best Chaplin manner. If you remember his two-reeler, “The Skating Rink,” you will be pleased to hear that Mr. Chaplin has not forgotten it either, and has found a place somewhere in his story for a more modern companion piece. You have seen him as a waiter years before, and you should be delighted to learn that he has not forgotten his tray-juggling technique. You should know, of old, his facility for dodging the Keystone cops and he clatters away just as nimbly now even though his pursuers wear more modern uniforms.

So it goes, and mighty pleasantly, too, with Charlie keeping faith with his old public by bringing back the tricks he used so well when the cinema was very young, and by extending his following among the moderns by employing devices new to the clown dynasty. If you need more encouragement than this, be informed then that Miss Goddard is a winsome waif and a fitting recipient of the great Chariot’s championship, and that there are in the cast several players who have adorned the Chaplin films since first the little fellow kicked up his heels and scampered into our hearts. This morning there is good news: Chaplin is back again.

Also at the Rivoli, and deserving of mention even on a bill that presents Mr. Chaplin, is Walt Disney’s latest cartoon, “Mickey’s Polo Team.” Certainly the rowdiest of all the Disneys, it contains a wild and woolly polo match between a team comprised of Mickey, Donald Duck, the Goof and the Big Bad Wolf and another four representing Harpo Marx, Stan Laurel, Oliver Hardy and Mr. Chaplin. Jack Holt is referee.
Frank S. Nugent, NY Times, February 6, 1936

Modern Times BDrip.mkv

General
Container:  	Matroska
Runtime: 	1h 27mn
Size: 	1.44 GiB
Video
Codec: 	x264
Resolution: 	792x576 
Aspect ratio:  	1.375
Frame rate: 	23.976 fps
Bit rate: 	2 000 Kbps
BPP: 	0.183
Audio
#1:  	English 1.0ch AC-3 @ 192 Kbps
#2:  	English 1.0ch AC-3 @ 160 Kbps (Commentary)

https://nitro.download/view/DD7565E53492D05/Modern_Times_BDrip.mkv
https://nitro.download/view/59F1FF322794136/Modern_Time_extras.rar

Language(s):Mostly Silent, Dual audio with Commentary
Subtitles:English Intertitles, optional German, Spanish, French, Italian, Portuguese, Danish, Finnish, Icelandic, Norwegian, Swedish, Croatian, Czech, Greek, Hungarian, Polish, Turkish, Hebrew, Russian, English and German HOH

The post Charles Chaplin – Modern Times (1936) first appeared on Cinema of the World.

The Tramp is an escaped convict who is mistaken as a pastor in a small-town church.

The.Pilgrim.1923.720p.WEB-DL.AAC.2.0.x264-SHR.mkv

General
Container:  	Matroska
Runtime: 	41 min 31 s
Size: 	1.35 GiB
Video
Codec: 	x264
Resolution: 	960x720 
Aspect ratio:  	4:3
Frame rate: 	24.000 fps
Bit rate: 	4 572 kb/s
BPP: 	0.276
Audio
#1:  	zxx 2.0ch AAC LC @ 128 kb/s

https://nitro.download/view/CC5DEF1EDA0FFEE/The.Pilgrim.1923.720p.WEB-DL.AAC.2.0.x264-SHR.mkv

Language(s):Silent
Subtitles:English intertitles, French, Portuguese

The post Charles Chaplin – The Pilgrim (1923) first appeared on Cinema of the World.

Quote:
The ringmaster of an impoverished circus hires Chaplin’s Little Tramp as a clown, when he discovers that he can only be funny unintentionally, not on purpose.

The Circus - Charles Chaplin (1928).mkv

General
Container:  	Matroska
Runtime: 	1 h 12 min
Size: 	2.00 GiB
Video
Codec: 	x264
Resolution: 	768x576 
Aspect ratio:  	4:3
Frame rate: 	23.976 fps
Bit rate: 	3 528 kb/s
BPP: 	0.333
Audio
#1:  	1.0ch FLAC @ 224 kb/s (Original score by Chaplin)
#2:  	English 1.0ch AC-3 @ 192 kb/s (Commentary by Chaplin biographer Jeffrey Vance)

https://nitro.download/view/D8CDCD060732AD0/The_Circus_-_Charles_Chaplin_(1928).mkv

Language(s):English titles
Subtitles:French

The post Charles Chaplin – The Circus (1928) first appeared on Cinema of the World.

Quote:
In his controversial masterpiece The Great Dictator, Charlie Chaplin offers both a cutting caricature of Adolf Hitler and a sly tweaking of his own comic persona. Chaplin, in his first pure talkie, brings his sublime physicality to two roles: the cruel yet clownish “Tomainian” dictator and the kindly Jewish barber who is mistaken for him. Featuring Jack Oakie and Paulette Goddard in stellar supporting turns, The Great Dictator, boldly going after the fascist leader before the U.S.’s official entry into World War II, is an audacious amalgam of politics and slapstick that culminates in Chaplin’s famously impassioned speech.

+Commentary by Charlie Chaplin experts Dan Kamin and Hooman Mehran

2.59GB | 2h 05m | 768×576 | mkv

https://nitro.download/view/7A5347299EC0201/Charles_Chaplin_-_(1940)_The_Great_Dictator.mkv

Language:English
Subtitles:English

The post Charles Chaplin – The Great Dictator (1940) first appeared on Cinema of the World.

Quote:
Charlie and a rival vie for the favors of their landlady. In the park they each fall for different girls, though Charlie’s has a male friend already. Charlie considers suicide, is talked out of it by a policeman, and later throws his girl’s friend into the lake. Frightened, the girls go off to a movie. Charlie shows up there and flirts with them. Later both rivals substitute themselves for the girls and attack the unwitting Charlie. In an audience-wide fight, Charlie is tossed from the screen.

143MB | 12:01.339 | 656×480 | avi

https://nitro.download/view/BDF359172E12D64/Those_Love_Pangs.avi

Language(s):Silent
Subtitles:English intertitles

The post Charles Chaplin – Those Love Pangs (1914) first appeared on Cinema of the World.

Quote:
The Tramp meets a poor blind girl selling flowers on the streets and falls in love with her. The blind girl mistakes him for a millionaire. Since he wants to help her and doesn’t want to disappoint her, he keeps up the charade. He befriends a drunk millionaire, works small jobs like street sweeping, and enters a boxing contest, all to raise money for an operation to restore her sight.

CHAPLIN HILARIOUS IN HIS ‘CITY LIGHTS’; Tramp’s Antics in Non-Dialogue Film Bring Roars of Laughter at Cohan Theatre. TAKES FLING AT “TALKIES” Pathos Is Mingled With Mirth in a Production of Admirable Artistry.

Charlie Chaplin, master of screen mirth and pathos, presented at the George M. Cohan last night before a brilliant gathering his long-awaited non-dialogue picture, “City Lights,” and proved so far as he is concerned the eloquence of silence. Many of the spectators either rocking in their seats with mirth, mumbling as their sides ached, “Oh, dear, oh, dear,” or they were stilled with sighs and furtive tears. And during a closing episode, when the Little Tramp sees through the window of a flower shop the girl who has recovered her sight through his persistence, one woman could not restrain a cry.

Mr. Chaplin arrived in the theatre with a police guard, and after greeting some of his many friends in the house he took an aisle seat beside Miss Constance Collier. When the picture came to an end he went to the stage and thanked those present for the enthusiasm with which they had received his work.

It is a film worked out with admirable artistry, and while Chaplin stoops to conquer, as he has invariably done, he achieves success. Although the Little Tramp in this “City Lights” in some sequences is more respectable than usual, owing to circumstances in the story, he begins and ends with the same old clothes, looking, in fact, a trifle more bedraggled in the last scene than in most others of his comedies. He has the same antics, the same flip of the heel, the same little cane, mustache, derby hat and baggy trousers.

Here one comes to the conclusion that Chaplin is in many respects the O. Henry of the screen, for he has twists to his sequences that are just as unexpected as those of the famous short story writer.

This tale happens in any city. It seems to be a mixture of Philadelphia, London, New York and Hollywood. And in the beginning the comedian takes a fling at the talking pictures, revealing by incoherent sounds that one can understand what is meant and also that these sounds are quite unnecessary. He wastes no time in getting down to comedy, for right at the outset is the episode wherein the Little Tramp is discovered in the arms of a central figure of a group of statuary that has just been unveiled.

Not long after that he meets the flower girl and with gentle suggestion it is conveyed to the spectator that she is sightless. This girl is impersonated by Virginia Cherrill, who by accident one night before the comedian, had cast his picture sat next to him at a pugilistic encounter in Hollywood. Under Chaplin’s unfailing guidance, Miss Cherrill gives a charmingly impressive performance.

Then there is the meeting of the Little Tramp and the Eccentric Millionaire, played by Harry Myers, who did so well in the old picture of Mark Twain’s “Connecticut Yankee at the Court of King Arthur.” This Millionaire loves the Little Tramp as a brother when he is in his cups, but when he is sober he does not recognize him, which naturally makes it most awkward at times for the Tramp, whose one aim in life is to get enough money together to pay a specialist to perform an operation on the blind girl’s eyes.

The first meeting between the Millionaire and the Tramp is when the Millionaire goes to a river embankment, bent on suicide, with a stone and a noosed rope in a suit case. The Tramp endeavors to persuade the Millionaire to abandon the idea of taking his life and the chapter of accidents ends in the Little Tramp being hurled into the water with the noose around his neck and the Millionaire having to officiate as the rescuer.

Perhaps the stretch that caused most merriment is where the Little Tramp finds himself in the prize ring facing a real pugilist. He darts about, always keeping, so far as is possible, behind the referee, and during some of the scenes the Tramp separates the referee and his antagonist. In any ordinary comedy the Tramp would have won the contest, but Chaplin wills otherwise.

The Millionaire gives the Tramp his expensive car. Thus the little fellow discovers himself thrown out of the house by the sober Millionaire, but he has a glistening car. Without a penny in his pocket and eager for a smoke he drives the automobile slowly along the curb and observes a man throw away a half-smoked cigar. Quick as a flash the Tramp leaps out of the car and, as he does so another tatterdemalion stoops to pick up the cigar. The Little Tramp, however, pushes the other man aside, looks at him as much as to say, “I saw it first,” then he picks up the butt and enters his lovely runabout.

After the Millionaire has taken back his automobile, the Tramp, in his efforts to get money for the blind girl, has his worries as a street cleaner. Then he has the great satisfaction of again falling into the arms of the Millionaire, happily intoxicated. The Tramp unfolds the pathetic story of the blind girl and the Millionaire in a most generous mood peels off more than a thousand dollars in bills. Burglars are in the house and in the course of the excitement the Millionaire sobers up, with the consequence that the Little Tramp has to scoot away. He succeeds in giving the flower girl the money, but cannot evade spending a few months in prison.

At the film’s end is a beautifully poetic bit, with the little fellow peering in at the window of a flower shop and recognizing the hitherto blind girl who has recovered her sight and does not, of course, know him. She laughs at him, and through another masculine figure, well dressed, one realizes that she imagines that her hero must look like this individual. A touch of the hand, however, reveals that the humble, little chap with the torn trousers and odd mustache, is her benefactor.

The synchronized music score helps the movement of this comedy. It was composed by Chaplin and arranged by Arthur Johnston. There are times when the notes serve almost for words and so far as sound effects go, Chaplin won gales of laughter last night when the Tramp swallows a whistle and every time he breathes he whistles. This sound interlude was made the most of, for the whistle calls cabs and dogs and angers a host of people.

It was a joyous evening. Mr. Chaplin’s shadow has grown no less.
Morduant Hall, NY Times, February 7, 1931

2.46GB | 1h 26mn | 856×720 | mkv

https://nitro.download/view/916516EB4F8FCDF/City_Lights_720p.mkv

Language(s):Mostly Silent, Dual audio with Commentary
Subtitles:French, German, Italian, Spanish, Portuguese, Swedish, Finnish, Icelandic, Danish, Norwegian, Hebrew, Czech, Greek, Hungarian, Polish, Turkish, Russian

The post Charles Chaplin – City Lights (1931) first appeared on Cinema of the World.