All films are new 35mm prints!

Hailed as the cinema's first genius, Charlie Chaplin set the standard for silent screen comedy as a performer, writer and director (and, starting with his features, he even composed the accompanying scores). The iconographic "Little Tramp," his signature screen persona of the silent era, remains such an enduring figure that even today he is recognizable by just his silhouette. This brilliant comedian was, for a time, the single most popular entertainer on the planet, celebrated the world over, connecting with audiences in the universal language of silent screen comedy. During his long life and career, Chaplin famously enjoyed the prestige and wealth that came with his filmic accomplishments (notably, co-founding United Artists studio along with fellow Hollywood luminaries Mary Pickford, Douglas Fairbanks and D.W. Griffith; notoriously, living down a number of sex scandals). But he also endured business setbacks, strained relationships and harassment for his leftist politics during the Red Scare of the 1950s, which eventually led to the London-born comic's exile from his adopted home in the United States (his later, darker-hued films wickedly reflect this real-life turmoil).

With changes in the political winds, and the rise of film culture in the 1960s, audiences reclaimed Chaplin for his genius and artistry, leading to a late-career surge in popularity for the then 80-year-old entertainer, and culminating with the awarding of an Honorary Oscar in 1972 for "the incalculable effect he has had in making motion pictures the art form of this century." This summer, AFI Silver proudly presents a comprehensive retrospective of Chaplin's greatest work, all in new or recently struck 35mm prints.

AFI Member passes will be accepted at all films in the Chaplin series.

THE CIRCUS

Chased off the midway by a policeman, Charlie stumbles into the Big Top, where his act's an immediate hit and he promptly falls for the owner's stepdaughter. But when he learns she loves another, it's time for one more noble sacrifice. Featuring perhaps Chaplin's most quietly poignant climax and some of his most hilarious sequences, from the opening chase to his high-wire tightrope act, complicated by frisky escaped monkeys.

DIR/SCR/PROD Charlie Chaplin. US, 1928, b&w, 71 min. NOT RATED

Screening with short film:
THE IDLE CLASS

Chaplin is the spitting image of a rich woman's drunk husband. At a masked ball, her inability to distinguish one from the other leads to much confusion. (Courtesy MK2 & Warner Bros.) DIR Charles Chaplin. US, 1921, b&w, 32 min. Silent with musical accompaniment. NOT RATED

Friday, August 6, 4:30; Saturday, August 7, 1:00; Sunday, August 8, 12:30; Monday, August 9, 4:30; Tuesday, August 10, 4:30; Thursday, August 12, 4:30

CITY LIGHTS

As Charlie Chaplin's most poignant love story opens, a group of statues is unveiled to pompous speeches (kazoos on the soundtrack), with the scruffy tramp discovered asleep in the lap of the monumental female figure. Under pressure to film in sound, Hollywood's newest craze, Chaplin remained silent, creating some of his most hilarious slapstick: while contemplating a nude statue, he performs an unwitting dance with a freight elevator yo-yoing behind him. When the tramp meets a blind girl who thinks he's rich, the story takes a touching turn: Charlie begins a search for money to fund an operation to heal her. But what happens when she can see--the Little Tramp?

DIR/SCR/PROD Charles Chaplin. US, 1931, b&w, 83 min. RATED G

Friday, August 13, 4:30; Saturday, August 14, 1:00; Sunday, August 15, 1:00; Monday, August 16, 4:30; Tuesday, August 17, 4:30; Wednesday, August 18, 4:30; Thursday, August 19, 4:30

THE GREAT DICTATOR
70th Anniversary!

Chaplin's first all-talking picture presents a biting satire on dictatorship, with Chaplin as a Jewish barber mistaken for Adenoid Hynkel, Der Phooey, Dictator of Tomania. His cohorts include the scene-stealing Jack Oakie as Benzino Napaloni (Il Dig-a-Ditchy), Henry Daniell as Garbitsch and Billy Gilbert as Herring. As Hynkel, Chaplin speaks in a rich guttural tongue interspersed with gibberish. Featuring Chaplin's globe dance--one of cinema's all-time highlights.

DIR/SCR/PROD Charles Chaplin. US, 1940, b&w, 125 min. RATED G

Friday, August 20, 4:00; Sunday, August 22, 12:45; Monday, August 23, 3:45; Wednesday, August 25, 3:45

LIMELIGHT

"With age comes a keener sense of dignity, which prevents us from ridiculing other men." Down-and-out comic Calvero (Chaplin) saves struggling ballerina Claire Bloom from suicide, then gives her the strength to go on, even as he descends to street busking. Recruited to perform in a benefit concert, he reunites with "old friend" Buster Keaton. This is Chaplin's late-period masterpiece, with perhaps his most purely cinematic moment: Bloom's closing solo number on a darkened stage.

DIR/SCR/PROD Charles Chaplin. US, 1952, b&w, 137 min. RATED G

Saturday, August 21, 12:45; Tuesday, August 24, 3:45; Thursday, August 26, 3:45

A WOMAN OF PARIS: A DRAMA OF FATE

"Chaplin's first, long-awaited, independent production for United Artists begins with an only partially true caveat from its creator: "To The Public--In order to avoid any misunderstanding, I wish to announce that I do not appear in this picture. It is the first serious drama written and directed by myself. Charles Chaplin"--Chaplin does appear in a walk-on as a train-station porter. It is indeed a serious drama but it is much more than that. It set new standards in silent dramatic acting and directing, and influenced other filmmakers so deeply that many of its innovations seem outdated only because of their constant imitation in films by others." -- Phil Posner, All Movie Guide

DIR/SCR/PROD Charles Chaplin. US, 1923, b&w, 78 min. NOT RATED

Screening with short film:
PAY DAY

Chaplin is a bricklayer who sets off to celebrate pay day with his pals. But his wife is waiting with the rolling pin. (Courtesy MK2 & Warner Bros.) DIR Charles Chaplin. US, 1922, b&w, 22 min. Silent with musical accompaniment. NOT RATED

Friday, August 27, 4:20; Saturday, August 28, 1:00; Monday, August 30, 4:20; Wednesday, September 1, 4:20

A KING IN NEW YORK

"Made in England in 1957, this film gave Chaplin his last starring role; he plays a gentle king who, having been unseated by a revolution in his own country, comes to New York in search of a new life. What he finds instead is the House Un-American Activities Committee. Though clearly based on Chaplin's own political exile, the film is less bitter than touchingly bewildered, even when Chaplin is aiming his satire at such broad targets as advertising and popular movies." --Dave Kehr, Chicago Reader. "A sweetly sentimental yet fiercely angry film that was so open and honest in what it was saying that it wasn't allowed to be released in America until 1973, 16 years after it was made." -- Bruce Eder, All Movie Guide

DIR/SCR/PROD Charles Chaplin. UK/US, 1957, b&w, 105 min. RATED G

Sunday, August 29, 1:00; Tuesday, August 31, 4:45; Thursday, September 2, 4:45

MODERN TIMES
#33 on AFI's 100 Years...100 Laughs!

Chaplin's Little Tramp gets trapped in the coils of automation--at one point literally--so frenziedly tightening screws on the assembly line that, once off it, he compulsively tightens buttons on women and later becomes the guinea pig for an efficiency-promoting feeding machine gone amok. Inspired by Rene Clair's A NOUS LA LIBERTE, this corrosive satire on the dehumanizing effects of technology gives its screeches, groans and grinds more lines than the actors. It's also one of Chaplin's most lighthearted works, with highlights including his helpful waving of a red flag dropped by a departing truck just as a Communist demonstration marches up behind him.

DIR/SCR/PROD Charlie Chaplin. US, 1936, b&w, 87 min. NOT RATED

Screening with short film:
SUNNYSIDE

Chaplin is a farm laborer who'll try anything to win over his pretty neighbor, but ends up spending a lot of time in dreamland. (Courtesy MK2 & Warner Bros.) DIR Charles Chaplin. US, 1919, b&w, 30 min. Silent with musical accompaniment. NOT RATED

Friday, September 3, 4:30; Sunday, September 5, 1:00; Monday, September 6, 3:30; Tuesday, September 7, 4:00; Wednesday, September 8, 4:00; Thursday,
September 9, 4:00

MONSIEUR VERDOUX

"The cleverest, most brilliant film of my career."--Chaplin. Chaplin plays an urbane seducer of rich women who is secretly a serial murderer of same. But this former bank clerk, stirred to bloody revenge by a perceived wrong, has a crackpot rationale: "One murder makes a villain; millions, a hero." Eschewing beloved slapstick antics for murderous black comedy puzzled and provoked audiences in 1947, and the film's scathing societal critique resulted in censorship challenges and political harassment for Chaplin, but the film has steadily gained a following in the decades since. Chaplin purchased the story idea from the perennially hard-up Orson Welles.

DIR/SCR/PROD Charles Chaplin. US, 1947, b&w, 124 min. NOT RATED

Saturday, September 4, 1:00; Tuesday, September 7, 8:45

THE KID
New 35mm Prints!

"With this film, Chaplin established the fusion of slapstick and pathos that would serve him so well in years to come. He also found perhaps his ideal co-star, 6-year-old Jackie Coogan, capable of both brilliant comic mimicry and unaffected emotion. In a squalid slum, the Little Tramp stumbles upon an abandoned baby. After a few attempts to rid himself of this unexpected responsibility, he settles into his paternal role--until the authorities arrive to break up their happy home. Chaplin's own childhood experiences of poverty and abandonment come through in the film's vividly imagined settings and its intensity of feeling." -- Juliet Clark, BAM/PFA

DIR/SCR/PROD Charles Chaplin. US, 1921, b&w, 68 min. NOT RATED

Screening with:
A DAY'S PLEASURE
Chaplin decides to take his wife and children on a boat trip, but the family car proves somewhat recalcitrant. (Courtesy of MK2 & Warner Bros.)
DIR/SCR/PROD Charles Chaplin. US, 1919, b&w, 19 min. NOT RATED

Friday, September 10, 5:00; Saturday, September 11, 12:30; Tuesday, September 14, 7:00

THE CHAPLIN REVUE*
New 35mm Prints!

In A DOG'S LIFE (1918), Chaplin and dog Scraps eat on the sly, polishing off the entire stock of brother Syd's lunch wagon while the proprietor is looking the other way. SHOULDER ARMS (1918), the greatest comedy to emerge from World War I, features Chaplin as a hapless member of "the awkward squad" who single-handedly captures the Kaiser. In THE PILGRIM (1923), Chaplin is an escaped convict mistaken for the rector of a Texas church.

DIR/SCR/PROD Charles Chaplin. UK/US, 1918/1923, b&w, 135 min. NOT RATED

*NOTE: This program is composed of the three short films rereleased as THE CHAPLIN REVUE in 1959--but is not the collected version itself, which included new introductions by Chaplin between the shorts. THE CHAPLIN REVUE was not available to be a part of this series.

Sunday, September 12, 1:00; Monday, September 13, 6:30

CHAPLIN AT MUTUAL
With Live Musical Accompaniment by Andrew Simpson!

These four farcical shorts from Chaplin's tenure with the Mutual Corporation, all released in 1917, provide ample evidence of Chaplin's mastery of the art of the two-reel laffer. This shorts program includes THE ADVENTURER, THE IMMIGRANT, THE CURE and EASY STREET.

All shorts DIR/SCR/PROD Charles Chaplin. US, 1917, b&w, 90 min total. NOT RATED

Sunday, September 12, 3:45

THE GOLD RUSH
New 35mm Print!

Chaplin's greatest silent film, an enduring comedy classic. "Chaplin began shooting without a script, but the finished film develops with sublime logic. It is situation comedy at its best, with Charlie first stumbling into view along a precipice, pursued by a disgruntled bear. As usual, in an effort to elude one crisis he plunges into another: the cabin that looks so comforting in the blizzard is inhabited by none other than the ferocious prospector Big Jim. In the concluding episode, as Charlie and Big Jim fight to escape from their cabin, which has been blown to the edge of an abyss, the familiar comic routine is brought to dazzling maturity. Suspense almost shores up one's laughter." -- Peter Cowie.

DIR/SCR/PROD Charles Chaplin. US, 1925, b&w, 69 min. NOT RATED

Saturday, September 18, 3:30; Sunday, September 19, 3:30