The Magic of Charlie Chaplin

Recently, my girlfriend was looking for a birthday gift for one of her friends who likes classic movies and I was asked which of the Charlie Chaplin movies I considered to be the best. The decision seemed to be an easy one, but before I could answer she said, "one that's not Modern Times." Now, I love Modern Times, but I don't consider it to be my favorite work of his. Actually, I was stumped as to which of his work I considered to be my favorite, or his personal best in my view.
Growing up in Rwanda, there were no television stations to show feature films as they do in other countries. We watched most of our movies either from home or make-shift theaters with 20-inch screen television sets. One of my earliest comedic experience was watching Charlie Chaplin. We called him "Charlot" and the pleasure of being able to retell his films to colleagues who had not seen them was only second to reenacting them. Our imitations, inferior in their imperfectness, were as much a source of importance to the performers as they were to the witnesses who, in turn, would become performers to a new group of dazzled spectators who would take their turn, ever widening the myth and legend of our beloved Charlot.
When I came to the United States, I was lucky to find a ready selection of his films for me to quench my curiosity. The library was my favorite hangout in the summer as most of my friends found some job and others left for season-long family visits. At the time, as I did in Rwanda, Chaplin's movies provided little stimulation aside of comedic relief. I watched, laughed, grew enraged at the maltreatment he received, but was always overjoyed in the end. I had yet to experience the most important part of Charlot's magic.
Charlie Chaplin was always identified with the political left and was hounded by controversies in regard to his lifestyle and views. In Modern Times, we see him criticize the Capitalist system and the emerging machinization of the industrial scene. Social unrest, poverty, inept and corrupt authority, and injustice mingle with hope and abundance of dreams of the common citizen. In Gold Rush, we see the extent and futility of human dreams; its resiliency and that of the hurdles strewn across its path. We are shown love for others in City lights, and that of humanity in The Great Dictator. Chaplin shows us that even in the simplest of beings, hope, chance, dreams, and love intermingle to form that which makes us humans.
However, Chaplin's magic was not in portraying that, but rather in entwining them with comedy to paint a present that is also the past and the future. If there is one person who ever used the time machine, Chaplin is the one, in my humblest of opinions. A feeling of timelessness haunts his movies even as one watches them a century after they were crafted. Whether I'm watching Modern Times, The Kid, or the Circus, I feel as if they are meant to address the issues of our time. Listen to his speech in the Great Dictator and you are led to believe he is speaking today rather than 40 years ago. I am forced, without much coercion, to laugh at situations that make society unequal, yet in my laughter is also a nagging thought encouraging me to identify what is wrong with the scene and what can be done to right the ship.
So, as I pondered my favorite Charlie Chaplin film and left my girlfriend to her own reading in the living room, I sat in front of my computer in the office and watched some of his films. I watched City Lights and laughed as Charlie weaved through the streets and in the company of the affluent. The encounter with the flower girl ever haunting his actions, he manages to accomplish that which he wishes for her- for her to regain her sight- while he ends up incarcerated. The end of the film made me think back and revisit his other finishes. What do his endings tell us about the films? Why doesn't he leave with the circus even though he's offered a job? Why does he set off down the road in Modern Times? What does the flower girl's realization at the end of City Lights mean? What happens after the speech in The Great Dictator? Maybe, that it's the beginning of another adventure, that life itself is a never ending adventure and we can go through it despite the setbacks and triumphs we encounter. That, as the saying goes, this moment, too, shall pass, and life should be measured in adventures rather than moments of success or failure.
Chaplin was a genius well ahead of his time, and that is evident in his films. My girlfriend selected The Kid, but I'm not sure which one I would have selected if it had been my friend. I would have leaned towards the whole set for $500, but even as easy spending as I am, I know that wouldn't have happened. Maybe, I wouldn't have considered a Charlie Chaplin movie as a gift, but I know I would have found a way to send some of Charlot's magic. Whatever method I would have chosen would have been an adventure, itself...not in the great master's way - for that can never be duplicated- but, maybe, in a way that would have made him smile as his has made me. That, also, is the magic of Charlie Chaplin.