My Autobiography by Charles Chaplin (most read book in the world TXT) 📕

line, otherwise it would snap like cotton. Should he make a sudden turn while running, the friction of the water will cut the line. He begins to leap twenty to forty times out of the water, shaking his head like a bulldog. Eventually he sounds bottom. Then the hard work begins, pumping him up. My own catch weighed one hundred and seventy-six pounds and took me only twenty-two minutes to land.

They were halcyon days, the Doctor and I holding our rods and dozing in the stern of the boat on those beautiful mornings with the mist on the ocean and the horizon merging into infinity, the vast silence giving importance to the cry of seagulls and the lazy chugging of our motor-boat.

Dr Reynolds was a genius in brain surgery and had achieved miraculous results in that field. I had known many of his case histories. One was a child with a brain tumour; she was having twenty fits a day and degenerating into idiocy. Through Cecil’s surgery she completely recovered her health and grew up to be a brilliant scholar.

But Cecil was a ‘nut’. His obsession was acting. This insatiable passion drew him to me as a friend. ‘The theatre sustains the soul,’ he would say. I often argued that his medical work should be sustaining enough. What could be more dramatic than turning a drivelling idiot into a brilliant scholar?

‘That’s merely knowing where the brain fibres lie,’ said Reynolds, ‘but acting is a psychic experience that expands the soul.’

I asked him why he had taken up brain surgery.

‘For the sheer drama of it,’ he replied.

He often took small parts at the Amateur Playhouse in Pasadena. He also played the parson who visits the jail in my comedy Modern Times.

When I returned from fishing news came that Mother’s health had improved and now that the war had ended we could bring her safely to California. I sent Tom to England to accompany her on the boat-trip over. She was put on the passenger list under another name.

During the voyage she was perfectly normal. She dined every night in the main saloon and during the day participated in the deck games. On her arrival in New York she was quite charming and self-possessed until the head of Immigration greeted her: ‘Well, well, Mrs Chaplin! This is indeed a pleasure! So you’re the mother of our famous Charlie.’

‘Yes,’ said Mother sweetly, ‘and you are Jesus Christ.’

The officer’s face was a study. He hesitated, looked at Tom, then said politely: ‘Would you mind stepping aside for a moment, Mrs Chaplin?’

Tom knew that they were in for trouble. However, after a lot of red tape the Immigration Department was kind enough to pass Mother through on a year-to-year permit on condition that she would not be dependent on the state.

I had not seen her since I was last in England, a period of ten years, so I was somewhat shocked when a little old lady stepped off the train at Pasadena. She recognized Sydney and me at once and was quite normal.

We arranged for her to live near us in a bungalow by the sea, with a married couple to run the house and a trained nurse for her personal care. Sydney and I would occasionally visit her and play games in the evening. During the day she liked going on picnics and excursions in her car. Sometimes she came to the studio and I would run my comedies for her.

Eventually The Kid opened in New York and was a tremendous success. And, as I had prophesied to his father the first day I met him, Jackie Coogan was sensational. As a result of his success in The Kid, Jackie earned in his career over four million dollars. Each day we would receive clippings of wonderful reviews: The Kid was proclaimed a classic. But I never had the courage to go to New York and see it, I much preferred to stay in California and hear about it.

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This discursive autobiography should not preclude essaying a few remarks about film-making. Although many worth-while books have been written on the subject, the trouble is that most of them impose the cinematic taste of the author. Such a book should be nothing more than a technical primer which teaches one to know the tools of the trade. Beyond that the imaginative student should use his own art sense about dramatic effects. If the amateur is creative he needs only the barest technical essentials. To an artist complete freedom to do the unorthodox is usually most exciting, and that is why many a director’s first picture has freshness and originality.

The intellectualizing of line and space, composition, tempo, etc., is all very well, but it has little to do with acting, and is liable to fall into arid dogma. Simplicity of approach is always best.

Personally, I loathe tricky effects, photographing through the fireplace from the viewpoint of a piece of coal, or travelling with an actor through a hotel lobby as though escorting him on a bicycle; to me they are facile and obvious. As long as an audience is familiar with the set, it does not want the tedium of a travelling smear across the screen to see an actor move from one place to another. Such pompous effects slow up action, are boring and unpleasant, and have been mistaken for that tiresome word ‘art’.

My own camera set-up is based on facilitating choreography for the actor’s movements. When a camera is placed on the floor or moves about the player’s nostrils, it is the camera that is giving the performance and not the actor. The camera should not obtrude.

Time-saving in films is still the basic virtue. Both Eisenstein and Griffith knew it. Quick cutting and dissolving from one scene to another are the dynamics of film technique.

I am surprised that some critics say that my camera technique is old-fashioned, that I have not kept up with the times. What times? My technique is the outcome of thinking for