Museum Elysée

Should Charlie Chaplin keep making films or enter the trenches? The controversy over the fact that the British actor was not fighting alongside his own people erupted in 1915. At the beginning of his glory, Chaplin was already confronted by criticism. Twenty-five years later, it was his turn to question moral and political convictions at the dawn of the Second World War.
In 1914, Americans discovered this young music-hall comedian on movie screens in Keystone’s burlesque films. In a few months, Chaplin became one of their stars. His character was a hit with audiences, standing out for his getup, his style and his funny faces. Because of the First World War, distribution of his first short films to the old continent was delayed until 1915, but the Tramp was just as popular there, with both civilians and soldiers.
Chaplin did not leave his second home, but he kept bolstering the troops’ morale with his humor. Nevertheless, he joined the war effort in 1918 by producing a short propaganda film in favor of the Third Liberty Loan. That same year, he filmed Shoulder Arms, in which a heroic Tramp succeeds in capturing the Kaiser. It combines comic situations with the realism of the trenches. Released a few weeks before the armistice, the film was a big success.
Chaplin’s political consciousness sharpened even more during the interwar period, as did his concerns about the economy. The rise of fascism in the early 1930s worried this man who had become a staunch pacifist. He implemented a politically engaged cinema by filming The Great Dictator in 1939 and 1940. Chaplin painted a caricature of the dictator, mixing irony and tragedy. Oppressed by society, the Tramp finds himself in the role of a Jewish barber. For his first full-ledged “talkie”, the filmmaker dared to say out loud what many would have preferred to keep silent.