Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #25574 in DVD
• Released on: 2002-05-20
• Rating: Suitable for 15 years and over
• Aspect ratio: 1.78:1
• Number of discs: 1
• Formats: Anamorphic, Dubbed, PAL, Widescreen
• Original language: English
• Subtitled in: English, German, Turkish
• Dubbed in: German
• Number of discs: 1
• Running time: 139 minutes

Amazon.co.uk Review
Chaplin, Sir Richard Attenborough's biographical film of the life and times of the famous comic, is a little thin as a narrative, but it is so charmingly creative and ultimately moving that it's hard to worry about the deficits. Robert Downey Jr does an excellent job re-creating Chaplin's graceful slapstick and getting inside the silent-film superstar's head over the years of triumph, defeat, scandal, official persecution, exile and inner peace. A huge cast portray the allies, friends, lovers and enemies in Chaplin's life, including Moira Kelly as his final, long-time wife Oona, Kevin Kline as Douglas Fairbanks, Geraldine Chaplin as Charlie's mother and James Woods as a prosecutor working hard to nail Chaplin for anti-American sentiments. Attenborough declines to tell the story in a flat, linear way, employing such clever techniques as detailing one chapter in Chaplin's life as a silent comedy. The climactic scene set at an Oscar tribute for Chaplin will get the tears flowing. --Tom Keogh, Amazon.com

Special Features
1.85 Wide Screen
16:9 Anamorphic Wide Screen
DVD 9
German
English
Region 2
Dolby Digital Surround English German
Dolby Digital Surround
Trailer
Behind The Scenes
Production Story
A Directors View
Photo Gallery
English\German\Turkish

Synopsis
Sir Richard Attenborough's CHAPLIN is a dramatised depiction of the highs and lows in the life of Charlie Chaplin (Robert Downey, Jr. in a highly acclaimed performance), one of the true comic geniuses of the early silver screen. Presented as the memories of an elderly Chaplin, the narrative opens with the comic's impoverished East London childhood, and progresses through his vaudeville and Hollywood successes to his virtual banishment from the United States, and eventually his welcome back to accept a special Academy Award--20 years too late.

Customer Reviews

Just Brilliant
This is a truly brilliant film.
Robert Downey Jr shows in this film just what an amazing actor he is. This film is beautifully acted by all who star in it. This is a film that takes you on a very moving story of Charlie Chaplin's journey from rags to riches. All of Charlie's good times and bad are portrayed perfectly by Robert, he has such talent.
This film is definetly a must see!!!!

Chaplin is British at heart and Jewish in mind
It is probably not the best film ever made about Charlie Chaplin, and I even think it is far behind Charlie Chaplin's own autobiography on which it is supposed to be based. But it makes a couple of points rather well. First, show business is business first of all. Brutal, expeditious, pitiless, cruel, full of hate and with hardly any love, except the illusion of a companionship they call love in Hollywood. But we know that. And even the FBI or McCarthy could not touch that: business money is business money and cannot be spoiled even if the owner is a communist or at least is accused of being one. Second, McCarthyism was an ugly adventure in the USA, but it is shown as having run in the texture of the country from the very start and particularly after the Russian revolution. The best part about it is that it made American politicians suspicious of anything that was not lauding the USA as THE ONLY country of freedom (except of course for those that have been declared unwanted characters, or anything that could in anyway seem to be supporting the poor, the working class, the underlings of this egotistic world. The portrait of Edgar Hoover is that of a fanatic, a fundamentalist, and yet nothing but an apparatchik that never leaves his pacifying desk and the comfortable warmth of his office. Third, this film shows so well through Chaplin's own life how the world changed and how no politician can stop it. A politician can make some people suffer, at times a lot when he has the means to go out and wage war, but even so he will not be able to change history, to stop history, to even strand or wreck history. Hitler is the best case at hand. The amount of suffering he caused is enormous and yet did he stop history, did he block it into some eternal barbaric dictatorship? Of course not. And Charlie Chaplin's wisecrack about not having the honor of being a Jew is the best answer anyone could do to any attempt at hijacking history: I don't have the honor of being your victim, and if I were your victim I would be honored to be one of them, to have their company. British wit and humor at the same time as British caustic sarcasm. Beautiful!

Dr Jacques COULARDEAU, University Paris Dauphine, University Paris 1 Pantheon Sorbonne & University Versailles Saint Quentin en Yvelines

Perhaps Attenborough's Best
Richard Attenborough is a consistent and unpretentious film-maker. His films are unashamedly conventional, have lots of heart, and they suffer nothing for it. He is a talented story-teller, and Chaplin is one of his best movies.

The film starts with Chaplin in Britain, and follows him to California, though his many loves and professional ups and downs. The film plods along in a fairly linear way, and some may criticise it for this. As farm as I'm concerned, I wish it had plodded some longer. The score, by John Barry, is surely one of the most beautiful written, and it raises the film to even greater heights.