tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2856547151523423474.post985256451993876287..comments2024-03-12T12:38:23.542-04:00Comments on The Kind of Face You Hate: I'll Give You More Gold Than Your Apron Can Holdbill r.http://www.blogger.com/profile/17748572205731857892noreply@blogger.comBlogger2125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2856547151523423474.post-68636676357339804462012-06-14T10:10:33.036-04:002012-06-14T10:10:33.036-04:00Do people really complain about Chaplin being sent...Do people really complain about Chaplin being sentimental? I'm glad I've never read those articles. "Sentimental" is used as a pejorative, and it shouldn't be. It's a form more than anything else. If you do it badly, which Chaplin obviously doesn't, then you have other words you can use. But saying something is bad because it's sentimental is like saying something is bad because it's funny.<br /><br />Keaton and Chaplin were both technical masters, and of course they were both comedians, but their stuff does have a completely different feel, a difference I don't really know how to describe. Probably because I've seen too little Keaton, but I can almost see the Chaplin/Kubrick comparison. Their brand of technical mastery does seem to match up in certain ways.<br /><br />CITY LIGHTS is the one, or the major one, I haven't seen in a long time. I hope that one's next for Criterion.bill r.https://www.blogger.com/profile/17748572205731857892noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2856547151523423474.post-3499788213571365302012-06-13T22:49:22.471-04:002012-06-13T22:49:22.471-04:00Chaplin's best films tend to be very noticably...<i>Chaplin's best films tend to be very noticably structured as a collection of long scenes, almost a series of unified sketches, but this is noticable only to the degree you realize how long certain scenes are allowed to play out.</i><br /><br />A keen observation. I watched <b>City Lights</b> last year and it starts with the dedication of the statue followed by the tramp being thrown off the statue and meeting the blind flower girl. It's two scenes but it takes up nearly the first third of the movie. That's something I miss with many newer movies. I like long played out scenes which is why so many modern movies lose me by cutting away too fast.<br /><br />I think Chaplin was a master of the cinema and I think, if it's possible, he's been underrated for the last forty years or so as Team Keaton pushed Buster to the forefront. The idea that these two cinematic marvels should compete is utterly ridiculous but I hear the "oh, Chaplin was so sentimental," too much. He was sentimental but in the classic tradition of sentimental melodrama played off as comedy. I'm not going to go into a movie about a tramp who falls in love with a blind flower girl and <i>not</i> expect sentimentality.<br /><br />I haven't seen <b>Gold Rush</b> in years but your review has made me want to see it again. Laura's never seen it so maybe we could watch it together. <br /><br />There's a documentary on Chaplin I watched years ago (an American Masters episode) that showed how obsessed he was with getting his visuals just right. Like Stanley Kubrick years later, he would shoot a scene over and over and over until he felt satisfied that it worked. In fact, he and Kubrick share the same long lapses in between films because they would each spend years developing an idea and then working out the look and feel. Forgetting comparing him to Keaton, maybe we should start comparing him to Kubrick.Greg F.https://www.blogger.com/profile/12988142631436195913noreply@blogger.com