Modern Times
What can American cinema do? How to explain its undeniable role in the history of cinema? Indissociable from geopolitics in the 20th century, this national preponderance for the industrial art demands that we regularly linger on it to see what it is all about - in terms of the present as much as the past.
Preserved in our collections
Chaplin is a worker in a big factory, where he tightens bolts. But the assembly line work makes him sick. He abandons his job, takes in an orphan girl and lives on the cheap. The vagabond and the young girl will join forces to face the difficulties of life together...
Charlie Chaplin
Born Charles Spencer Chaplin in a poor district of London in 1889, Charlie Chaplin climbed the boards of music halls at a very young age before joining Fred Karno's theater company, with which he left for the United States. He began acting in films in 1914, where his burlesque genius and his vagabond character soon became very successful. Chaplin directed his own films and co-founded the company United Artists in 1919 to be fully in control of his projects. He then went from short to feature films, multiplying masterpieces and successes, from The Kid in 1921 to The Great Dictator in 1940. After an interruption of a few years, he resumed his career as a filmmaker but abandoned the character of a vagabond who made his success. His political stance attracted attacks and trouble in the McCarthyism context of the time, forcing him to take refuge in Europe, where he made his last two films.
