Charlie Chaplin - Legacy

Legacy

Chaplin was one of the first international film stars and one of the most famous men of the twentieth century, whose most recognised character, the Tramp, is considered to be cinema's "most universal icon". Film critic Leonard Maltin has written that "For me, comedy begins with Charlie Chaplin. I know there were screen comedies before he came along But none of them created a persona as unique or indelible as the Little Tramp, and no one could match his worldwide impact." Chaplin is included in Variety's list of "100 Icons of the Century", in VH1’s list of “The 200 Greatest Pop Culture Icons” and was voted 10th most important male star of all time by the American Film Institute. In 2002, he was also ranked number 66 on a list of the 100 Greatest Britons, broadcast on BBC. Memorabilia connected to Chaplin still fetches large sums in auctions: in 2006 a bowler hat and a bamboo cane that he used while in the role of the Tramp were bought with a record sum of $140,000 in a Los Angeles auction.

In addition to being one of cinema's most iconic stars, Chaplin was one of the medium's first artists and one of the most influential filmmakers of the first four decades of the twentieth century. Mark Cousins has written that Chaplin "changed not only the imagery of cinema, but also its sociology and grammar" and considers Chaplin to have been as important to the development of comedy as a genre as D.W. Griffith was to drama. He was the first to popularise feature-length comedy and to slow down the pace of action, adding pathos and subtlety to it. Although his comedies are mostly classified as slapstick, Chaplin's only drama film, A Woman of Paris (1923) was a major influence for Ernst Lubitsch's film The Marriage Circle (1924) and hence also played an important part in the development of the genre of sophisticated comedy.However, since the 1970s, Chaplin's reputation as a filmmaker has slightly diminished with the advent of the formalist film theory, which concentrates on the technical aspects of film and has tended to stress the historical importance of Buster Keaton as opposed to Chaplin.

Chaplin not only influenced filmmakers, but also artists and entertainers in other fields: he inspired both pop culture (for example comics and cartoon characters, such as Felix the Cat and Mickey Mouse) and high art (for example the Dada movement). As one of the founding members of United Artists, Chaplin also had a role in the development of the film industry. Gerald Mast has written that although UA never became a major company like MGM or Paramount Pictures, the idea that filmmakers could themselves produce their own films was "years ahead of its time".