His movies are still entertaining, even to my 11 year-old niece. In this autobiography he wrote about his poor childhood, how he joined the entertainment industry, how he made successful movies and founded the United Artists and how the American public were turned against him, accusing him as a communist. He wrote about famous people he met, like Gandhi, Einstein, Churchill, HG Wells, his partner Douglas Fairbanks, etc.
After the released of the first film with sound, the Jazz Singer, in 1927; he still insisted to make two more silent movies: City Lights (1931) and Modern Times (1936) and both were successful. The next movie, The Great Dictator (1940), which he called an anti-nazi movie, was not as good as his silent ones. It was very funny how he portrayed the dictator, which looked a lot like Hitler: why they wore the same moustache? When you think about it, Chaplin wore it first. Why would a country leader wore the same moustache as a comedian? Was the style a hit in the era?
My favourite Chaplin films are the full-length ones: The Gold Rush, The Circus, and Modern Times. When I was buying this book, what I looking for was how he had gotten the ideas for them. So I am a little disappointed because he didn't wrote about all of them. He only wrote about several of his movies, while he had made so many. In all, this is an enjoyable book and a good inspirational story about a poor boy from a destitute neighbourhood in London who became the world's favorite man. This book was first published in 1964, when he lived in exile in Switzerland. Only in 1972 he returned to the U.S.A to accept his Honorary Award from The Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Science.
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| 64-pages of pictures are grouped in the middle of this book. |
Excerpt from the book about Bali:
It was Sydney who had recommended
visiting the island
of Bali
We passed through compounds with
beautifully built walls and imposing entrances where ten or twenty families
lived. The farther we traveled the more beautiful the country became; silvery
mirrored steps of green-rice fields led down to a winding stream. Suddenly Sidney nudged me. Along
the roadside was a line of stately young women, dressed only in batiks wrapped
around their waists, their breasts bare, carrying baskets on their heads laden
with fruits. From then on we were continually nudging. Some were quite pretty.
Our guide, an American Turk who sat in front with the chauffeur, was most
annoying, for he would turn with lecherous interest to see our reactions – as
though he had put on the show for us.
The hotel in Denpasar had only
recently been built. Each sitting-room was open like a veranda, partitioned
off, with sleeping quarters at the back which were clean and comfortable.
Hirschfeld, the American
water-colour artist, and his wife had been living in Bali
for two months and invited us to his house, where Miguel Covarrubias, the
Mexican artist, had stayed before them. They had rented it from a Balinese
nobleman, and lived there like landed aristocrats for fifteen dollars a week.
After dinner the Hirschfelds, Sydney, and I took a walk. The night was dark and
sultry. Not a breath of wind stirred, then suddenly a sea of fire-flies, acre
upon acre of them, raced over the rice-fields in undulating waves of blue
light. From another direction came sound of jingling tambourines and clashing
gongs in rhythmic tonal patterns. ‘A dance going on somewhere,’ said
Hirschfeld; ‘let’s go.’
About two hundred yards away a
group of natives were standing and squatting around, and maidens sat
cross-legged with baskets and small flares selling dainty edibles. We edged
through the crowd and saw two girls about ten years old wrapped in embroidered
sarongs, with elaborated gold tinsel head-dresses that flickered sparklingly in
the lamplight as they danced mosaic patterns to treble high notes, accompanied
by deep bass tones from large gongs; their head swayed, their eyes flickered,
their fingers quivered to the devilish music, which developed to a crescendo
like a raging torrent, then calmed down again into a placid river. The finish
was anticlimactic; the dancers stopped abruptly and sank bank into the crowd.
There was no applause – the Balinese never applaud; nor have they a word for
love or thank you.
Walter Spies, the musician and
painter, called and had lunch with us at the hotel. He had lived in Bali for fifteen years, and spoke Balinese. He had
transcribed some of their music for piano, which he played for us; the effect
was like a Bach concerto played in double time. Their musical taste was quite
sophisticated, he said; our modern jazz they dismissed as dull and too slow.
Mozart they considered sentimental, and only Bach interested them because his
patterns and rhythms were similar to their own. I found their music cold,
ruthless and slightly disturbing; even the deep doleful passages had the
sinister yearning of a hungry minotaur.
After lunch Spies took us into
the interior of a jungle, where a ceremony of flagellation was to take place.
We were obliged to walk four miles along a jungle path to get there. When we
arrived, we came upon a large crowd surrounding an altar about twelve feet
long. Young maidens in beautiful sarongs, their breasts bare, were queueing up
with baskets laden with fruit and other offerings, which a priest, looking like
a dervish with long hair down to his waist and dressed in a white gown, blessed
an laid upon the altar. After the priest had intoned prayers, giggling youths
broke through and ransacked the altar, grabbing what they could as the priests
lashed violently out at them with whips. Some were forced to drop their spoils
because of the severity of the lashings, which were supposed to rid them of
evil spirits that tempted them to rob.
We went in and out of temples and
compounds as we pleased, and saw cock-fights and attended festivals and
religious ceremonies which took place all hours of the day and night. I left
one at five in the morning. Their gods are pleasure-loving, and the Balinese
worship them not with awe, but with affection.
Late one night Spies and I came
upon a tall Amazon woman dancing by torchlight, her little son imitating her in
the background. A young-looking man occasionally instructed her. We discovered
later that he was her father. Spies asked him his age.
‘When was
the earthquake?’ he asked.
‘Twelve
years ago,’ said Spies.
‘Well, I
had three married children then.’ Seemingly not satisfied with this answer, he
added: ‘I am two thousand dollars old,’ declaring that in his lifetime he had
spent that sum.
In many
compounds I saw brand-new limousines used as chicken-coops. I asked Spies the
reason. Said he: ‘A Compound is run on communistic lines, and the money it
makes by exporting a few cattle they put into a saving fund which over the
years amounts to a considerable sum. One day an enterprising automobile
salesman talked them into buying Cadillac limousines. For the first couple of
days they rode around having great fun, until they ran out of gasoline. Then
they discovered that the cost of running a car for a day was as much as they
earned in a month, so they left them in the compounds for the chickens to roost
in.’
Balinese humour is like our own and abounds in sex jokes,
truisms and play on words. I tested the humour of our young waiter at the
hotel. ‘Why does a chicken cross the road?’ I asked.
His
reaction was supercilious. ‘Everybody knows that one,’ said he to the
interpreter.
‘Very well
then, which came first, the chicken or the egg?’
This
stumped him. ‘The chicken – no –‘ he shook his head, ‘-the egg – no,’ he pushed
back his turban and thought a while; then announced with final assurance: ‘The
egg.’
‘But who
laid the egg?’
‘The
turtle, because the turtle is supreme and lays all the eggs.’
