Charlie Chaplin, The one-man band
Philharmonie de Paris / 2020 / 6 min / BBC

A self-taught musician from his early teens, Charlie Chaplin left the world of music hall for that of cinema at the age of 25. With the invention of Charlie Chaplin, the filmmaker asserted the supremacy of pantomime. This dancing, almost musical body, with its universal language and movements driving the rhythm of the montage, established itself as the main poetic and comic springboard of his art. So much so that, in 1927, when the world’s cinema switched from silent to talking pictures, Chaplin resisted and relied even more on the musical eloquence of his films. From then on, he signed the score of all his works, inventing a sound comedy where sound effects and music respond to each other.