Essay on Charlie Chaplin

had acquired a lot of cultural groundings at home with his mother and the doctor.

When one thinks of silent films most likely that person thinks about is Charlie Chaplin. According to Biography.com, “Charlie Chaplin’s

Charlie Chaplin, or the “Little Tramp”, led a life many referred to as a Cinderella story. Chaplin was the son of a poor London family, who were entertainers. As a child, at an early age, he also performed, and made his stage debut in 1894. He began his career when he played a paperboy in the film Sherlock Holmes. He also worked as a mime in Vaudeville theatres in London, until he left for America. When Chaplin arrived in the States, he joined the Karno Pantomime Troupe, and toured with them for six years. This experience led him to branch out on his own, making his own films. One of these films was City Lights. Many say that this film and others, lead him to be one the most successful film stars of his time. “Chaplin dedicated himself to perfecting every scene during both the writing process and on set, sacrificing his personal life during production” (Eggert, 2006).

In the play, Death of a Salesman, Arthur Miller establishes Charley, a humble and successful salesman as the foil to Willy Loman, a prideful and arrogant man. Charley is the perfect character to help depict Willy’s flaws. Although the two contrast with each other, their characteristics help maintain a balance between them. Willy Loman lives in his own world, where he believes that in order to be successful, one must be well liked with a great appearance. “The man who makes an appearance…is the man who gets ahead” (Miller 1568). These are obvious words from Willy which proves that he does not believe in hard work. He instills within both of his children that looks and personality are all that matters. The characteristics of Willy allow us to grasp the idea that he lives within a false reality. He is a man living within a child’s fantasy based off of the life of Dave Singleman. The very words he spoke against his neighbor Charley and his son, Bernard, are the very words that prove him wrong.

  Charley says something in Arthur Miller’s Death of a Salesman that sums up Willy’s whole life. He asks him, "When the hell are you going to grow up” (Miller 97)?  Willy spends his entire life in an illusion, seeing himself as a great man who is popular and successful.  Willy exhibits many childlike qualities and his two sons Biff and Happy pattern their behavior after their father.  Many of these qualities, such as idealism, stubbornness, and a false sense of self-importance in the world have a negative impact on Willy’s family,

Before becoming one of the most iconic figures in silent film, D.W. Griffith failed as an actor and writer. If it wasn’t for a friend, Griffith wouldn’t have even worked at Biograph. In fact, Griffith had no training in film prior to Biograph. That is what makes his legacy so fascinating. Griffith was ambitious to act and write, but found his true identity in directing. Without any prior knowledge of directing, Griffith rose to fame, creating over 450 films, revolutionized film with his use of parallel editing, and was responsible for defining the Classical Hollywood Style of film.

William Hearst though many obstacles became a well-rounded publisher and industrialist the newspaper. His publisher career took peak in the 1920s (Pray Leslie).

From rock bottom poverty to bottomless fame and fortune. From abandonment from his primary family to love from millions of fans. From a neglected childhood to a bountiful family of his own. From calamity to celebration, in frequent repetition, Richard Pryor has earned the title of Legend as a result of his deft narrative, brilliant wit, and selfless survival, (“Richard Pryor,” richardpryor.com).

Orson Welles is commonly praised for his popular movie, Citizen Kane, but that wasn’t the only movie he has directed and acted in. In his career, Welles acted in several plays, used his voice on radio shows, created ten complete films, and acted in a number of movies himself. Even though, Citizen Kane was a major influence in the filmmaking world, it wasn’t all Orson should be remembered for. Welles was a dedicated director, producer,writer, and actor who always found a way to use his creativity and passion to create films. Welles got lucky and started peeking into the acting world at a young age.

Luckily Orson Welles was taken in by a man named Maurice Bernstein, who fostered his passion for theatre. Despite his challenging upbringing Orson Welles still became one of the most, if not the most important face of our modern media. At only nineteen years old Orson Welles was already at the forefront

Orson Welles didn’t just impact the filming realm, but, by being an actor himself, showed that he possessed a very strong standpoint on what an ideal actor was. Orson said that, to him, acting “was like a sculpture. It’s what you take away from yourself to reveal the truth of what you're doing that makes a performance. A performance deserves to be considered great or important. It’s always entirely made up of the actor itself and entirely achieved by what he has left in the dressing room before he came into the camera’s view. There’s no such thing as becoming another character by

Charlie Chaplin did not use sound to communicate to the audience in his movies. Despite the fact that there was no spoken language, his movies were sensational and the audiences loved them. Chaplin was thought of as cinema’s first genius and has been called the single most-influential artist in the history of motion pictures. I am researching Charlie Chaplin to learn how he became a sensational comedian and one of the best actors of all time.

My example that I will be using is Modern Times by Charlie Chaplin. Modern times is a film developed after the industrial revolution. It serves the purpose of critiquing capitalism and the social world. Modern Times begin with a factory worker who starts developing anxiety through the lack of breaks and repetitive work. When the Worker is on break, his boss is always keeping an eye on him and demands him to go back to work due to the loss of production. Soon after, the factory worker goes on lunch break, but is again distracted by his boss due to the desire to try out a new lunch contraption. At first, the new technology seems to work since the factory Worker was being fed. But, after a few seconds the contraption goes haywire and starts hurting the worker. The factory Worker goes back to work, but suddenly starts to mess up. He goes around ruining all his co-workers’ work and even get himself in prison. However, he ends up saving all the cops from the inmates’ revolution and is released early from jail. He does not want to leave since he is treated properly in jail and will be homeless in the outside world. He tries to get himself in prison again, but meets a beautiful woman Gamin who is also homeless and workless. They run off together and commit burglaries to feed themselves, but is soon discovered by the police. They manage to escape and run off to live in a small house by themselves. The factory Worker and the Gamin decides to have lunch together, but finds out that a

The film remains Chaplin's one of the greatest achievements and it remains one of his popular film. (Back story source- Wikipedia)

Ernest Hemingway the winner of the Nobel Peace prize lived a troubled life over his Sixty-two years of life and experienced many struggles. He went through a few marriages, different faiths and in the end, he lost his battle with depression. However, though all of this he made an impact on the world with the style and theme of American literature he wrote and is a significant influence to many authors and readers alike. During his life, there were many things that were an influence and help shape his writing into what it is today. Hemingway heavily focused on the theme of war during his career and was a topic of several of his novels one of those novels being “For whom the bell tolls” (Hemingway) The recognizable effects of Hemingway’s influence on literature is still witnessed around the world in the many tributes to him to this day.