The only work of
fiction ever written by
Charlie Chaplin, a dark, nostalgic novella which was the root of his great film
Limelight and which has lain unpublished for over 60 years, is being made public for the first time.
Footlights, which runs to 34,000 words, traces the same story as Chaplin's valedictory film Limelight – that of an ageing, alcoholic clown Calvero and the ballerina he saves from suicide.
The film, in which Chaplin played Calvero and Claire Bloom the ballerina, was the final American movie Chaplin made before he was banned from the country for alleged communist sympathies. The novella, which Chaplin wrote in 1948, before the film script, widens and deepens the story, giving an insight into the author's state of mind at the time.
It has lain in Chaplin's archive for decades, but has now been pieced together from a mix of handwritten and typed scripts by Chaplin's biographer David Robinson. It is published by the Cineteca di Bologna, an Italian film restoration institute which has been digitising the Chaplin archive for his family.
Cecilia Cenciarelli, co-director of the Cineteca's Chaplin project, said the novella "has shadows. It's the story of a comedian who has lost his public, by a comedian who at that time had lost his public, who was referred to in the press of the time as a 'former comedian', a 'former successful film maker'".
It is a prequel of sorts to the film, in that it fleshes out "why Calvero has nightmares, why he is so disenchanted with his career, with the public", she said. "The book deals a little more with the relationship of the artist to his audience, with the meaning of art."
"I know I'm funny," says Calvero in the novella, "but the managers think I'm through … a has-been. God! It would be wonderful to make them eat their words. That's what I hate about getting old – the contempt and indifference they show you. They think I'm useless … That's why it would be wonderful to make a comeback! … I mean sensational! To rock them with laughter like I used to … to hear that roar go up … waves of laughter coming at you, lifting you off your feet … what a tonic! You want to laugh with them, but you hold back and laugh inside … God, there's nothing like it! As much as I hate those lousy – I love to hear them laugh!"
Chaplin was going through a bad time in America when he wrote the novella, said Robinson. "He was a big target for J Edgar Hoover … which was effective to the extent that a great deal of middle America turned against him. This was a shock to him, who had been the best loved man in the world for 30 years." These feelings, said Robinson, "work themselves out in the story of Calvero".
Footlights, complete with Robinson's commentary and description of the story's evolution, is being launched by the Cineteca this week, with an event at the British Film Institute Southbank, London, featuring Robinson and Bloom, to whom the book is dedicated. The book will be
available from the publisher's website and Amazon, although it does not yet have a British or American publisher – something Cenciarelli is hoping will change.
"It is astonishing that this man who went to school for six months in his life managed to become a writer," she said. "The reason it has never been published before is because the family has been a little protective … but eventually they were convinced this would be a good thing to do."
"He never meant it for publication," said Robinson. "It was something absolutely private … he wrote it for himself."
In his commentary, Robinson writes that Chaplin "can move without warning from the baldly colloquial to dazzling yet apparently effortless imagery, as when the crushed Calvero gazes 'wearily into the secretive river, gliding phantom-like in a life of its own … smiling satanically at him as it flecked myriad lights from the moon and from the lamps along the embankment'".
Chaplin's childhood in south London can be seen, he writes, in a child character's "aversion to parks – 'the dreary, forlorn patches of green, and the people who sat about them, were the living graveyards of the hopeless and the destitute'". The novella also shows "the delight in fine or strange words of the self-confessed autodidact, who kept a dictionary beside him and set out to learn a new word every day: brattled, selenic, efflorescing, fanfaronading and – to the end of his life his all-purpose favourite – ineffable."
"Once he'd got a word he liked to use it, even if it was not quite right for the situation," Robinson said. "Nevertheless he does write amazingly. With his films he worked and worked until it came right, and it is the same with this book. It's a good read. Strange, but good."
Pamela Hutchinson, who blogs about silent film at
www.silentlondon.co.uk, called the publication "very exciting".
"There is always tremendous interest in Chaplin – and when so much has been written about him over the years the chance to read his own words, especially ones we haven't heard before, is refreshing," she said. "One of the things that is really wonderful about Limelight is that it shows Chaplin returning to the London of his youth: the tenements and music halls that he knew.
"To read what he was writing about this world in the 40s confirms our fondly-held belief that Chaplin never forgot his British roots throughout his successes in the States.
"The subject matter of Limelight – poverty, mental health and the variety stage – as well as its London setting, could have been plucked straight from his childhood. The drafts of this novella confirm that these things were still playing on his mind late in his life."
默片喜劇大師卓別林(Charlie Chaplin)曾寫下個人唯一一部小說，這件事幾乎沒有人知道，現在這部小說「舞臺生涯(Footlights，暫譯)」即將首度公開。
卓別林1948年寫下小說「舞臺生涯」，內容描述1名小丑成功說服1名舞者不要自殺。這部小說之後改編成卓別林電影「舞台春秋」(Limelight)，小說4日在英國倫敦亮相。
義大利電影修復機構「波隆那電影資料館」(Cineteca di Bologna)將以英文出版這本小說。這個機構一直與卓別林傳記作家羅賓遜(David Robinson)重建卓別林檔案中發現的草稿。
卓別林1889年在倫敦出生，父母生活拮据，在戲院擔任藝人維生。卓別林少年時期在蘇活區(Soho)的戲院工作，最後終於成為劇團演員。
根據羅賓遜，卓別林在小說中描述酒醉小丑與絕望芭蕾女伶之間的關係，可能是他1916年遇到俄羅斯傳奇舞者尼金斯基(Vaslav Nijinsky)時所得到的靈感。
「這位畫家的表現，好像這晚會不是為他而辦的。這令人想起查理‧卓別林在聚會中尋找誰是慶祝會的真正主角，卻獨獨想不到主角是他自己。」《盧奧》(Georges Rouault) ，台北：文庫出版社，1994
1977.12.25 Chaplin 過世時. 我在英國South End 某家度聖誕節 不記得主人說此惡耗....... 2013.10.7 電視報導Chaplin瑞士的故居將改為博物館。 其孫女說: 他晚年最怕名沒他世........
我的日本朋友Kawase先生說 ， 世界上唯一看完Chaplin生前自己拍攝的生活影片檔案的，是某日本人，似乎花了一年多.......改天跟他要詳細資料 Chaplin's final home, Manoir de Ban in Switzerland, is in the process of being converted into a museum exploring his life and career, to be opened in 2015.
[435] The Swiss town of Vevey, where he spent the last 25 years of his life, named a park in his honour in 1980 and erected a replica of the Doubleday statue there in 1982.
[433] In 2011, two murals depicting Chaplin on two 14-storey buildings were unveiled in Vevey.
[436] Chaplin has also been honoured by the Irish town of
Waterville, where he spent several summers with his family in the 1960s. A statue was erected in 1998,
[437] and since 2011 the town has been host to the annual Charlie Chaplin Comedy Film Festival, which was founded to celebrate Chaplin's legacy and to showcase new comic talent.
[438]Charlie Chaplin and his wife Oona on the roof of the Savoy Hotel in London in 1952 ❤️
查爾斯·斯賓賽·「查理」·卓別林爵士，
KBE（
英語：Sir Charles Spencer "Charlie" Chaplin，1889年4月16日－1977年12月25日）是一位
英國喜劇演員及
反戰人士，後來也成為一名非常出色的導演
[2]，尤其在
好萊塢電影的早期和中期他非常成功和活躍。他奠定了現代喜劇電影的基礎，與
巴斯特·基頓、
哈羅德·勞埃德並稱為「世界三大喜劇演員」，卓別林戴著
圓頂硬禮帽和禮服的模樣幾乎成了喜劇電影的重要代表，往後不少藝人都以他的方式表演。
卓別林最出色的角色是一個外貌
流浪漢，內心則一幅紳士氣度、穿著一件窄小的禮服、特大的褲子和鞋、戴著一頂圓頂硬禮帽、手持一根竹拐杖、留著一撇小鬍子的形象。在
無聲電影時期卓別林是最有才能和影響最大的人物之一。他自己編寫、導演、表演和發行他自己的電影。從在英國的大劇院作為孩童演員登台演出，到他88歲高齡逝世為止，他在娛樂業從事了70多年的生涯。從
狄更斯式的
倫敦童年一直達到了電影工業的世界頂端，卓別林已成為了一個文化偶像。
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