by Vadim Rizov

One of the most fascinating essays reprinted in Jonathan Rosenbaum"s new collection Goodbye Cinema, Hello Cinephilia bears the deceptively simple title "Rediscovering Charlie Chaplin." The more accurate title would be "Try Harder." The piece (originally from the September 2004 issue of Cineaste) was tied to a new issue of Chaplin DVDs armed with copious supplemental documentation and appreciations from major global directors (the late Claude Chabrol, the Dardenne brothers, et al.). "I think the period we"re now living through may well be the first in which scholars have finally figured out a good way of teaching film history," Rosenbaum proposes of the "didactic materials" that classic films on DVD often come armed with.

With reference to Chaplin"s films specifically, Rosenbaum finds the need for education urgent: in a world where it"s easy to scorn the Tramp as sentimental and outmoded, he insists "one can"t even begin to grasp Chaplin"s importance without processing sizable chunks of the twentieth century." He then does his best to lay out some of that historical space briefly, and by the end even a hardened Chaplin skeptic may well be convinced they"re the ones at fault. Not because of some facile argument about watching a film and making allowances that the film was "impressive for its time"; that presumes an awful lot of knowledge about what was normative and what could be expected at best from a given era. Rosenbaum"s argument is simpler and more convincing: when you"re looking at a film that has survived decades, has a number of substantive admirers and nothing in it speaks to you, you should probably do some reading on it, or at least watch the extras. You may learn how quickly your gut reaction can change. Posted by: ahillis    Source

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