To celebrate 130 years since the birth of Charlie Chaplin, the Chaplin Office has made a double-CD of original soundtrack extracts from the director/actor’s (and composer’s) films. The first disk is devoted to such landmark feature films as City Lights (with the Iberian Fight Club and the overwhelming final song Girl Holds Charlie’s Hand) and Modern Times (with the frenzied Factory Scene and the nonsensical hit Titine). We also remember the music of Wagner and Brahms for the globe and barbershop scenes, respectively, in The Great Dictator, as well as more stylistically exquisite waltzes from The Gold Rush and heartbreaking themes from Limelight.
The second disc includes songs from other feature films, such as A King in New York; for this film, Chaplin may have settled his scores fiercely with the United States, but his musical style seems unchanging. It is always a mixture of mischievous lightness and pure tenderness that characterizes the stick-holding mustached man. This CD also includes the melodramatic music of The Kid (who didn't shed a tear on The Country Doctor?), as well as a fox-trot and other waltzes for short films shot from 1918 onwards (The Pilgrim, A Pay Day...). The album concludes with the elegant theme of A Woman of Paris, one of the English filmmaker's lesser known feature films (and for good reason, he doesn't perform in it). Chaplin could neither read nor write music, but he had an undeniable sense of melody, which this anthology clearly highlights. © Nicolas Magenham/Qobuz