Page "Charlie Chaplin" Paragraph 74

Chaplin never spoke more than cursorily about his filmmaking methods, claiming such a thing would be tantamount to a magician spoiling his own illusion.

After his death, film historians Kevin Brownlow and David Gill examined out-takes from the Mutual films and presented their findings in a three-part documentary Unknown Chaplin ( 1983 ).

According to Brownlow and Gill, Chaplin developed a unique method of filmmaking after achieving independence to direct his own films.

Until he began making spoken dialogue films with The Great Dictator ( 1940 ), he never shot from a completed script, but instead usually started with only a vague premise — for example " Charlie enters a health spa " or " Charlie works in a pawn shop.

" He then had sets constructed and worked with his stock company to improvise gags and " business " around them, almost always working the ideas out on film.

As ideas were accepted and discarded, a narrative structure would emerge, frequently requiring Chaplin to reshoot an already-completed scene that might have otherwise contradicted the story.

Due to the lack of a script, all of his silent films were usually shot in sequence.