5. Chaplin was an ascendant filmmaker in the 1920s
World War I severely crimped the European film industry. Before the war films from Germany, Italy, France, Sweden, and the United Kingdom were all universally popular, the silent era offering the advantage of no need for an audio track in another language. By the end of the war and the opening of the decade which became known as the Roaring Twenties, Charles Chaplin, an English transplant to America and known the world over as Charlie, dominated the film industry. Chaplin was the most powerful man in the emerging film capital of Hollywood, and he possessed one of the most famous faces in the world, as well as one of the most famous characters of all time, his immortal “Little Tramp“. Chaplin used the Tramp and his own personality to change film – and thus history – by adding pathos to what had been simply slapstick comedy during the decade.
Chaplin was among the first to use comedy in films as social commentary, and during a period in which Hollywood produced over 800 films annually – more than 80% of the global output – the release of his motion pictures became international events. He became the highest-paid performer in the world during a period which saw, for the first time, the emergence of a new type of celebrity, which was called the movie star. He used music to control the mood of the audiences viewing his films, which he for the most part composed himself, and his growing financial independence allowed him to ignore the critics and follow his own agenda in the face of growing controversy as the twenties and thirties lurched towards the impending catastrophe of World War II. He also became the first, though by no means the last, filmmaker to be identified with licentious behavior and an amoral personal life.