Explore Char­lie Chaplin’s life and career via a new dig­i­tal archive

To coin­cide with Char­lie Chaplin’s 130^th birth­day on 16 April, Roy Export and the Cinete­ca Di Bologna have cre­at­ed a dig­i­tal archive ded­i­cat­ed to Chaplin’s life and illus­tri­ous 75-year career as a pio­neer­ing actor and film­mak­er. Around 80 per cent of the mate­ri­als from the Chap­lin family’s col­lec­tion, includ­ing pho­tographs, scripts, notes, sheet music, telegrams, let­ters, legal con­tracts, and mem­os, is now avail­able to the pub­lic for the first time.

Kate Guy­on­va­rch, the Man­ag­ing Direc­tor of the Chap­lin office, has guid­ed the project, work­ing in close col­lab­o­ra­tion with Cecil­ia Cen­cia­rel­li, Head of The Chap­lin Project at The Cinete­ca Di Bologna. ​“The archives reflect every stage of his film­mak­ing, from note tak­ing to post pro­duc­tion pub­lic­i­ty,” explains Cen­cia­rel­li. ​“The idea was not only to car­ry out the index­ing, digi­ti­sa­tion and cat­a­logu­ing of the archives, but also to encour­age the dis­sem­i­na­tion of its con­tent through pub­li­ca­tions, exhibits, lec­tures, film pro­grams and par­tic­i­pa­tion to conferences.”

Chap­lin allowed his actors to ​‘find’ the char­ac­ter inside them­selves. He per­formed scenes on set so they could quick­ly learn how to inter­pret his actions. A three-page doc­u­ment, which had pre­vi­ous­ly lain undis­cov­ered, dis­pels the myth of Chap­lin as a tena­cious direc­tor. These ​‘step-by-step’ anno­tat­ed notes demon­strate Chaplin’s con­sid­er­a­tion towards his third wife and co-star, Paulette God­dard, dur­ing the film­ing of polit­i­cal satire The Great Dic­ta­tor, help­ing her to con­vey the mood of Han­nah, the feisty neigh­bour and love inter­est of a Jew­ish bar­ber (played by Chaplin).

For Chap­lin, the jour­ney from page to screen was often fraught with dif­fi­cul­ties; he was derid­ed by the press for pur­su­ing a polit­i­cal satire under the cloud of Nazi fas­cism sweep­ing across East­ern Europe, as the ruth­less dic­ta­tor ​‘Ade­noid Hynkel’. Nev­er­the­less, Chap­lin worked on his script from the end of 1938, self-financ­ing the film to the tune of $2 mil­lion. It went on to gross $5 mil­lion, the equiv­a­lent of $89 mil­lion today.

J Edgar Hoover mon­i­tored Chap­lin from 1922, and as the years passed the US author­i­ties became increas­ing­ly trou­bled by the filmmaker’s left-wing pol­i­tics, pro­tract­ed legal bat­tles and ​‘moral’ code of con­duct. In 1952, mat­ters came to a head when Chap­lin attend­ed the UK world pre­mière of Lime­light. The author­i­ties revoked Chaplin’s visa, block­ing his return to his adop­tive coun­try (of almost 40 years) unless he sub­mit­ted to ques­tion­ing. Instead, Chap­lin and his young fam­i­ly retreat­ed to Switzer­land, where he instruct­ed his half-sib­lings Wheel­er Dry­den and Syd­ney Chap­lin to retrieve his per­son­al arte­facts with imme­di­ate effect.

Films were duly dis­patched over to the UK, while Chaplin’s doc­u­ments were shipped over to his estate. Kept for decades in the cel­lar of Chaplin’s Manoir de Ban, these doc­u­ments only resur­faced when Chap­lin began writ­ing his mem­oir. Chap­lin made a tri­umphant return to Hol­ly­wood in 1972, receiv­ing an hon­orary Oscar and a 12-minute stand­ing ova­tion from his peers.

After Chaplin’s death in 1977, his man­ag­er, Rachel Ford, grant­ed access to archive mate­r­i­al to only a select few includ­ing film his­to­ri­ans David Robin­son, Kevin Brown­low, David Gill and Direc­tor Richard Atten­bor­ough. When Oona Chap­lin died in 1991, the papers moved to a secure stor­age facil­i­ty in Gene­va before being trans­ferred to the Chap­lin office in Paris for research and inventory.

In the late ​’90s, The Cinete­ca Di Bologna and Chap­lin Estate began restora­tion work on Chaplin’s fea­tures in the Cineteca’s lab­o­ra­to­ry, L’Immagine Ritrova­ta. Impressed by the qual­i­ty and quan­ti­ty of the mate­r­i­al, Cinete­ca direc­tor Gian Luca Farinel­li pro­posed the idea of a digi­ti­sa­tion project to doc­u­ment Chaplin’s life and career to the Chap­lin Estate. Gen­er­ous­ly sup­port­ed by the Fon­dazione Cas­sa di Risparmio di Bologna, the team metic­u­lous­ly con­struct­ed a com­pre­hen­sive time­line cel­e­brat­ing key mile­stones in Chaplin’s life.

Spe­cial­ist head­ings on the web inter­face include ​‘Sto­ries’ and ​‘Top­ics’ which pro­vide users with sug­ges­tions and entry points to the archives, draw­ing on mate­r­i­al from Chaplin’s close cir­cle of fam­i­ly and friends. Hand­writ­ten let­ters from (and about) his beloved moth­er Han­nah poignant­ly demon­strate the close bond between moth­er and son – who even­tu­al­ly reunite when Han­nah moves to Cal­i­for­nia in 1921.

“We are plan­ning to update records month­ly or any time a par­tic­u­lar event calls for it,” says Cen­cia­rel­li. ​“We are work­ing on ​‘Sto­ries’ from The Cir­cus as we are now restor­ing the film. Meta­da­ta (records) are added every time an addi­tion­al archival nucle­us is acquired or redis­cov­ered by the Chap­lin fam­i­ly or pur­chased by Roy Export at auc­tions or from pri­vate collectors.”

The Bologna team con­tin­ue to digi­tise and cat­a­logue doc­u­ments, return­ing them to the Archives de Mon­treux in Switzer­land, where all orig­i­nal doc­u­ments, includ­ing Chaplin’s musi­cal scores and press cut­tings, many of which are not scanned, remain in secure stor­age, and to the Musée de l’Elysée in Lau­sanne where the pho­to­graph­ic com­po­nent of the archives (film and glass) is deposited.

“Archiv­ing means main­tain­ing a sci­en­tif­ic rigour in the cat­a­logu­ing process,” Cen­cia­rel­li explains, ​“mak­ing sure that con­tent is shared in a ​‘demo­c­ra­t­ic’ way and in a con­stant­ly evolv­ing dig­i­tal land­scape. Before we start­ed iden­ti­fy­ing and assign­ing num­bers to each cat­a­logue unit, devel­op­ing a the­saurus or val­i­dat­ing dif­fer­ent dig­i­tal para­me­ters for scan­ning all the dif­fer­ent mate­ri­als, we had to inves­ti­gate the exist­ing avail­able option strate­gies for data man­age­ment (data and meta­da­ta back-up, refresh pro­ce­dures), and for cre­ation of meta­da­ta and con­tent shar­ing. We need­ed to fig­ure out the most effi­cient tech­no­log­i­cal set-up.”

The archive dates back to Chaplin’s for­ma­tive years as a child­hood star in the West End, to his vaude­ville days in the late 19^th cen­tu­ry, through his teenage appren­tice­ship with Fred Karno and his first films, to his emer­gence as one the fore­fa­thers of Unit­ed Artists in 1919 along with Dou­glas Fair­banks, Mary Pick­ford and DW Grif­fiths. It is a unique and mov­ing tes­ti­mo­ny to Chaplin’s endurance as the first inde­pen­dent film­mak­er of the 20^th cen­tu­ry, while also reveal­ing the chal­lenges of film­mak­ing in his final years. And it reminds us what a true mav­er­ick he was, defy­ing con­ven­tion in the face of oppo­si­tion and insur­mount­able odds.

Dis­cov­er the full archive at char​liechap​li​nar​chive​.org