Peyroux 'gets' the Chaplin genius

So I was intrigued when I spoke to singer Madeleine Peyroux, who will be performing in the city next week, and she named Charlie Chaplin as one of her major influences.

Now, Chaplin isn’t obscure in the sense that people haven’t heard of him – he was the first real screen superstar to come out of Hollywood, and practically everyone knows who he is.

But Chaplin’s heyday was the 1920s and ’30s; he lived and worked so long ago that most people nowadays only really know his name and his iconic Little Tramp image.

They haven’t watched any of his films all the way through, they wouldn’t recognise him out of costume and they have no idea how talented he was, or how influential.

And it’ll likely be a mystery why an American jazz singer, songwriter and guitarist would cite him as an influence.

That’s a real shame, because there has never been another cinematic genius quite like Chaplin.

A Chaplin film really is a Chaplin film. His name on the credits doesn’t just mean he starred in it.

It means he wrote, produced and directed. He handled the casting, choreographed the dance routines, performed the stunts, worked out the camera angles and composed the score.

Within a few years of being in Hollywood, he also owned the studio.

“He was a real Renaissance man,” says Peyroux. “He took tragedy and comedy and made them into an art form.

“There are people out there who can do the physical comedy and there are amazing playwrights and movie-makers but to be all of those things together is so unusual.

I don’t think you could grow up in the 20th century without being influenced by Chaplin.”

Chaplin was also an egotistical, controlling perfectionist who demanded the same extreme standards from everyone around him that he expected of himself.

If he felt it needed 104 takes to get a scene right, he would do 104 takes. Then he’d do another 104 just to be sure. Every detail of every film he made had to be exactly as he envisioned it.

Not surprisingly, this didn’t always endear him to the people he worked with – but the films he made still stand up against the best we can offer nearly a century later.

Not many people can do that.

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