[-1:-2.00]are surely the secrets of Chaplin's great comedy.
[-1:-3.00] He also had a deep need to be loved
[-1:-4.00]— and a corresponding fear of being betrayed.
[-1:-5.00]The two were hard to combine and sometimes
[-1:-6.00]— as in his early marriages
[-1:-7.00]— the collision between them resulted in disaster.
[-1:-8.00]Yet even this painfully-bought self-knowledge
[-1:-9.00]found its way into his comic creations.
[-1:10.00]The Tramp never loses his faith in the flower girl
[-1:11.00]who'll be waiting to walk into the sunset with him;
[-1:12.00]while the other side of Chaplin makes Monsieur Verdoux,
[-1:13.00]the French wife killer,into a symbol of hatred for women.
[-1:14.00]It's a relief to know that life eventually gave Charlie Chaplin
[-1:15.00]the stable happiness it had earlier denied him.
[-1:16.00]In Oona O'Neill Chaplin, he found a partner
[-1:17.00]whose stability and affection spanned the 37 years age difference between them
[-1:18.00]that had seemed so threatening
[-1:19.00]that when the official who was marrying them in 1942,
[-1:20.00]turned to the beautiful girl of 17 who'd given notice of their wedding date and said,
[-1:21.00]"And where is the young man?" — Chaplin, then 54,
[-1:22.00]had cautiously waited outside.
[-1:23.00]As Oona herself was the child of a large family with its own problems,
[-1:24.00]she was well-prepared for the battle that Chaplin's life became
[-1:25.00]as unfounded rumors of Marxist sympathies surrounded them both
[-1:26.00]— and,later on,she was the center of rest in the quarrels
[-1:27.00]that Chaplin sometimes sparked in their own large family of talented children.
[-1:28.00]Chaplin died on Christmas Day 1977.
[-1:29.00]A few months later, a couple of almost comic body-thieves
[-1:30.00]stole his body from the family burial chamber and held it for money:
[-1:31.00]the police recovered it with more efficiency than
[-1:32.00] Mack Sennett's clumsy Keystone Cops would have done.
[-1:33.00]But one can't help feeling
[-1:34.00]Chaplin would have regarded this strange incident as a fitting memorial
[-1:35.00]— his way of having the last laugh on a world to which he had given so many.

 2/2   首页 上一页 1 2