In 1967, Charles Chaplin directed his final film, “The Countess From Hong Kong.” An ill-fated project doomed by the differences in working methods of director Chaplin and star Marlon Brando, “Countess” broke Chaplin’s spirit — and his ankle when he tripped in the studio during production. By then, he no longer bore any resemblance to the inspired artist behind masterpieces like “The Great Dictator,” “Monsieur Verdoux,” and “Limelight.”
Yet not long after the artistic and commercial failure of “Countess,” Chaplin’s imagination got fired up again when he conceived of “The Freak,” an allegorical fantasy about a young woman born with wings whose condition attracts both the best and worst of humanity. At the age of 80, Chaplin not only wrote a complete script for the film but had wings built, designed sets, oversaw a shooting schedule and budget, and had an artist storyboard many of the shots.
“The Freak” got tantalizingly close to production, but Chaplin never shot any footage outside of some tests of the heroine’s wings. One problem, as usual, was financing — the living legend struggled to raise the necessary funds, at one point suffering the indignity of rejection by United Artists, the studio he had co-founded during the silent era. Another was Chaplin’s deteriorating health; though he felt invigorated by the prospect of a new project, his wife Oona feared that the movie’s logistical challenges would kill him and secretly worked to keep the film from ever moving forward.
While it will never be possible to see Chaplin’s final dream project, Sticking Place Books and the Cineteca Bologna have collaborated to give us the next best thing: “Charles Chaplin‘s ‘The Freak’: The Story of an Unfinished Film,” a book that reproduces the final shooting script and provides context with hundreds of documents taken from the Chaplin Archives and newly discovered papers of producer Jerry Epstein. The volume is a treasure trove for Chaplin enthusiasts, containing everything from the auteur’s handwritten script notes and wing designs to production documents and miscellania like a list of film prints Chaplin reserved for personal viewing (among them “Barbarella” and “The Absent-Minded Professor”).
The archival material is organized and annotated by Chaplin biographer David Robinson and editor Cecilia Cenciarelli, who have done essential work here detailing Chaplin’s biggest final burst of creativity. Robinson uses the documentation to provide signposts for a narrative in which he takes the reader step-by-step through Chaplin’s creative process, a valuable endeavor even when related to a never-completed film — maybe even especially for a film that was never completed, as this is the closest we’ll ever come to sharing Chaplin’s final dream along with him.
Anyone who has consumed the Criterion Collection’s indispensable editions of Chaplin masterworks knows he was a unique director with a time-consuming approach that yielded great films only after many false starts and turns down blind alleys. “The Freak” was no exception, and Robinson clearly lays out discarded ideas while tracing the evolution of the script, working from thousands of random pages found among Chaplin’s papers.
The deep dive into Chaplin’s working methods is compelling and illuminating, and the shooting script itself shows that the always politically and philosophically probing Chaplin hadn’t lost any of his fire or originality in his old age. Interviews with two people close to the process — Chaplin’s daughter Victoria, who was slated to play the title character, and storyboard artist Gerald Larn — add a human touch to the tome and confirm the passion and desire that “The Freak” inspired in the octogenarian filmmaker.
For those of us who revere Chaplin, “The Story of an Unfinished Film” is a vital and riveting work of film history and scholarship — for the uninitiated, it’s a great introduction to the obsessive working methods of one of the 20th century’s true cinematic geniuses.
“Charles Chaplin’s ‘The Freak’: The Story of an Unfinished Film” is currently available from Sticking Place Books.