“Chaplin’s great virtue, aside from his comedic gifts, was his emotional readiness. Those who don’t respond to it will be quick to deny that emotion, or to call him saccharine—and indeed, Chaplin did have a tendency to pull out all the emotional stops and risk bathos. But it always felt real. His was not false sentiment but rather a naked display of raw sentiment. And that’s more than forgivable. It’s who he was. It’s what he had to risk to make his art, and the transcendent emotion of his best work shows that he was right to trust his heart.”
Mick LaSalle
Mick LaSalle
