The Real Charlie Chaplin review – immensely entertaining look into the soul of a screen legend

Not only one of the all-time great stars of the screen, but one of the most famous human beings to ever live, there’s not much to say about Charlie Chaplin that hasn’t already been said. To its great credit, new documentary The Real Charlie Chaplin turns this familiarity into a strength, trusting in an audience’s innate knowledge of the man himself to, very entertainingly, examine the impact the legend of Chaplin had on both the man himself and the people around him.

With a twinkling narration from Doctor Who star Pearl Mackie, The Real Charlie Chaplin covers, in broad strokes, pretty much Chaplin’s entire life, from the grinding poverty of his Lambeth childhood to his world-conquering silent film career and his eventual persona non grata status in Red Scare America. It’s a near-mythic story that has certainly been told before, but directors Peter Middleton and James Spinney find a fascinating way to ground it in the more human stakes.

Using real recordings, the pair re-stage interviews with Chaplin and his contemporaries, actors mouthing along to the precise beats of the actual conversation. It’s a technique that seems initially like a gimmick, but eventually becomes genuinely moving, especially in the case of the 1983 interview with Chaplin’s childhood friend Effie Wisdom, whose recollections bring not just Chaplin, but late-19th Century London as a whole to vivid life.

Middleton and Spinney never shy away from the grim parts of Chaplin’s life, either in his suffering in London workhouses or the suffering he inflicted upon his many (and very young) wives, but, fittingly for the subject, there are laughs here too. Whether it’s a sparky anecdote from Chaplin or Wisdom or a montage of the various funny names Chaplin’s “Little Tramp” earned internationally (Japan calling him “Professor Alcohol” is particularly hilarious), it makes for a fine tribute to a truly visionary comedian.

If you’re already a major Chaplin buff, there's little new info to be gleaned here, but it’s all put together into such an engrossing whole that it’s still pretty irresistible – its two-hour runtime flies by in a way that is rare for any documentary. Living his life in character as he did, it might not be possible to get to the heart of the “real Charlie Chaplin,” but with a cinematic legacy as immortal as his, we might not really need to.

The Real Charlie Chaplin is released in cinemas and on streaming platforms from 18 February.