Charlie Chaplin is considered to be one of the most creative talents in the history of film. Both on and off screen, the Chaplin affect is, by far, one of the most important strings, which binds the history of film with its theory and philosophy. So much so, that one can consider Chaplin, in his most indicative tramp costume, as the most identifiable image in the history of western cinema. Similarly, as the man behind the camera, Chaplin can be seen as the paradigmatic indicator for the evolution of film technology, and the evolvement of film’s perspective and accommodating theory, from his days onwards.

Kafka once said, “Chaplin is a technician… a man of a machine world, in which most of his fellow men no longer command the requisite emotional and mental equipment to make the life allotted to them really their own”. Following this observation, From his early shorts in 1914 to his last feature in 1967, Chaplin demonstrates his extraordinary ability both to invent the ways by which the screen can philosophize human nature, and then to use the screen to communicate the foibles of this mundane philosophy. He tackles issues like

the trajectory of human nature and the downsides of human condition (between comical pessimism and naïve realism), political realism (between capitalism and Marxism), ethics, morality and human relations; subjectivity and society, man v. the machine, etc.—while inventing his practice, his Tecnè, and the medium, in the process. We will examine this throughout the course, if only to concur with Kafka’s conclusion: Chaplin “manufactures aids to the imagination. That’s what his films are. That’s what films in general are.”