Charlie Chaplin take in "The Kid". For "The Immigrant", a 20 minute-short, Chaplin shot 40,000 feet of film – enough for a feature-length. Describing his working method as "sheer perseverance to the point of madness", Chaplin would be completely consumed by the production of a picture. Robinson writes that even in Chaplin's later years, his work continued "to take precedence over everything and everyone else." The combination of story improvisation and relentless perfectionism – which resulted in days of effort and thousands of feet of film being wasted, all at enormous expense – often proved taxing for Chaplin who, in frustration, would
Charlie Chaplin filmography re-issued with soundtracks. "City Lights" (1931) and "Modern Times" (1936) were essentially silent films, although they were made with soundtracks consisting of music and sound effects, with talking sequences in the latter film. Chaplin's last five films were all talking pictures. Aside from "A Countess From Hong Kong", all of Chaplin's films were photographed in 35mm black-and-white. Except where otherwise referenced, the release dates, character names, and annotations presented here are derived from Chaplin's autobiography, Robinson's book, and "The Films of Charlie Chaplin" (1965) by Gerald D. McDonald, Michael Conway, and Mark Ricci. Chaplin appeared in 36 films for Keystone