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
Unknown Chaplin actress during filming. A compilation of alternate takes illustrates how Chaplin slowly developed the story line of "The Immigrant". The film was narrated by James Mason, and original music was scored and conducted by Carl Davis. PBS distributed the series in the United States in 1986 as part of the series "American Masters". In the 2005 DVD release of the series, Brownlow relates some of "Unknown Chaplin"'s backstory. In 2010, Brownlow published a book on the making of the documentary titled "The Search for Charlie Chaplin". Unknown Chaplin Unknown Chaplin is an acclaimed three-part 1983 British documentary series about the