Published: 16 September 2010
by GERALD ISAAMAN

OSCAR winners aren’t known for being camera shy – but 72-year-old Kevin Brownlow is an exception to the rule. 

The Hampstead resident is the first film historian to be awarded an honorary Oscar by the Hollywood’s Academy of Motion Pictures and Sciences – but he prefers not to provide a photo of himself, even at this moment of glory.

A pioneering silent film historian, author and documentary film maker, Brownlow will be off to Hollywood in November to receive his golden statue.

Announcing the awards, Academy president Tom Sherak said: “Each one of these honorees has touched movie audiences worldwide and influenced the motion picture industry through their work.”

Brownlow says he was “pole-axed” when he heard the news. 

“I no longer make films,” he explained, “and even when I did, an Oscar was the very last thing I had on my mind.”

The award – which has gone in the past to Orson Welles, Akira Kurosawa and Lauren Bacall – comes at an appropriate moment. For Brownlow has just published a new book that shows his dedication in discovering the truth about an icon of the silent era, Charlie Chaplin.

It stands brilliantly alongside some of Brownlow’s previous works: his 1968 book on silent film, The Parade’s Gone By; his television series Hollywood: A Celebration of the American Silent Film; and, in particular, The Unknown Chaplin, the three-part series he made for Thames TV in 1983.

Brownlow recalls: “The first Chaplin film I remember was the 1942 reissue of The Gold Rush at the Everyman, and finding the scene where the dance hall girls fail to turn up at his party incredibly sad. I should think I was seven or eight at the time. 

“My daughter was the same sort of age when I showed her Chaplin’s The Kid and she found the scene of Jackie Coogan being taken to the orphanage unbearably sad. ‘Didn’t you like the amusing bits?’ I asked. ‘What amusing bits?’ she sniffed.”

But while Chaplin understood pathos, comedy was at his heart. 

Director King Vidor, one the many Chaplin contemporaries Brownlow has interviewed, recalls in the book: “I remember one time Chaplin was illustrating his sense of comedy, and he said that some comedians would be content to have a scene walking into a room, and have one gag in the scene. Chaplin’s approach was to have six gags, one on entering, one on closing the door, a couple as he crossed the room and two more gags opening the other door. That was his goal.”

Yet the tragedy is – and it is undoubtedly the message of Brownlow’s masterful and fascinating book – is that millions have missed the magic of Chaplin’s true talents. 

That’s because his films were deliberately shot for the big screen, to be seen by mass audiences – not on tiny television screens, where research has shown that the hysterical laughter of the cinema is rarely recreated.

“Let us hope that the great Chaplin films will return to the cinema, where they belong, and that they will be watched by large and appreciative audiences,” writes Brownlow. 

“All it needs is the proper climate. To help create that climate is the purpose of this book.”

• The Search for Charlie Chaplin. By Kevin Brownlow. UKA Press, £9.99.
• Unknown Chaplin is available from moviemail-online.co.uk and from amazon.co.uk