Chaplan recalls "his boyhood; the early, casual days of the movies; how he evolved his style, his costumes, his plots, his sudden dazzling success; how he chose his leading ladies; his encounters with great stars and world figures, from Mary Pickford to Gandhi to Bernard Shaw to FDR; his emotional involvements and his four marriages . . . and the political accusations that made him decide to leave the United States."

A hapless factory worker cracks under the strain of his job and is sent off in a paddy wagon. He then finds himself unemployed, on the streets of Depression America, where he befriends a young woman fleeing childcare authorities, and they embark on a misadventure-filled search for happiness. An imaginative, often slapstick satire on the alienating and disruptive effects of mass production and automation. Charlie Chaplin, in his last portrayal of...