Play it with a smile

The most important film composer of the 20th century and beyond? Williams? Guðnadóttir? Steiner? I have another candidate: Charles Spencer Chaplin.

- MARIA CORTE MAIDAGAN

Chaplin wrote, directed and starred in his films, from The Kid to The Great Dictator, and changed the iconography of the 20th century forever. But he was also a composer who wrote and controlled a great deal of the music for his movies, in and out of the silent era.

Yet for many, Chaplin's work as a composer still requires a caveat: he didn't actually 'write' the scores because he wasn't trained to read music; and he needed a team of arrangers to realise his musical dreams. It's an argument filled with hypocrisy: no one says to Paul McCartney that he's 'not a composer' because he can't read music; Hans Zimmer employs more than 200 people who are involved in producing his scores. Chaplin's collaborative model of composition is simply what happens in Hollywood's studios, then and now.