As the liner steams out of New York, Chaplin is told he will not be allowed back into the US on account of his suspect politics.

Photos: Snap StillsRex Features Citizen cane Robert Downey Jr in Chaplin (1992).

Childhood The film begins with Chaplins grim childhood in Victorian London, complete with an absentee father, a mentally ill mother (played by Geraldine Chaplin, the granddaughter of the real thing) and a stint in the workhouse.

One night, when his mother sings in a music-hall show, her voice fails.

Much though this rise-to-fame story sounds too good to be true, it is what Chaplin described in his autobiography.

Love Chaplin (1992) Photograph: Snap StillsRex Features In adulthood, Chaplin is played by Robert Downey Jr.

The film makes a big deal of the 19-year-old Chaplins infatuation with Hetty Kelly (Moira Kelly), a 15-year-old dancer.

The real Chaplin also made a big deal of this in his dotage, recalling Kelly as a formative love from whose loss he never entirely recovered.

Several biographers have seized upon this convenient story to explain his lifelong weakness for slightly alarmingly young girls.

Its a simplistic theory that avoids delving into the mans character at all.

Marriage Chaplin (1992) Photograph: Snap StillsRex Features Chaplin heads off to the United States and accepts an offer to star in motion pictures.

In California, he comes up with the character that would define him: the Little Tramp.

At a party with Douglas Fairbanks (Kevin Kline, perfectly cast) and Mary Pickford (Maria Pitillo), he spots Mildred Harris (Milla Jovovich).

Chaplin swiftly married her before finding out that she wasnt.

Within a month or two of the wedding, she was but the baby survived for just three days.

Religion Chaplin (1992) Photograph: Snap StillsRex Features The film follows Chaplin through City Lights, The Kid, The Gold Rush, Modern Times and a couple more marriages to very young women.

At a Hollywood party in the 1930s, he encounters a visiting Nazi and refuses to shake his hand.

Another guest remarks, Youll have to forgive him.

Hes a Jew. Chaplin replies sharply: Im afraid I dont have that honour.

Chaplin was often presumed (and sometimes claimed) to be Jewish.

Both the FBI and MI5 investigated whether he was really a French Jew called Israel Thornstein a rumour spread by Nazi sympathisers.

He wasnt. The film is right that J Edgar Hoovers FBI were really trying to prove that Chaplin was a communist.

Again, he wasnt. Unlike some in Hollywood, though, Chaplin was disgusted by Adolf Hitlers politics from the beginning prompting him to make The Great Dictator.

Politics Chaplin (1992) Photograph: Moviestore CollectionRex Features Aged 53, Chaplin meets the love of his life: 17-year-old Oona ONeill, daughter of the playwright Eugene ONeill.

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