The new film form was perfectly adapted to this composite 
image, since film is itself a jerky mechanical ballet of flicks that 
yields a sheer dream world of romantic illusions. But the film 
form is not just a puppetlike dance of arrested still shots, for it 
manages to approximate and even to surpass real life by 
means of illusion. That is why Chaplin, in his silent pictures at 
least, was never tempted to abandon the Cyrano role of the 
puppet who could never really be a lover. In this stereotype 
Chaplin discovered the heart of the film illusion, and he 
manipulated that heart with easy mastery, as the key to the 
pathos of a mechanized civilization. A mechanized world is 
always in the process of getting ready to live, and to this end it 
brings to bear the most appalling pomp of skill and method and 
resourcefulness.

     The film pushed this mechanism to the utmost