During the moving final scene of his film ‘Modern Times’ (1936), Charlie Chaplin (1889-1977) shows a picture of a man and a woman. She is crying. He moves his finger to the corner of his mouth, draws a smile, and conjures up a smile on her face. In the end they walk away, hand in hand, on their journey to the horizon and to an unknown future. During this final image, a melody that later was given the title ‘Smile’ is being played. As with many of his films, Chaplin composed this music himself. ‘Smile’ is also the culmination of the works collected on this release. They make up a unity around a song cycle by the Belgian composer Godfried Devreese (1893-1962), written during the horrors of the First World War.
