„A group of charming Chinese children are laughing gaily.
The group is presented in „different shots“. Close-up. Medium shot. Again close-up.
What are they laughing at?
Perhaps at what is taking place deep in the room.
What is it they see?
A man (probably drunk) lies sprawling on the bed. A small Chinese woman furiously slaps his face. The children roar with laughter.
Although the man is their own father. And the little woman their mother. And the big man is not drunk. And the little woman is not slapping her husband because he is drunk.
The man is dead.
She is beating the dead man for dying and deserting her and the little children who are now laughing merrily but who will have nothing to eat.
This is not from a Chaplin film.
This is a passage form La condition humaine by Andre Malraux.
Whenever I think of Chaplin I always see him as a little Chinese boy laughing merrily at the sight of the grotesquely wobbling head of the big man as the little woman slaps him.“

Eisenstein - Notes of a film director