It's the sort of performance that should have had directors falling over themselves to cast him in dramatic roles. Whether it was that the movie bombed or that he still carried the taint of Brat Pack, Downey wound up doing mostly comedies for the next few years. The majority of them ("Heart and Souls," 1993, "Only You," 1994) are forgettable, one of them (the 1991 TV spoof "Soapdish") is hilarious and one (James Toback's 1987 "The Pick-Up Artist") is unexpectedly lovely. It turned out to be a great opportunity, as Downey turned into the most gifted farceur in contemporary movies.

The mistake often made with acting in farce is attempting to whip things into a frenzy instead of just allowing yourself to be swept into the whirlwind. Downey eases into farce, as if he were at home with chaos. He's not so much a still center as an elastic one, bending with each new complication, trying to keep responding to every new situation as, drop-jawed, he struggles to comprehend it. Downey is one of the few farce performers who has learned the secret of not wearing out the audience. His relaxation, even at his most frenzied, means that you don't stop laughing before the climax, as can happen too often in farce.

Nothing shows off his comic talent better than the 1989 romantic comedy "Chances Are," a picture he alone saves from being utterly forgettable. Downey plays an aspiring young reporter who discovers that he is actually the reincarnation of Cybill Shepherd's beloved dead husband. It complicates things that Shepherd's daughter (Mary Stuart Masterson) is falling for him. The highlight of Downey's performance is a long sequence where he's brought home to Shepherd's place for dinner and enters an extended state of déjà vu. Downey makes a repeated joke out of nonchalantly recognizing the surroundings and then frightening himself because he doesn't know how he's recognized them -- and it's funnier each time. (Trying to calm himself down, he walks around the living room where he notices an oil painting over the mantel: "Oh, it's a picture of Uncle Marsh ... Who the hell is Uncle Marsh?")

Downey's face -- the paleness, the huge, inky eyes -- had always seemed slightly out of its time, expressive enough for silent movies. That must have been part of what Richard Attenborough was thinking when he cast Downey as Charlie Chaplin in his 1992 biopic. Charlie Chaplin belongs to the group of phenomenal talents whom the public loves but whose overweening neediness can make repellent (Judy Garland is another). None of this occurred to Attenborough, for whom Chaplin is a man persectued for espousing "brotherhood," a figure fit to take his place beside Gandhi and Steve Biko in "Sir Dickie's Lives of the Saints." Downey makes the movie something else: the story of a wounded monster. It's a great performance, as emotionally complex and layered as the movie is simplistic.

Downey's physical comedy is superb. He is remarkably agile at re-creating the drunk routine that Chaplin developed in British music halls (and later showed off in his two reeler "One A.M."). But it's his insight into the core of Chaplin's character that shapes the entire performance. Downey plays Chaplin as a man who demands love but is emotionally cut off, unable to feel for anyone as much as he can feel for himself. Downey plunges into the divide between the screen image of the Little Tramp and Chaplin, the off-screen grandee, basking in the obsequiousness of the people who once spurned him.

Time and again, Downey upsets the simplistic meanings Attenborough settles for. Attenborough re-creates the plea for world peace that ends "The Great Dictator" as if it were proof of Chaplin the great humanitarian. He forgets that the focus of the scene -- a huge, unwavering close-up of Chaplin -- tells the real story. Somehow, Downey captures the egotism that sails over Attenborough's head, by the gleam in his eye that tells you how thrilled he is to be the center of attention, by the rising note of monomania in his voice. Attenborough wants to show us Chaplin as the anti-fascist artist bravely taking on Hitler; Downey shows us a man perturbed by an upstart who's had the temerity to swipe his mustache. The whole performance comes together in the final scenes where Downey, done up in aging makeup to play Chaplin in his 70s, returns to America for the first time since his deportation to accept an honorary Oscar. Sitting backstage as he waits to go on, he breaks into tears watching a montage of his clips, and you have the sense of watching a closed circuit upon which no accolade can intrude -- the Little Tramp rewarded with tears by his perfect audience.

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