Charlie Chaplin appeared in more than 80 films over the course of his roughly 75-year career. But I had to travel to Switzerland to see this one from the 1960s: A home movie in which the silent film star, white-haired and in his 70s, skips playfully on the front lawn of his estate, holding hands with two of his young children. The black-and-white scene jumps to the great comedian dining with several of his brood, each spooning soup in comic unison, then to Chaplin, wide-eyed, a hat levitating magically above his head to the family’s delight. He is rounder than his film character, the Little Tramp, but he remains impish, a child among his own children.

That is the personal portrait that emerges from Chaplin’s last home, the 37-acre estate, Manoir de Ban, in the small Swiss Riviera town of Corsier-sur-Vevey, about 55 miles northeast of Geneva, where he lived from 1953 until his death in 1977. Restored and refashioned into a museum last spring, it is part of the new complex on the grounds known as Chaplin’s World that includes an immersive cinema museum devoted to his professional achievements, and a restaurant that serves fish and chips in a nod to his London boyhood.

It seems fitting that Chaplin, a perfectionist and multi-tasker, chose Switzerland, a country famous for precision in everything from luxury watches to Roger Federer’s backhand, as his retirement home.