Book Review of Chaplin: Genius of the Cinema

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Chaplin: Genius of the Cinema by Jeffrey Vance

The thing that most sticks out about Chaplin: Genius of the Cinema is that it's a large book - both in terms of sheer size (400 pages, 1.26" x 12.14" x 9.32") and contents (500 photographs, beautifully reproduced, as well as excellent text content as well). It's the best photographic biography of Chaplin available, even better than Charlie Chaplin by Michael Comte. The book has an introduction by David Robinson (Chaplin's biographer, the author of Chaplin: His Life and Art) and includes Richard Meryman's 1966 interview with Chaplin as an appendix, as well as a highly detailed bibliography and filmography.

Book Description of Chaplin: Genius of the Cinema

Charlie Chaplin (1889-1977), an immortal of the silver screen, was perhaps the greatest comic genius the world has known. To this day his beloved creation the Tramp remains the most universal representation of humanity in the history of film. Noted film historian and silent-comedy authority Jeffrey Vance has drawn on exhaustive research and interviews with those who knew Chaplin to produce this definitive illustrated account. Composed with full access to the Chaplin family archives, the book chronicles his entire complex life story and his creative process in 500 photographs, many of them rare and recently discovered, newly printed from the original negatives especially for this volume.

Describing the appeal of the Tramp, Chaplin wrote: "This fellow is many-sided-a tramp, a gentleman, a poet, a dreamer, a lonely fellow, always hopeful of romance and adventure." The description also befits the artist himself, who endured a deprived childhood in late-Victorian London, numerous romances and four marriages, and political persecution during the anticommunist witch hunts, while leaving a legacy of 75 remarkable years of creative accomplishment. This third Abrams book by Jeffrey Vance on silent-film comedians coincides with the major international video/DVD release of newly restored Chaplin films.

About the Author of Chaplin: Genius of the Cinema

Jeffrey Vance, a film historian and authority on silent-film comedy who has been involved in the restoration of many silent films, is the author of Abrams' Buster Keaton Remembered and Harold Lloyd: Master Comedian . He collaborated on two previous books on Charlie Chaplin (Wife of the Life of the Party, Making Music with Charlie Chaplin). Vance lives in Los Angeles.