Chaplin

A Life

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by Stephen Weissman

Type

Biographies

Subject

Director > Charlie Chaplin

Keywords

Charlie Chaplin, biography

Publishing date

2011

Publisher

Arcade Publishing

Language

English

Relative size

Physical desc.

Paperback • 315 pages
6 ¼ x 9 inches (16 x 23 cm)

ISBN

978-1-61145-040-8

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Book Presentation:
“Chaplin is arguably the single most important artist produced by the cinema,” wrote film critic Andrew Sarris. Born in London in 1889, Charlie Chaplin grew up in dire poverty. Severe alcoholism cut short his father's flourishing career, and his beloved mother first lost her voice, then her mind, to syphilis. How did this poor, lonely child, committed to the Hanwell School for the Orphaned and Destitute, become such an extraordinary comedian, known and celebrated worldwide? Dr. Stephen M. Weissman brilliantly illuminates both the screen legend himself and the turbulent era that shaped him.

Press Reviews:
From Publishers Weekly : Weissman, professor at the Washington School of Psychiatry, examines Charlie Chaplin's life and work from a psychoanalytical perspective. Believing in using a life to read a film and a film to read a life, Weissman focuses on Chaplin's childhood and early career, giving scant attention to his later adult life. Most telling is the relationship with his mother. Her madness, brought on by starvation and syphilis, Weissman believes, manifests itself in Chaplin's films with a recurring theme: the rescue of a downtrodden female. For example, City Lights is a childhood rescue fantasy of saving his parents, while Limelight is filled with references to his alcoholic father. Weissman uncovers the source for the shabby gentility of the Little Tramp, as well as the development of that extraordinary character. En route, he paints an engaging if narrowly focused portrait of how a cinema artist is created and how he practices his craft. (Jan.) Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

Press Reviews:
Psychiatrist Weissman offers a fascinating, analytic portrait of a most complex man, who from 1915 to the mid-1930s was the most famous person in the world. Chaplin's near-Dickensian childhood was one of squalid poverty in London. Both parents were in show business, and alcoholism and syphilis blighted their lives. At seven, Charlie was committed to the Hanwell School for Orphans and Destitute Children. According to Weissman, Chaplin recreated his painful childhood over and over in his movies, especially through the adventures of Chaplin's archetypal film persona, the Little Tramp, the comical and lovable Everyman who never gives up. Weissman finds many parallels between Chaplin's upbringing and what he presented on the big screen; indeed, he maintains that the films are deeply personal statements reflecting the formative influence of early poverty on his artistic development. Besides being a captivating psychological study of a seminal figure in motion-picture history, the book is an engaging survey of early Hollywood filmmaking. --June Sawyers

External link
Book presentation: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/femail/article-1233081/The-dark-secrets-Charlie-Chaplins-mother-fired-genius.html

See the publisher website: Arcade Publishing

See the complete filmography of Charlie Chaplin on the website: IMDB ...