Charlie Chaplin, Director

Charlie Chaplin was one of the cinema's consummate comic performers, yet he has long been criticized as a lackluster film director. In this groundbreaking work--the first to analyze Chaplin's directorial style--Donna Kornhaber radically recasts his status as a filmmaker. Spanning Chaplin's career, Kornhaber discovers a sophisticated "Chaplinesque" visual style that draws from early cinema and slapstick and stands markedly apart from later, "classical" stylistic conventions. His is a manner of filmmaking that values space over time and simultaneity over sequence, crafting narrative and meaning through careful arrangement within the frame rather than cuts between frames. Opening up aesthetic possibilities beyond the typical boundaries of the classical Hollywood film, Chaplin's filmmaking would profoundly influence directors from Fellini to Truffaut. To view Chaplin seriously as a director is to re-understand him as an artist and to reconsider the nature and breadth of his legacy.

Binding Type: Paperback
Publisher: Northwestern University Press
Published: 03/05/2014
ISBN: 9780810129528
Pages: 374
Weight: 1.32lbs
Size: 9.00h x 6.09w x 0.91d

Review Citations: New York Times Book Review 06/29/2014 pg. 30
Choice 02/01/2015 pg. 980