I think you have to like Chaplin to get through this book. I love Chaplin. So I'm glad there's a biography so thorough as this one, that collects in 632 pages and 100 pages of appendices pretty much every thing you might want to know about him.
It took me a while to get through (partly because I kept going to youtube to watch films as I was reading those parts, and watching the 3-episode Unknown Chaplin, which BBC production came out around the same time as this book and is almost a companion piece to it).
The book breaks down into two main parts - his childhood and his movies. His childhood is like a Dickens novel until he gets on a tour of the US with the Karno troupe. After he gets into movie making, the periods of his life are defined by his contracts (for the two-reeler periods), and then by each movie he made (once he was his own boss). The man lived his work.
So, if you want to know if you should read this book, and you've never seen The Gold Rush or The Kid or Shoulder Arms or A Dog's Life or The Pilgrim or City Lights or Modern Times, watch one or two of them first. If you're blown away, and you think about the fact that he directed and wrote them and scored them as well as starring in them, go ahead and seek this book out.
It took me a while to get through (partly because I kept going to youtube to watch films as I was reading those parts, and watching the 3-episode Unknown Chaplin, which BBC production came out around the same time as this book and is almost a companion piece to it).
The book breaks down into two main parts - his childhood and his movies. His childhood is like a Dickens novel until he gets on a tour of the US with the Karno troupe. After he gets into movie making, the periods of his life are defined by his contracts (for the two-reeler periods), and then by each movie he made (once he was his own boss). The man lived his work.
So, if you want to know if you should read this book, and you've never seen The Gold Rush or The Kid or Shoulder Arms or A Dog's Life or The Pilgrim or City Lights or Modern Times, watch one or two of them first. If you're blown away, and you think about the fact that he directed and wrote them and scored them as well as starring in them, go ahead and seek this book out.
