Chaplin: The Tramp's Odyssey (Louvish Hollywood Biographies) - Softcover

Simon Louvish

Softcover

ISBN 10: 156656011X ISBN 13: 9781566560115

Synopsis

An essential volume for understanding Chaplins body of work. An Everyman who expressed the defiant spirit of freedom, Charlie Chaplin was first lauded and later reviled in the America that made him Hollywoods richest man. He was a figure of multiple paradoxes. Simon Louvishs book looks afresh at the mask behind the man. Louvish charts the tale of the Tramp himself through his films, from the early Mack Sennett shorts through the major features (The Gold Rush, City Lights, Modern Times, The Great Dictator, et al.). He retrieves Chaplin as the iconic London street kid who carried the surreal antics of early British music hall triumphantly onto the Hollywood screen. Louvish also looks anew at Chaplins and the Tramps social and political ideasthe challenge to fascism, defiance of the McCarthyite witch hunts, eventual exile, and last mature disguises as the serial killer Monsieur Verdoux and the dying English clown Calvero in Limelight. This book is an epic journey, summing up the roots of comedy and its appeal to audiences everywhere, who reveled in the clowns raw energy, his ceaseless struggle against adversity, and his capacity to represent our own fears, foibles, dreams, inner demons and hopes.

About this title

About the Author

Simon Louvish is a biographer of comedians, and author of satirical and outrageous fiction, a part-time film teacher at the London Film School, and a film screenwriter. He is married and lives in Fulham, London.

Edition details

• Publication date: 2018
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 156656011X
• ISBN 13: 9781566560115
• Binding: Paperback
• Number of pages: 432