Charlie Chaplin, Director

Charlie Chaplin was one of the cinemas consummate comic performers, yet he has long been criticised as a lacklustre film director. In this groundbreaking workthe first to analyse Chaplins directorial styleDonna Kornhaber radically recasts his status as a filmmaker. Spanning Chaplins 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, Chaplins 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. See more