Customer Reviews

Charlie Chaplin and His Times

5 star:		(2)
4 star:		(2)
3 star:		(2)
2 star:		(4)
1 star:		(3)

 

 

Kenneth S. Lynn's "Charlie Chaplin and His Times" is an almost-unmitigated piece of ugly character assassination. Focusing obsessively on Chaplin's romantic/sexual liaisons and his "radical-left" politics, it is not Mr. Chaplin so much as Mr. Lynn himself who ends up as the unlikeable figure: narrow-minded, prudish, politically-unbalanced and, ultimately, unfair. By the book's midpoint, the only reason to continue reading is to marvel at the insidious viciousness with which Lynn pretends to accurately portray Chaplin [a task which pays dividends on nearly every page]. Chaplin was surely no saint, but Lynn's account allows Chaplin no quarter, continually twisting incidents in such a way as to render Chaplin as little more than a libido-driven, communist-duped, ungrateful egotist-and while these elements may have been present in the man, obviously he was much more. Lynn gives us precious little of the "more." To add to the book's ineffectiveness, it offers few insights into Chaplin's films themselves. Scrambling for a positive statement about the book, the best thing one can say is that it is rather gracefully-written. In sum, Kenneth S. Lynn's biography of Charlie Chaplin is a one-sided, mean-spirited, entirely unsympathetic book which does no one any good. Not recommended.

This book is factually wonderful. More details about Chaplin's life are discussed here than in other bios. But, I gradually wondered what it was that was bothering me about the writing. Suddenly it dawned on me. Kenneth Lynn hates Chaplin! I dont know why, but there is an overwhelming sense that he is doing his best to knock Chaplin down wherever he can, but Chaplin's genius is always sticking it to him in the end. Read with the knowledge that the author is in no way in love with his subject (a strange concept to be sure) this book can be read through and enjoyed with reservations. Without realizing this fact though, the reader can get a very unfair view of Chaplin.

The best thing I can say about this biography by Kenneth Lynn is that counterbalances the 1992 biopic of Chaplin's life. In this film, Robert Downey Jr portrayed Chaplin as an artist-hero who was martyred by the political right. While the Chaplin movie didn't ring particularly true for me, Lynn's biography appears to go too far in the opposite direction. This biography is not about Chaplin the Tramp, Chaplin the filmmaker, Chaplin the comic. Its about Chaplin the sputtering, spastic tyrant, Chaplin the felon, Chaplin the sex fiend, Chaplin the Red.

This book reads more like an indictment than a biography. Lynn makes his case persistently and repetitiously. He grants weight to negative accounts of Chaplin's character while positive accounts are brushed aside, or are relegated to the footnotes. (A typical example: Lynn gives an account of the problematic relations between Chaplin and Brando. Lynn relies on Brando's account of an interaction between the two men, which reveals Chaplin as a petty tyrant. Then, in the footnote Lynn slips in a completely contradictory account of the same incident by another source. The footnoted source, which depicts Chaplin in a much more favorable light, seems far more credible than Brando's. Lynn repeatedly dismisses the veracity of Chaplin's autobiography. But when he comes to Brando - now there's a reliable memoirist!)

In some cases, Lynn delivers jabs at his subject which seem quite pointless (for example, Lynn states that Chaplin "ignorantly" named his Modern Times heroine the Gamin. (the word is correctly spelled gamine). To me, this sort of criticism seems petty and overly personal. In sum, this mean spirited and poorly informed biography of Charlie Chaplin can be safely bypassed. David Robinson's Chaplin biography remains the primary recommendation.

This will be short because much of what I have to say echoes previous reviews. Kenneth Lynn dislikes Chaplin to the the extent that he has written a biography of the man that is patently unfair and one-sided. Lynn is often shameful in attributing hateful and narcissistic motives to as many of Chaplin's career and life decisions as he can. Lynn focuses obsessively on Chaplin's sordid sex life at the expense of his exquisite art. (Lynn doesn't know much about film, it is clear). Lynn writes of Chaplin's political leanings in terms that would make all but red-baiting Joseph McCarthy, the Junior Senator from Wisconsin, blush. Its almost as though through Lynn, McCarthy has returned from the grave. Read this book only if David Robinson's "Chaplin: His Life and Art" remains out of print, and then read it skeptically and as a last resort.

I received Prof. Kenneth Lynn's biography CHARLIE CHAPLIN AND HIS TIMES as a gift from my father and am hence tempted to give it a higher rating out of sentimental reasons. Sentiment or not, one star seems kind. This might be the essential Misery Biography, given the fact that its subject was hardly that miserable a character. Don't get me wrong; Charlie Chaplin was clearly an extraordinarily complex man, whose life as the most famous film star on the globe resulted in a series of well-publicized scandals. I won't deny that these scandals are required for a biographer to cover, and I have read enough books on Chaplin to not be too shocked when his troubled traits are discussed. What bothers me with Lynn's take on it all, is that he fails to bring any substance into his discussions of these traits, but has instead chosen the easy way out; to systematically badmouth Chaplin to the point of ridiculous. He presents unflattering rumors of the comedian as though they were facts, never doubting their sources, while he at the same time constantly puts the credibility of Chaplin's memoirs to question even for the most irrelevant detail. His crisp writing may fool some into believing that his mission is to tell Charlie Chaplin's life story, but a closer examination of the book reveals its true purpose: to disguise his hunger for sensationalism behind intellectual language. An obvious example is the chapter on the making of THE GOLD RUSH; this film was one of Chaplin's greatest artistic and commercial triumphs, and many critics still consider it the most phenomenal comedy produced to date. During the making of the film, however, Chaplin went through a difficult time as he married his second wife Lita Grey, an unfortunate event which reportedly had Chaplin once sneering at his young bride, "Why don't you jump off the train?" Consequently, the chapter covering one of Chaplin's greatest films is titled "Why don't you jump?"

As in most of the book, in the "Jump"-chapter Chaplin comes off as little more than a sexist and a tyrant. This description might have had some truth to it at the time, but anyone making a study of the event should keep in mind that even Lita herself admitted late in life to have made up or exaggerated several of her accussasions against Chaplin; well, Lynn doesn't keep that in mind. When Lita claims that Chaplin called her a "gold-digging wh-re," it's true. Lita and her family, on their part, never did a single thing wrong. They were simply some poor victims of a monster with money. I would have been able to accept that view, though, if it wasn't for the fact that Lynn tries to make us believe that Chaplin acted the same way in all of his relationships with women. Even his final marriage with Oona comes off as a thoroughly depressing mess. There's no doubt that Charlie and Oona did fight occasionally; I don't buy that their union of thirty-five years was as fairytale-like as some biographies lead us to believe. But here, again, instead of using the opportunity to give readers a balanced view of their marriage by admitting there were troubles despite great happiness, Lynn chooses to DWELL on the negative aspects, as if their relationship was as wrecked as the Lita Grey-affair but somehow, miraculously, sustained. Another obvious example on Lynn's tendency to precedence the negative rather than the positive is when he quotes Marlon Brando as saying that he found Chaplin to be "the most sadistic man I'd ever met." Brando did indeed say so in his memoirs, but what Lynn never grants a mention, despite being perfectly relevant in context to the text, is that the actor at the same time praised Chaplin as "probably the greatest genius the [movie] medium has ever produced."

Yes, Lynn is eager to tell us what a monster some people seem to have thought of Chaplin to be. I use the phrase "..SEEM to.." because I suspect his presentations of certain quotations to be misleading. For instance, he quotes Geraldine Chaplin as saying that the children at home were only permitted to watch Chaplin-films, as though Chaplin's narcissistic nature could not bear to have his offspring realize that there were other films out there. I've seen an interview with Geraldine (or possibly another Chaplin-child) telling this story in a jocular manner, recalling the reason behind it as simply being that Chaplin himself preferred to watch his own films because he was greatly fond of them, like any proud artist would be.

Worst of all, though, Lynn reveals a lack of insight into Chaplin's work as well which is a bit surprising coming from such a respected writer. Other reviewers have commented Lynn's remark that Chaplin "unknowingly" spelled the word "Gamine" sans the "E" in MODERN TIMES. Moreover he describes the comedian's famous final speech in THE GREAT DICTATOR as "flapdoodle," apparently unable to recognize that Chaplin with this speech probably CHOSE to express himself through simple language which could not only be understood by intellectuals such as author Lynn himself, but by the whole world, irrelevant of age, nation and education. Furthermore Lynn draws parallels between Chaplin's work and sex life which are not only weakly argued for but really quite pointless, unless you find interest in ALL sex-related discussions irrelevant of purpose and credibility.

You get it? Stay away from this brick of crap and go for Chaplin's autobiography instead, as well as David Robinson's and Charlie Chaplin Jr.'s books. They're generally as well written, and do without exception provide more substance into one page than this book does in some five hundred.

For anyone who has read David Robinson's definitive biography on Chaplin there is nothing new in Kenneth Lynn's "Charlie Chaplin and his Times," unless you wish, as the author seems to, that Chaplin was convicted for all the crimes he was actually acquitted of. The author attempts to support his preposterous thesis that every move Chaplin ever made was either a conscious or subconscious response to his mother's mental illness. There is nothing about creative or technical process here, only a 1920's prudishness and '50's red-baiting mentality. Many of the author's interpretations of sexual symbolism in Chaplin's early films are truly not for the squeamish.

It is not until late in the book that Lynn's true aim in writing about Chaplin becomes clear. It is not, as the title implies, an attempt to seat Chaplin's work in the social context of the world around him. Instead it is, along with Joyce Milton's "Tramp," another attempt to correct the left-wing view of Chaplin as an innocent well-meaning artist driven out of America by philistine witch hunters. Unfortunately, like Milton, Lynn goes much too far in the other direction. For instance, he credits such dubious sources as Joan Barry's FBI statement and testimony before the House Un-American Activities Committee with far more validity than they can bear. By the end, it becomes obvious that Lynn has dug into every source that can present Chaplin as a politically-hypocritical sexual monster. That he might have been, but Lynn's bias is so obvious that it becomes impossible to get near the truth.

.....this is about him and the times he lived in. This is the first book about Chaplin
I've read since his autobiography was snuck around my junior high school in the mid-60s.
At that time, all we cared about were the "naught" bits. I've thoroughly enjoyed the film
Chaplin, but was totally astonished to see how much of the film was
complete invention after reading this and doing more research.
Lynn's looking at late-Victorian London, and Chaplin's upbringing seems pretty spot on,
and if Chaplin had the wool pulled over his eyes by the Russian Revolution, he was not the
only American progressive guilty of that. Lynn's synopsis of the 1919 Seattle General Strike
is also right on. Two of my favorite parts of the film 'Chaplin' are his relationship with
Douglas Fairbanks, and the making of the film The Kid (1921) [Remastered Edition],
and I wasn't disappointed here. I just re-watched 'The Kid', and loved it.
If you love Chaplin for his film work, and don't want to see his feet of clay, don't read this.
If you want a picture of much of what made Chaplin tick, by all means read this.

Edward Steichen's mesmerizing portrait of Chaplin in 1925 that graces the dustjacket is almost worth the price of the book. However, the quality is downhill from there. I cannot say the same about Chaplin's life and work after 1925, however. Once again, a Chaplin biographer seems compelled to create a gimmick or sexy angle from which to approach Chaplin since the definitive biography remains David Robinson's _Chaplin: His Life and Art_, and the best way to learn about Chaplin (and insodoing yourself) is to watch his wonderful movies. Refrain from languishing with author Lynn in psychobabble and politically conservative views. His focus on sex in Chaplin's life and Charlie's films reveals more about the author than his subject matter. Several of his sexual interpretations are laughable. He seems to forget that the gags that are sexual in nature are funny -- as simple as that. Many times Lynn's descriptions of scenes from Chaplin' films are wrong. On the positive side, he does praise Chaplin the artist and presents some interesting analyses of his movies, but his desire to come up with something unique in the very long list of Chaplin biographers, commentators, and analysts leads him astray

Lynn's is the best bio I've ever read. But, when the title says "And His Times", he really means it. During many of the episodes in Chaplin's life, the author spills into historical dialog, some of which does'nt really have to do with The Tramp at all. In other words, instead of coming in at 544 pages, it should have been about 480.

There is a lot of detail and regardless of how much you think you knew about Chaplin, you will still find it facinating. Even if you don't care for Chaplin but have an interest in the roots of American filmmaking, I highly recommend it.<BR