Customer Reviews

THE LIFE AND WORK OF ERROL FLYNN: A PSYCHOANALYTICAL BIOGRAPHY

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This is a book that really didn't have to be. Divided basically into two parts, the first half is a short retelling of Flynn's life. The second half is a discussion of each of his films, including ratings, backstage gossip and sometimes a discussion of the film's historical accuracy. I got the book because it seemed that the combination of Psychoanalytical in the title and the mysterious authorial name (only a first initial and the author never provides any of his own credentials) meant that this was a slumming psychologist who would really give a clinical analysis of what ailed Flynn. Instead what this seems to be is just someone who is a big fan of Flynn's screen image and probably tries to identify with him, giving him the delusion that he is the only one to really understand Flynn. One sees much the same thing with the myriad books on Marilyn Monroe. But he seems to no more be a psychologist than I am. There is no true diagnosis here, only the obvious comments many could make from reading other books on Flynn. I might suggest here the Myers book which is far more thorough or the one by Conrad who at least spent a lot of time with Flynn, or even Flynn's ghost written (by Conrad) autobiography. As to the second half, his opinions are interesting, but not more so than anyone else's. He clearly hasn't even bothered to even see all the films and there are no pictures, making this far inferior to The Complete Films of Errol Flynn. The author doesn't seem to have a great command of English and typos and mistakes in this self-published work are common, once the word "flayed" being used where "flailed" was meant. Even worse, he has a meandering style that states a point, then winds back to it again, repeating it, often more than once, using almost the same words. It's not surprising that no real publisher would touch this.

At first I must say that I expected this to be a more indepth analytic review of Errol Flynn's life. While I was somewhat disappointed in the analyses, it does represent an interesting first look at his life from a psychoanalytic perspective. What is also good about this book is the authors discussion of the Flynn movie legacy although being a "Flynn fan" I was quite uncertain as to how the author arrived at such questionnable ratings of Flynn's movies. Find a used book if your expectations are high but enjoy a human perspective that the author brings to it.