The Charlie Chaplin Archive
Edited by Paul Duncan
Taschen £60.00

“A LITTLE Englishman, quiet, unassuming, but surcharged with dynamite, is influencing the world right now … the world has Chaplinitis … but, for the life of you, you can’t analyse the reason.”

Since this 1915 journalistic assessment, a myriad books have attempted to understand the phenomenal achievement of a man whose name was, through the first quarter of the last century, better known internationally than that of Jesus Christ.

At first, what appears to be an imposing coffee table book from the Cologne art publisher Taschen, “the home of beautiful books,” priced well beyond an Everyman Pocket, might appear superfluous to even the most devoted Charlie Chaplin fan.
 
However, while this comprehensive record of Chaplin’s life and work may not have unearthed unknown facts, it will provide an invaluable research tool as it tracks through, describing and illustrating every film with a kaleidoscopic commentary from colleagues, critics, friends, enemies, fellow actors, wives, children and Chaplin himself.