Geraldine Chaplin: The Gift of Film Performance

by Steven Rybin

Overview

Geraldine Chaplin is the most distinguished actor among Charlie Chaplin’s children. Through her collaborations with major international film directors, she has created a striking performative presence across international cinema. Her acting also evokes, with varying levels of self-consciousness and in shifting cinematic contexts, the memory of her father’s screen performances. This book analyses the distinctive screen art of Geraldine Chaplin and uncover parallels between her performances and her father’s work on film. Through this method, this star study explores the rich and surprising relationships between art cinema and silent film comedy, and between modernist and classical cinematic performance. It offers a long overdue appreciation of Geraldine Chaplin’s own remarkable screen achievements, all the while shedding new insight into the art of Charlie Chaplin through the singular prism of his daughter’s bold work.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781474427975
Publisher:	Edinburgh University Press
Publication date:	05/30/2022
Series:	International Film Stars
Edition description:	75,000
Pages:	264
Product dimensions:	6.14(w) x 9.21(h) x 0.56(d)

About the Author

Dr Steven Rybin is Associate Professor of Film at Minnesota State University, Mankato. He is the author of several books including Geraldine Chaplin (2020), Gestures of Love: Romancing Performance in Classical Hollywood Cinema (2017), Michael Mann (2013) and Terence Malik and the Thought of Film (2011). He is editor of The Cinema of Hal Hartley (2016), Hamlet Lives in Hollywood (2017) and Stellar Transformations: Movie Stars of the 2010s (2022).

Table of Contents

List of figures

Introduction – Into the Limelight

Chapter One – The Kid: Geraldine Chaplin in the Sixties

Chapter Two – The Great Dictator: Geraldine Chaplin in the Films of Carlos Saura

Chapter Three – The Circus: Geraldine Chaplin in the Cinemas of Robert Altman and Alan Rudolph

Chapter Four – A Woman of Paris: Geraldine Chaplin Across French Cinema

Chapter Five – Modern Times: Geraldine Chaplin Across Contemporary Cinema

What People are Saying About This

Donna Kornhaber

Steven Rybin has done us all a service by bringing Geraldine Chaplin's career and art so thoughtfully into view.　 Through a series of revelatory close readings, he traces her globe-spanning, seven-decade career, which encompassed turns in British, Spanish, French, Italian, Hollywood, and avant-garde cinemas and included career-defining roles in Doctor Zhivago and Nashville. Throughout, Rybin recognizes Chaplin as an avatar of film history: her earliest screen appearance came as a child extra in her father's Limelight, one of her latest saw her playing her own grandmother in Richard Attenborough's Chaplin. Framing Chaplin's career through its distinct echoes with that of her legendary father, Rybin enables us to see how Geraldine Chaplin both embraced and transcended that legacy to become a preeminent screen artist in her own right.

Lisa Stein Haven

Dr. Steven Rybin has taken on a difficult task: a bio-study of the progeny of one of Hollywood’s most important actors, Charlie Chaplin. Geraldine Chaplin has had a productive and successful career on her own, but Rybin has somehow viewed that career through the lens of her father’s—in a respectful and useful way. In addition, the prose itself is a pleasure to read. As a Chaplin (Charlie) scholar myself, I can highly recommend Rybin’s book.

George Toles

I have never read a better analysis of a major actor's career than Steve Rybin's Geraldine Chaplin: The Gift of Film Performance. His accounts of Chaplin's remarkably diverse body of work is filled with surprises, making the story of her collaborations with David Lean, Carlos Saura, Robert Altman, Alan Rudolph and numerous other directors not only illuminating, but gripping. Especially rewarding are the parallels he establishes not only with her father's career but with Charlie Chaplin's major performances.

Editorial Reviews

Dr. Steven Rybin has taken on a difficult task: a bio-study of the progeny of one of Hollywood’s most important actors, Charlie Chaplin. Geraldine Chaplin has had a productive and successful career on her own, but Rybin has somehow viewed that career through the lens of her father’s—in a respectful and useful way. In addition, the prose itself is a pleasure to read. As a Chaplin (Charlie) scholar myself, I can highly recommend Rybin’s book.

Lisa Stein Haven

I have never read a better analysis of a major actor's career than Steven Rybin's Geraldine Chaplin: The Gift of Film Performance. His account of Chaplin's remarkably diverse body of work is filled with surprises, making the story of her collaborations with David Lean, Carlos Saura, Robert Altman, Alan Rudolph and numerous other directors not only illuminating, but gripping. Especially rewarding are the parallels he establishes not only with her father's career but with Charlie Chaplin's major performances.

George Toles

Steven Rybin has done us all a service by bringing Geraldine Chaplin's career and art so thoughtfully into view.　 Through a series of revelatory close readings, he traces her globe-spanning, seven-decade career, which encompassed turns in British, Spanish, French, Italian, Hollywood, and avant-garde cinemas and included career-defining roles in Doctor Zhivago and Nashville. Throughout, Rybin recognizes Chaplin as an avatar of film history: her earliest screen appearance came as a child extra in her father's Limelight; one of her latest saw her playing her own grandmother in Richard Attenborough's Chaplin. Framing Chaplin's career through its distinct echoes with that of her legendary father, Rybin enables us to see how Geraldine Chaplin both embraced and transcended that legacy to become a preeminent screen artist in her own right.

Donna Kornhaber