Charlie Chaplin feted in archive book

Charlie Chaplin once said that all anyone needed to make a funny film was “a park, a policeman and a pretty girl”. Chaplin failed to mention the “Tramp” costume that made him world famous. You can see one of the women — among four Chaplin married in the course of his 88 years — in a glistening, outsized black-and-white picture of Paulette Goddard with a stolen bunch of bananas from Modern Times in The Chaplin Archives, a hefty book whose author calls it a “Blu-ray” high-definition tribute to the legendary comic actor and filmmaker.

Produced by the specialist German-based publisher Taschen Books, this 560-page tome weighing 7 kg and roughly the dimensions of a small television set, can hardly be read in bed and overwhelms many cocktail tables. But it fulfils what English author Paul Duncan says was his goal of recreating Chaplin’s career chronologically — as he lived it — to mark, roughly, the centenary of the penniless English vaudevillean’s start in the movies, when he jumped ship from a theatre company touring the US. Reproduced on page 47 is Chaplin’s first movie contract, with Keystone, dated September 25, 1913, for what to Chaplin was the then-princely sum of $150 a week.

The rest, as anyone who has an eye for great movie-making and funny films will know, is history. His oeuvre included silent film slapstick classics like City Lights and Modern Times before he embraced sound with political satire like The Great Dictator and black comedy, including Monsieur Verdoux. “What I wanted to do was make it an oral history, so it’s actually Chaplin and his collaborators talking as you read the book, you’re reading about the events of his life and how he made his films,” Duncan said.