Charlie Chaplin Archives, The

- Blurb -

Happy birthday, dear Tramp!. Celebrating Chaplin's life and work as his alter-ego turns 100. From Alaska to Zimbabwe, the bowler hat, cane, baggy trousers and outsized shoes of the Tramp is still the most recognized silhouette in the world, 100 years after Charlie Chaplin first created him. Celebrating his centenary, TASCHEN presents The Charlie Chaplin Archives, the ultimate book on the making of Chaplin's films, using the vast resources of the Chaplin archives. Within a year of arriving in Hollywood in 1914, British-born Chaplin, playing the Tramp, had become the slapstick king of America. By the end of his second year on the silver screen. Chaplin's fame had spread worldwide. He was the first international film star and, with a million dollar contract, became one of the richest men in the world. With his own studio and his stock company of close collaborators, Chaplin began making his greatest movies: The Kid (1921), The Gold Rush (1925), The Circus (1928), City Lights (1931), Modern Times (1936), and The Great Dictator (1940)-an unassailable collection of work that has enshrined him in the collective consciousness of world culture.With unrestricted access to his archives, this book offers insight into the process behind the Chaplin genius, from the impromptu spontaneity of his early shorts to the meticulous retakes and reworking of scenes and gags in his classic movies.Using 1,200 stills, memos, storyboards and on-set photos, as well as interviews with Chaplin and his closest collaborators, we see how Chaplin turned his caricature of the Tramp into a living character. The Tramp is the ultimate underdog, an everyman trying to survive economic depression, two World Wars, and the Cold War. Whatever crises life threw at him, the Tramp, and Chaplin, shrugged it off, straightened his shoulders, and walked off into a brighter future. This is the entire Chaplin life history in words and pictures.It features: 1,200 images including many previously unseen stills, on-set photos, memos, documents, storyboards, posters, and designs, plus scripts and images for unmade films; an oral history, told from the point of view of Chaplin himself, drawing upon his extensive writings, many of which have never been reprinted before; supplementary interviews with some of his closest collaborators; material from over 150 books of press clippings in Chaplin's archives, which range from his early days in music halls to his death; Chaplin's short films, from Making a Living (1914) to The Pilgrim (1923), as well as all of his feature-length movies, from The Kid (1921) to A Countess from Hong Kong (1967); and, (In first print editions) a filmstrip from the classic City Lights (1931), cut from a print in Chaplin's archives.It also includes documents from the Chaplin Archives Property and Copyright of Roy Export Company Establishment, scanned by Cineteca di Bologna.