Charles Chaplin: Footlights with The World of Limelight

by David Robinson, Charlie Chaplin

Before being one of the great films of the maturity of Chaplin, even before a script, Limelight sees the light in the form of a story: a novella written in 1948, four years before the making of the film, entitled Footlights, which remained unpublished for more than sixty years, guarded by the Archives and Chaplin that now finds its first international publication by Editions of the Film Library of Bologna. This test is unique in the literary career of Chaplin and hits for the vividness of style, balance narrative, the freedom with which he moves between the lively colloquial (which will feed unchanged in the film) and the breath of Dickensian characters and descriptions.
David Robinson, Chaplin's biographer and foremost scholar, leads the reader to a full understanding of this archival treasure, "the story of a ballerina and a clown" which has its roots in the distant, short but decisive encounter in 1916 between Chaplin and Nijinsky, and especially, in its rich and fascinating World of The Limelight, reconstructs the making of the film and makes us ripercorerre London in the decade that the story and relive the movie: the Soho theater, the world of entrepreneurs, the music hall, the ballet of Leicester Square ...
The book is illustrated with previously unpublished photographs and documents from the Archives Chaplin and very rare iconographic evidence of London as it was in the years of youth and training Chaplin.

219 pages, Hardcover

First published January 1, 2014

About the author

Librarian Note: There is more than one author in the GoodReads database with this name.

David Robinson (born 1930) is a British film critic and author. He started writing for Sight and Sound and the Monthly Film Bulletin in the 1950s, becoming Assistant Editor of Sight and Sound and Editor of the Monthly Film Bulletin in 1957-1958. He was film critic of The Financial Times from 1958 to 1973, before taking up the same post at The Times in 1973. He remained the paper's main film reviewer until around 1990 and a regular contributor until around 1996.

Reviews

[raShit · Rating 4 out of 5]

For me, Limelight is the best film in Charlie Chaplin's talking pictures. The book contains the film's pre-production and shooting process, the effects of the film after the screening, and the sources of inspiration from Chaplin's own life. In the book, you can also find the text of Limelight that looks like a long story rather than a screenplay. The most exciting part of the film is that it brings together two legends: Chaplin and Buster Keaton. The book describes how two legends come together.