Charles Chaplin: o "self-made myth"

by José-Augusto França

"O livro de J.-A. França – que consegue estabelecer uma ligação entre os fenómenos colectivos e contemporâneos e as imagens sugeridas por Chaplin – constitui uma apaixonante tentativa de explicação de Chaplin como "self-made-myth"."


Jean Duvignaud, in Critique, 1956

176 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 1989

About the author

JOSÉ-AUGUSTO FRANÇA nasceu em Tomar, a 16 de Novembro de 1922. Doutor em Letras e Ciências Humanas pela Universidade de Paris, é professor catedrático jubilado (1974-1992) da Universidade Nova de Lisboa. Membro da Academia Nacional de Belas-Artes (seu presidente em 1977-1980), da Academia das Ciências de Lisboa, da Academia Real de S. Fernando (Espanha), etc., é membro honorário do Comité International d'Histoire de dArt, e presidente de honra da Association Internationale des Critiques d'Art. Publicou numerosas obras sobre história da cultura e da arte: A Arte em Portugal no Século XIX, 1966; A Arte em Portugal no Século XX, 1974; Amadeo de Souza-Cardoso, o Português à Força, 1956; Almada Negreiros, o Português sem Mestre, 1974; O Romantismo em Portugal, 1975; História da Arte Ocidental, 1780-1980, 1987; Os Anos 20 em Portugal, 1992, etc. Dirigiu as revistas Unicórnio (1951-1956) e Colóquio/Artes (1970, até à sua extinção, em 1996). Publicou Memórias para o Ano 2000, (Livros Horizonte). Faleceu a 18 de Setembro de 2021.

Reviews

[Luís · Rating 5 out of 5]

I could not resist giving you to know some passages of this work, specially dedicated to the relationship between the cinema and the public.

«Charlot only in America would be possible -. And yet, Chaplin remains European, it is truly English by the roots of his pantomime art and his childhood experience starving in the Victorian London streets. Is it by his sense of humanity? From America, he will take advantage of his naivety, his schematic purity, but not only has he not alienated the blindness of the Yankee civilization, but has kept his heart and intelligence linked to the memories of his Europe.

Through the power of the money with which he buys (the spectator) the ticket (and thus, more obliged to consideration by the social rule and freed of the essential element of that rule, to the abandoned door), the public is ready for the dream to who were willing, and to whom everything around invites him. The public is relieved then, because the mechanics of the world to which it is bound, to the daily dread, the eagerness of watches and budgets, can oppose a pair of bootlegs and vagabonds. And you can choose them with all security - because they are not your boots because it is not at your feet that they will come to fit …

The fact that they take them from their usual comfort, wedged on the other feet of a dream-being, distances them, separates them from the dream, and mobilizes them abroad. And thus he regards it as a support for a possible transference of his sins, his unconfessed solitude, his strangled hopes. (...)

And so we are free. Free from all the annoyances to daily practice, by this act of poetic prophylaxis, which was the acceptance of their mythical existence, free from a terrible and secret night consciousness, to the pasture from which the existence of a dream comes at last.

Doubly free? Much richer is the liberation achieved. "Taking revenge on Chaplin for all the kicks we did not get on the next guy's ass," means replacing us on the spot. To substitute ourselves ambiguously: for the kicks it gives and that we fail to give and the kicks it receives and which we do not get to give.

If Charlot is the mythical reflection of collective anxiety, it is also the reflection of an individual need. Chaplin participates, forms the collective that is reflected but, as an individual in it, departs from its measure, isolates itself from it. And then, Charlot, the isolate, simultaneously reflects the tragic isolation of man and the dramatic isolation of Charles Chaplin.»