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Geraldine Chaplin
The Gift of Film Performance
by Steven Rybin
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Book Presentation:
Explores the film performances of Geraldine Chaplin across various transnational and historical contexts
• Examines the distinctive screen performances of Geraldine Chaplin, a unique and underappreciated international star
• Offers new readings of Chaplin’s presence in important films by key film directors across various international cinemas, including Carlos Saura (Spain), Jacques Rivette (France), David Lean (Britain), Robert Altman (America), Alain Resnais (France)
• Offers a unique approach to film performance studies, showing how performative moments created by one actor evoke the memory and performances of another related star in a different historical and aesthetic context
• Explores the relationships between silent film comedy and postwar international art cinema, and between classical and modernist styles of film performance
The most distinguished actor among Charlie Chaplin’s children, Geraldine Chaplin has created a striking performative presence across international cinema. In shifting cinematic contexts and through collaborations with major film directors, she playfully evokes the memory of her iconic father, while establishing her own distinctive screen art. Geraldine Chaplin: The Gift of Film Performance is a long-overdue appreciation of Chaplin’s remarkable screen achievements, and includes close readings of her performances in films such as Doctor Zhivago, Peppermint Frappé, Cría cuervos, Nashville, Welcome to L.A., Remember My Name, Noroît, Chaplin, Talk to Her, and more.
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).
Press Reviews:
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, University of Texas at Austin
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, University of Manitoba
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, author of Syd Chaplin: A Biography and Charlie Chaplin’s Little Tramp in America, 1947-1977
See the publisher website: Edinburgh University Press
See the complete filmography of Geraldine Chaplin on the website: IMDB ...
> From the same author:
Stellar Transformations (2022)
Movie Stars of the 2010s
Dir. Steven Rybin
Subject: On Films > Per period
Gestures of Love (2018)
Romancing Performance in Classical Hollywood Cinema
by Steven Rybin
Subject: Genre > Romantic films
Hamlet Lives in Hollywood (2017)
John Barrymore and the Acting Tradition Onscreen
Dir. Murray Pomerance and Steven Rybin
Subject: Actor > John Barrymore
The Cinema of Hal Hartley (2016)
Flirting with Formalism
Dir. Steven Rybin
Subject: Director > Hal Hartley
Lonely Places, Dangerous Ground (2015)
Nicholas Ray in American Cinema
Dir. Steven Rybin and Will Scheibel
Subject: Director > Nicholas Ray
> On a related topic:
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by Brooke Shields and Rachel Bertsche
Subject: Actor > Brooke Shields
Master of Me (2025)
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by Keke Palmer
Subject: Actor > Keke Palmer
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