Eyman’s book is basically a biography of Chaplin with an emphasis on the later and unhappier half of his career. It’s fun to read and it adds detail to the story of Chaplin’s spectacular peripeteia. Eyman is completely sympathetic to Chaplin, and he makes the case that we should be, too.
[A] chilling story ... Eyman skips fairly quickly through Chaplin’s early life and career...and concentrates on the years when Chaplin’s political views began to inform his films ... For all the piquant detail of Chaplin’s ordeal, he remains an elusive central figure. Eyman quotes liberally from Chaplin’s friends and colleagues, but their amateur psychologizing is often hard to evaluate.
Eyman approaches his subject with compassion, digging to explore the ordinary person beneath the veneer of celebrity. An essential addition to every film history collection.
Riveting ... Eyman gives the history a sense of urgency by highlighting the danger that government interference poses to artistic speech, and his account of how 'Chaplin’s forced exile destroyed him as an artist' is affecting. Readers will be rapt.
A beautifully composed and unique look at how Chaplin was characterized as an immoral sexual deviant and Soviet-sympathizing subversive. The author vividly documents the federal government's relentless pursuit of Chaplin ... A brilliant must-read about the epic and turbulent life and times of a cinematic titan.
