I attended the talk Dr. Lynn gave at the Smithsonian the other night. I was a bit disappointed. The first half hour was mainly a summary of the first chapter of the book! The rest quickly summed up the rest of his book. Although, I haven't yet finished reading his book, he didn't depart at all from the points he made in it, in fact, he quoted directly from it quite frequently during his talk.
He discussed Chaplin's childhood and attempted to separate the fact from fiction that Chaplin created in his early years. After that, the major points he made were: 1) the recurring rescue theme in Chaplin's films which no doubt reflected his childish fantasy's of 'rescuing' his mentally deranged mother (rescuing Paulette in 'Modern Times', the blind flower girl in 'City Lights', etc.); 2) the recurring insanity theme in Chaplin's films (such as the schizophrenic drunken millionaire in 'City Lights', the scenes where Charlie goes 'crazy' after being accidentally shot up with drugs in 'Easy Street' and accidentally used the 'nose candy' in 'Modern Times'
; and, 3) Chaplin's decided pro-communist leanings. Although Lynn did point out, quite rightly, that despite their exhaustive investigation, the FBI never found any hard proof of any communist affiliation.
That last one disturbed me the most. I don't think that Chaplin was a communist. I think he was more of a naive idealist who befriended many known communists.
