The Great Dictator: Geraldine Chaplin in the films of Carlos Saura

Abstract

As the first chapter of this book demonstrates, moviegoers mainly knew Geraldine Chaplin in the 1960s as the daughter of cinema’s most famous silent clown. Nevertheless, the expansive, transnational character of her career is already in evidence in the international assortment of films she made during that decade (in Italy, Britain, and France.). The transnational quality of her persona is also important to an understanding to the work discussed in this chapter, the films she made with Spanish auteur Carlos Saura between 1967 and 1979. In these films with Saura, who was also Chaplin’s partner during this period, Chaplin creatively intervenes in the politics and cinema of Spain during the final years of the dictatorship of Francisco Franco, whose repressive cruelties are dealt with both explicitly and implicitly in Saura’s films. Chaplin’s performances in Saura’s films, the chapter argues, creatively intervene in traditional understandings of womanhood in Franco’s Spain, all the while demonstrating a fervent commitment to use performance as a vehicle for liberation.