Why the French Love Jerry Lewis: From Cabaret to Early Cinema

If expecting a leisure read, this is not that. It is an academic thesis in which only a small part concerns Jerry Lewis. Book did arrive in excellent condition and as expected.

That is a carefully documented work where, probably for the first time in such works, is developed the analogy between cinema and psychiatry, "from Charcot to Charlot" [Charlot is the French nickname of Charlie Chaplin] to Cabaret to Pantomime and early Cinema. One may not have realized it before, but there is a strong analogy between hysterical behavior (more common at the end of the nineteenth century) and the exaggerated gestures frequent in silent movies. The reading is admittedly not as easy as the title may suggest, but it is worth the effort, including going through the many footnotes that should be read when one reaches the place at which they appear.