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By PAUL BRENNER
Last year Warner Home video
released "The Chaplin Collection: Volume I,"
featuring pristine two-disc releases of four of
Chaplin's greatest films -- "The Gold Rush,"
"Modern Times," "The Great Dictator," and
"Limelight." But that was a mere appetizer for the
recent release of the towering twelve disc "The
Chaplin Collection: Volume 2." The transfers are
equally exquisite but the films are more
reflective of Chaplin's overall feature film
output.
The films in "The Chaplin Collection: Volume 2"
showcase Chaplin as master comic ("The Chaplin
Revue"), innovative boulevardier of sophistication
("A Woman of Paris"), expert gag constructionist
("The Circus"), cloying panderer ("The Kid"),
supreme sentimentalist ("City Lights"), cynical
satirist ("Monsieur Verdoux"), and unfunny elder
statesman ("A King in New York"). Pompous windbag
is left out but can be found in the first
collection with "Limelight."
"The Chaplin Revue" is a collection of seven
shorts released by First National between 1918 and
1923 -- "A Day's Pleasure," "Sunnyside," "The Idle
Class," "Payday," "A Dog's Life," "Shoulder Arms,"
and "The Pilgrim." These final Chaplin shorts run
the gamut from the mundane ("A Day's Pleasure") to
the sublime ("Sunnyside"). If not as great as his
Mutual shorts (the shorts are a bit too perfectly
constructed and the air seems to be sucked out of
them), the shorts making up "The Chaplin Revue"
reveal what was lost when Chaplin switched to
feature productions. The extras include an
introduction by Chaplin biographer David Robinson,
deleted scenes from "Sunnyside" and "Shoulder
Arms," home movie footage, propaganda films from
World War I featuring Chaplin, Edna Purviance,
Sydney Chaplin, and even Harry Lauder, How to Make
Movies from 1918 that introduces the new Chaplin
studios, photo galleries, a film poster gallery,
and a trailer for "The Chaplin Revue."
With "The Kid," Chaplin reconfigured the form of
silent film comedy from loosely structured
slapstick shorts to pathos-laden features in which
the gags are hung like topcoats upon a serious
story. In this case, Chaplin's Tramp character
befriends a homeless street urchin (played with
singular rambunctiousness by Jackie Coogan) and
fights off do-good reformers a la D.W. Griffith.
The extras include an introduction by Robinson, a
"Chaplin Today" documentary by Alain Bergala, a
collection of Chaplin home movies, a short
featuring Chaplin exhibiting his newly constructed
movie studio, another Jackie Coogan feature ("My
Boy") from 1921, deleted scenes from "The Kid"
that were removed from the 1971 reissue of the
film, footage of Chaplin conducting his new score
for the film, a photo gallery, a poster gallery,
trailers, and scenes from other films in "The
Chaplin Collection."
"A Woman of Paris" (combined with the much later
"A King in New York" in the collection) was
Chaplin's first film for United Artists (the
company he founded with Douglas Fairbanks, Mary
Pickford, and D.W. Griffith) and his first
excursion into drama. Although the film was not a
success when first released in the United States,
it was a tremendously influential film for a
gaggle of international directors including Ernst
Lubitsch and Heinosuke Gosho. The film's
sophistication and subtlety become the bedrock for
the kind of witty, upper class comedies perfected
by Paramount in the early thirties. Robinson once
again introduces the film and the extras include a
"Chaplin Today" documentary by Jerome de Missolz
and Jim Jarmusch, fourteen deleted scenes, footage
of Chaplin conducting an orchestra, a photo
gallery, trailers, and clips from other films in
The Chaplin Collection.
"The Circus," which garnered Chaplin an honorary
Academy Award in 1927 ("for versatility and genius
in writing, acting, directing, and producing The
Circus"), is Chaplin, responding to the tight gag
construction of Harold Lloyd's popular films,
performing a master class in how to put together a
comic sequence. The film's main fault is just
that: the film is a collection of masterly
sequences, held together with a slight thread and
culminating in an unsatisfying conclusion. The
extras include a Robinson introduction, a "Chaplin
Today" documentary by Francois Ede, a deleted
sequence, home movies outtakes of Chaplin with
Lord Mountbatten, footage from the Hollywood
premiere, 3-D tests for the film made by Chaplin's
house cameraman Rollie Totheroh, excerpts from the
film "Circus Day" with Jackie Coogan, a photo
gallery, a poster gallery, and trailers.
"City Lights" may well be Chaplin's most perfectly
balanced film. The film takes place in a studio
dream city and the film's slight removal from the
reality of real city streets permit Chaplin the
perfect blend of pathos, romance, and comedy. And
the final close-up of Chaplin is so emotionally
right that Woody Allen, haunted by the image, used
the same idea to close his much more worldly
"Manhattan." The extras include the introduction
by Robinson, a "Chaplin Today" documentary by
Serge Bromberg, "The Champion" from 1915, A screen
test for the Virginia Cherrill part by Chaplin
protégé Georgia Hale, rehearsal footage, outtakes,
home movies taken on the set, Chaplin greeting
visiting prizefighters, footage of a visit by
Winston Churchill, home movies of a trip to Bali,
Chaplin speaking for the first time on film, a
photo gallery, a poster gallery, and trailers.
Where "City Lights" was Chaplin's most loved film,
"Monsieur Verdoux" was Chaplin's most vilified.
Chaplin turns his Tramp character inside out,
playing a fastidious roué who charms and marries
women only to kill them for their money. Chaplin
turns this black comedy into an indictment of
capitalism and makes a justified case of the
acceptability of serial killing (compared to the
amount of victims governments kill in wars,
Verdoux declares himself to be merely an amateur).
With the film released at the height of
anti-Communist hysteria in the United States in
1947, Chaplin's film was roundly condemned along
with Chaplin and commercially it was a bitter
failure. But now from a perspective of over fifty
years down the road, "Monsieur Verdoux" appears as
Chaplin's most passionate and most contemporary
film. Unfortunately, the film also set the stage
for Chaplin's subsequent banishment from the
United States by the rabid right wing in the
country. The extras include a Robinson
introduction, a "Chaplin Today" documentary by
Bernard Eisenchitz with Claude Chabrol, plan
drawings for the set and preparatory sketches, a
photo gallery, a poster gallery, and trailers.
"A King in New York" (presented on the same disc
with "A Woman of Paris"), Chaplin's penultimate
film, was Chaplin's bitter response to the
Communist witch hunt in the United States that led
to Chaplin's exile. Shot in 1957, the film wasn't
shown in the United States until the 1970s. Sadly,
Chaplin's pomposity never fully recovered from
"Limelight," only "A King in New York" is even
more grandstanding. Chaplin tries some satirical
Frank Tashlin/Jerry Lewis gags (some work, some
don't) but hosing down an Un-American Activities
committee with a fire hose seems less climactic
than, for example, Woody Allen in "The Front"
telling the committee to go fuck themselves.
The extras include an introduction by Robinson, a
"Chaplin Today" documentary directed by Jerome de
Missolz, a deleted scene, Chaplin rehearsing the
score, a photo gallery, a poster gallery, and
trailers.
The best special feature in the collection is
Richard Schickel's definitive tribute to Chaplin,
"Charlie: The Life and Art of Charles Chaplin."
Schickel's documentary expertly crafts film clips
and home movies, with interviews of Chaplin family
members and comments from Woody Allen, Martin
Scorsese, Johnny Depp, and Robert Downey Jr. --
the aesthetic argument between Woody Allen and
Johnny Depp is not to be missed.
Also not to be missed is this important DVD
collection of one of the most important artists in
film history. Forget the "Alien Quadrilogy." This
is the collection to buy with your hard earned
mazuma. |
