I couldn’t have realized it at the time but I have waited 46 years for this set to be released. I first encountered Charlie Chaplin at a Shakey’s Pizza Parlor in Greenville, South Carolina back in 1964. These were 8mm home movie copies and the picture quality was dreadful although I didn’t think that then. All I knew was that the fellow in the derby hat made me laugh and I was strangely attracted to his occasional leading lady Mabel Normand. Fast forward a quarter of a century. Chaplin’s feature films began to appear on home video but not his early comedies and certainly not his earliest efforts at Keystone before he became a star. By the start of the 21st century his first starring comedies for Essanay and Mutual had been restored and were made available but the Keystones still languished because no one thought they were of any real value. That’s because no one had seen them the way they were first shown. Until now. This latest release from Flicker Alley rectifies that oversight and proves to be a revelation.
After an unprecedented 8 year effort of combing the world’s archives for every available print, silent film specialist David Shepard of Blackhawk Films and Film Preservation Associates along with the British Film Institute, Lobster Films of Paris and Italy’s Cineteca Bologna have found and restored 34 of Chaplin’s first 35 short films allowing us to watch him develop as a movie performer and see the birth of a cinematic icon as he creates and refines his famous Tramp character. No versions of these early Chaplin efforts survived in original form having been re-edited many times and virtually re-printed out of existence due to their initial popularity. By restoring them as close as possible to their original look with original intertitles and by scoring them properly and projecting them at the right speed, CHAPLIN AT KEYSTONE has given us an unprecedented glimpse back into cinematic time. We can literally watch the beginning of the movie industry in California and see pictures of a long vanished world and the people who inhabited it. One of the comedies, A FILM JOHNNIE, actually takes us behind the scenes at how a Keystone movie was made circa 1914. The set also makes available the few directorial efforts of one of the movies’ first female pioneers, comedienne Mabel Normand.
In addition to all but one of Chaplin’s short films, this set contains the UCLA restoration of the first feature length comedy TILLIE’S PUNCTURED ROMANCE with Chaplin, Normand, and Marie Dressler which can be heavy going today to the uninitiated. I had never seen this movie in its original form complete with opening and closing curtain appearances and title cards for reel changes and projected at the right speed. It makes a big difference. While never a big fan of TILLIE, I can now see why it was once so popular. Selling for $80 retail, this set will only appeal to those who are interested in Chaplin or in silent comedy. However for your money, in addition to the films, you get a whole host of extras including a 40 page booklet with rare photographs and background on the titles included and two special features. One is on the film restoration that took place and on the other is on the original filming locations as they appear today. An absolutely invaluable and indispensable set. Now if only some of the other non-Chaplin Keystones could receive the same treatment. They are the equivalent to silent comedy what D. W. Griffith’s Biograph shorts are to silent drama and deserve to be rediscovered.
The Capsule Critic 