Charlie Chaplin at Keystone [DVD]

This is it folks. 34 painstakingly restored Keystone films showcasing the evolution of Charlie Chaplins early film career. Featuring the films he made at Mack Sennets Keystone studios in 1914. Including 16 films directed by Charlie Chaplin himself. The films have all new musical scores from Eric Beheim, Neil Brand, Antonio Coppola, Frederick Hodges, Stephen Horne, Robert Israel, Rodney Sauer, The Mont Alto Motion Picture Orchestra, Ethan Uslan, and Ken Winokur. All films fully restored from the best 35mm elements gathered from around the world and painstakingly pieced together and restored by the British Film Institute National Archive, the Cineteca Bologna and its laboratory L'Immagine Ritrovata in Italy, and Lobster Films in Paris. A process which has taken 8 years to complete. This set is a must for all Chaplin fans and those interested in silent cinema. Many other stars feature alongside Chaplin such as Roscoe Fatty Arbuckle, Mabel Normand, Mack Swain, Ford Sterling, Chester Conklin, Edgar Kennedy, Billy Gilbert, Charley Chase and Marie Dressler. This BFI 4 dvd release is identical in content to the vastly more expensive region 1 Flicker Alley set. A must buy.

The Films -

MAKING A LIVING
KID AUTO RACES AT VENICE, CAL
MABEL'S STRANGE PREDICAMENT
BETWEEN SHOWERS
A FILM JOHNNIE
TANGO TANGLES
HIS FAVORITE PASTIME
CRUEL, CRUEL LOVE
THE STAR BOARDER
MABEL AT THE WHEEL
TWENTY MINUTES OF LOVE
CAUGHT IN A CABARET
CAUGHT IN THE RAIN
A BUSY DAY
THE FATAL MALLET
THE KNOCKOUT
MABEL'S BUSY DAY
MABEL'S MARRIED LIFE
LAUGHING GAS
THE PROPERTY MAN
THE FACE ON THE BAR ROOM FLOOR
RECREATION
THE MASQUERADER
HIS NEW PROFESSION
THE ROUNDERS
THE NEW JANITOR
THOSE LOVE PANGS
DOUGH AND DYNAMITE
GENTLEMAN OF NERVE
HIS MUSICAL CAREER
HIS TRYSTING PLACES
GETTING ACQUAINTED
HIS PREHISTORIC PAST
TILLIE'S PUNCTURED ROMANCE (Feature Length)

The Extras -

* Charlie's White Elephant (1916, 6 minutes): an animation by John Colman Terry and Hugh Shields featuring Chaplin.
* Inside the Keystone Project (2010, 10 minutes): a short documentary about international restoration efforts behind the films in this collection
* Silent Traces (2010, 12 minutes): historian John Bengston on several of the Keystone locations
* Extracts from A Thief Catcher (1914,7 minutes): a film recently rediscovered by Paul E Gierucki, with a cameo of Chaplin as a Keystone Cop
* Stills Gallery
* Illustrated booklet written by Jeffrey Vance

I have waited a long time for some restored Keystones featuring Chaplin and here they all are - apart from the lost Her Friend the Bandit (1914) - and all looking very smart thanks an army of restorers, technicians and musicians. Many of them are of historical interest only: I can take only so much brick-throwing which seemed to have amused audiences at the time. After all, if you are hit by a brick it could possibly kill you but in the silent era they caused just minor inconvenience, even when hit full in the face.
There is a lot of kicking - again too much, often to the point of tedium - but Chaplin always shows a balletic ability which is pretty graceful at all times, even when fighting.
Chaplin finely created a complete character, one often imitated but rarely bettered. As the films are in chronological order one can see how he developed very quickly. In some early films you can almost see him thinking about what he could do that would be funny - and not always succeeding. Later he knew exactly what he was doing.
One surprise for me was to find Chaplin in drag playing a woman rather than a man dressed as a woman. He's pretty good at it and very funny in the pantomime dame tradition.
As the films were shot very quickly there are more than a few rough edges but all are fascinating to watch now.
Previous video and dvd copies of these 34 films have been poor with no intertitles,fuzzy pictures and music that had nothing to do with what was on screen. Now they have new scores, intertitles wherever possible and the picture quality is pretty good considering the mangling some of the copies received over the years.The 56-page booklet is useful with each film discussed although I might suggest Glenn Mitchell's The Chaplin Encyclopedia for more information including cast lists The Charlie Chaplin Encyclopedia.
The BFI have done an excellent job here and must be thanked. But one word of warning. Like a previous reviewer I found that Twenty Minutes of Love on disc one does cut off and revert to the main menu fairly early on. You get rather less than Twenty Minutes! I returned my box set to Amazon who replaced it with another but that had the same fault which obviously happened in the manufacturing process.
I have kept my box set fault and all as this remains a great collection at a bargain price.

If you like Charlie Chaplin you can't go wrong
with this collection.
A super buy for the true fan
(5 stars)