CHAPLIN AT KEYSTONE
Review by Phil Posner
Flicker Alley’s long awaited set of restorations of the complete work of Charles Chaplin for Keystone Studios is a revelation, even to one extremely familiar with the films. This DVD set is a must for all Chaplin or silent comedy enthusiasts, and for film history students.
For those not familiar with the significance of the Chaplin Keystones I quote from the Flicker Alley press release:
Charles Chaplin came to Mack
Sennett’s Keystone Studios late in 1913 as a little-known British
vaudevillian, and after a year, had not only established his Tramp
character, (but) learned to write and direct his own films, and also
achieved public recognition as a star comedian. Although Keystone did not
publicize its performers by name, standees of Chaplin's likeness outside
theatres sufficed to attract audiences. Some of the films, especially
Tillie's Punctured
Romance, remained in theatrical
distribution for decades.
The fact that all but one of the Chaplin Keystones exist is due, of course,
to the star’s enormous subsequent popularity. Most of the original Keystone
negatives, however, were simply printed away and the survival of all but a
few of these films depends upon a very few original prints, a larger number
of reissue prints, and some duped prints from later years. With the support
of Association Chaplin (Paris), 35mm full aperture, early-generation
materials were gathered over an eight year search on almost all the films
from archives and collectors around the world, and were 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. Most are now clear, sharp and
rock-steady, although some reveal that their source prints are well-used and
a handful survives only in 16mm. While admitting these limitations, one can
now understand Chaplin's meteoric rise, for it is possible for the first
time in generations to see clearly what clever and imaginative films he made
at Keystone.
I’ve been a Chaplin aficionado for fifty years. When I began my study
and admiration of Chaplin, there was no home video, only expensive and rare
16mm, and 8mm home movie versions of wildly varying quality. The
prints available were all derived from badly damaged sources. The
films had been duped over and over again since their original releases, as
Keystone never thought of preserving archival negatives or prints in those
early days. They were choppy, often with large gaps in the action, due
to badly repaired breaks in the prints. The images often had lost the
entire left side or the upper portion of the frame because of the later
addition of optical soundtracks and were further marred by darkening of
contrast and blurring due to generational loss. When the video era
began there was little improvement, and incorrect projection speeds added to
the problems.
All this made the films hard to watch and the plots, such as they were, very hard to follow, especially with whole sections of certain films missing.
These new restorations, carried out in Europe by the British Film Institute, Lobster Films in France and Cineteca Bologna in Italy, with prints and dupe negatives gather from many sources, while not absolutely perfect, are the best these prints have looked in any video release. Indeed, probably the best anywhere since the 1920s.
The chief accomplishment in this set is the restoration of missing shots and whole scenes not seen since the original releases almost a century ago. There are many private collectors who may have very good 16mm print versions of some of these films, but I’d venture to say that this collection consists of the most all around satisfying of all the available prints.
The restorers have made a great effort to find the best looking, closest to original versions from many world wide archives and to conflate them into the most complete versions possible. There are still problems with scratched negatives or prints, a few jump cuts, and certainly it is fairly obvious when a film jumps from one source to another. But when weighed against their effective completeness these flaws are forgettable.
As an example, Tillie’s Punctured Romance, the six reel, first American feature comedy, starring Marie Dressler, Chaplin and Mabel Normand, which comes from a UCLA Film and Television Archive restoration print contains the long lost introduction of Marie Dressler as herself at the beginning of the film, and the curtain calls taken by Dressler, Normand and Chaplin, as seen below. In addition many shots not seen in the best previous restorations by Kino and Republic are now present.
The curtain call from Tillie’s Punctured Romance.
Other shorts are astonishingly good looking, sharp and clear in most places, with lesser quality moments where better footage did not exist.
Case in point, the rare one reeler, Recreation, which begins disappointingly with footage very similar to previous video editions, high contrast with heads cut off, suddenly becomes a pristine, beautifully grey toned section which may be the best quality reproduction of the set.
Some of the earlier films are particularly well served. Kid Auto Races at Venice is beautiful to behold and Between Showers is the best I’ve ever seen. Mabel’s Strange Predicament on the other hand, suffers from a lot of deterioration but becomes completely clear for the last few seconds. Most are excellent throughout.
I’ve seen some criticisms of the speed of some of these restorations, but I was completely satisfied with them. After years of suffering though prints that were originally undercranked for effect, and then further sped up from 16 or 18 frames per second to sound speed (24 fps), they all ‘feel’ right to me.
The importance of these films to Chaplin scholarship cannot be overemphasized. Although none of these films can be called a masterpiece many are historic. They show the clear and steady progress that Chaplin made in screen acting, story crafting and directing as he gathered more and more experience during his first year of film making at Keystone.
Crude as they can sometimes be, the films show the development of the Tramp character from a wild, anti-social almost elemental oddball into the beginnings of the more sympathetic, pathos inspiring character into which he eventually evolved.
Films such as The New Janitor advances and humanizes the Tramp. In a story that Chaplin further developed in his 1915 Essanay film, The Bank, a janitor saves the day by foiling a robbery. About to be fired for dousing the boss with water, Chaplin asks for forgiveness in a manner unlike the Tramp ever behaved before. The performance was so affecting that, according to Chaplin in his autobiography, an actress on the set during filming burst into tears.
Many thematic elements that Chaplin would later develop were also first seen in the Keystones. The imposture story, first used by Chaplin in Caught in a Cabaret, was used again and again by Chaplin in later films from The Count, The Rink, The Idle Class, City Lights, right up to his first full talkie, The Great Dictator. The rescue theme as enacted in The New Janitor was reused in films such as The Bank, The Vagabond, The Kid, Modern Times and others.
The new music accompanying these films is generally very good, ranging from the energetic solo piano scores by Eric Beheim to the excellent small orchestra compositions by Rodney Sauer and The Mont Alto Motion Picture Orchestra. The music for the set is always appropriate and largely supports the moods of the films.