The Chaplin Mutuals, Vol. 2

Amazon.com

Charlie Chaplin refined his trademark character the Little Tramp through his short films at Mutual Studios with the help of his two key costars: burly, barrel-chested Eric Campbell, his hulking physical opposite who forever played the bullying nemesis (often behind a positively demonic beard), and sweet-faced Edna Purviance, the alternately demure and plucky innocent he's forever courting, saving, or simply mooning over. In The Count, Chaplin and Campbell crash a society bash under false identities to woo a rich lovely, but Chaplin soon reverts to his impulsive instincts and turns the posh gathering into an anarchic free-for-all. The Vagabond, Chaplin's second Mutual short, is a rural melodrama of a young girl saved from abusive guardians by the resourceful Tramp. Favoring pathos over slapstick, it looks forward to the sentimental melodrama of his features to come. As a lowly menial in The Fireman, Chaplin is cheerfully oblivious to the chaos he causes to the ordered firehouse and still manages to emerge a hero. Finally, Behind the Screen thumbs a nose at the movies in general and Mack Sennett (Chaplin's old boss) in particular with a lampoon of the studios that concludes with the invention of the pie fight ("I don't like this highbrow stuff," comments one victim). Equal parts class clown, downtrodden social outcast, and sentimental softy, Chaplin's continued appeal lies not merely in his comic invention but his dogged defiance of authority, class, and convention, and these classic shorts preserve the edginess he smoothed out in later features. --Sean Axmaker

Description

Features four films made for the Mutual Film Company: The Count, The Vagabond, The Fireman, and Behind the Screen. Includes new digital stereo scores by Michael Mortilla.

Customer Reviews:

This DVD was great, but the new restored 90th Anniversary Edition is better........2006-06-25

Up until 2006, these were the best copies on DVD. But now David Shepard and Image Entertainment have restored the missing footage and re-mastered the films , addressing the complaints mentioned below.

So buy the "Mutual Restored 90th Anniversary Edition" instead of this edition.

Quite a dvd!.......2002-03-05

First of all, I am actually reviewing The Chaplin Mutuals, Vol. 2 DVD, not a vhs tape or collection. I'm expecially NOT reviewing any videotapes by the Madacy corporation, which are very poor quality, difiicult to watch, and an embarassment to the Chaplin legacy.

Anyways, to the DVD in question. These four short films have been carefully restored by Davis Shepherd, and it shows. The prints are well done, there is footage restored that had been missing for years, the image is sharp, and most of the film flaws have been minimized as much as humanly possible without detracting from the film itself.

Sadly, these are amongst the first dvds produced, and the quality of the video compression leaves something to be desired. Zooming in on the image at all produces an appalingly distorted picture. People with high-definition tv sets may notice a lot of compression artifacts in the picture. These faults are not the fault of David Shepherd - the discs simply need updating, which is sadly unlikely since they probably don't sell that well.

But the material on the dvd is fantastic. The films are mostly very funny, though you have to adjust your tastes a bit for the humor of 1916 - 1917.

You can't do much better than this for Chaplin! (Oh, and by the way, you can find a variety of cheaper Chaplin collections. Be warned, though, that they are a vastly inferior product, with poor film quality, terrible soundtracks, and even worse video compression! You money should go to these excellent restorations!)

DVD:

DVD

DVD