Comedy

The Chaplin Collection, Vol. 1 (Modern Times / The Great Dictator / The Gold Rush / Limelight)

The Great Dictator Goldrush Limelight Modern TimesFormat: DVD MOVIE Genre: COMEDY Rating: NR UPC: 085393794224

Charles Spencer Chaplin, the London ragamuffin who became the most popular man of his era, gets his proper due with this deluxe package of four classics. Each two-disc set begins with an excellent new digital transfer of the picture and remastered sound. The Gold Rush, Chaplin's 1925 masterpiece, puts the Little Tramp into the snowy Yukon; it includes such celebrated sequences as the "Dance of the Rolls" and Chaplin's uncanny metamorphosis into a large chicken. Both the original silent version and Chaplin's re-edited 1942 release (for which he added his own musical score and narration) are included. A documentary on "Chaplin Today" looks at the film through the eyes of Burkina Faso director Idrissa Ouedraogo. Modern Times (1936) is Chaplin's peerless take on the machine age; his ballet on the assembly line remains one of the great images of modern man driven mad by mechanization. The DVD extras include a couple of (somewhat extraneous) vintage promotional films about the wonderful world of mass production, the famous Chaplin composition "Smile" performed by Liberace (huh?), and penetrating comments on the film by the Belgian filmmakers Luc and Jean-Pierre Dardenne.

The Great Dictator is Chaplin's comic undressing of Hitler, boldly released in 1940. An absorbing documentary, "The Tramp and the Dictator," details production of the film, and color footage shot on the set provides fascinating behind-the-scenes material. Limelight (1952), in which he plays a fading vaudevillian, is Chaplin's magnificent elegy on his own career. Extras include a deleted scene, the entire Oscar-winning score, and Bernardo Bertolucci on the film's emotional impact: "I don't cry often, but here my tears flow." Each film has a loving introduction by Chaplin biographer David Robinson--but newcomers to Chaplin should watch the movies first, as the extras give away endings and the best jokes. --Robert Horton

The Chaplin Collection, Vol. 2 (City Lights / The Circus / The Kid / A King in New York / A Woman of Paris / Monsieur Verdoux / The Chaplin Revue / Charlie - The Life and Art of Charles Chaplin)

The second magnificent collection of Charlie Chaplin's work is even more stuffed with goodies than the first: six feature films, a round-up of two-reelers, and a new documentary, plus a cornucopia of deleted scenes and context. Each feature is accompanied by a half-hour "Chaplin Today" featurette, in which a filmmaker comments from a 21st-century perspective. Claude Chabrol extols the wicked virtues of Monsieur Verdoux and calls Chaplin "a thoroughly modern director," while Jim Jarmusch speaks gallantly on the political satire of the problematic A King in New York.

The Kid (1921), Chaplin's first feature, relates directly to Chaplin's own hard upbringing. The Tramp adopts a street kid (Jackie Coogan), in a seamless blend of slapstick and sentiment. For A Woman of Paris (1923), Chaplin experimented: straight, adult melodrama, with no Charlie onscreen (save for a brief cameo). 1927's The Circus is prized by many Chaplin critics as pure sublime comedy, less burdened by sentiment or politics than subsequent films. City Lights (1931) is an undisputed masterpiece; the Tramp befriends a blind girl, leading to one of the great bittersweet endings in film history. (Among the extras: a priceless seven-minute deleted scene involving little more than Chaplin and a piece of wood stuck in a grate.) With Monsieur Verdoux (1947), Chaplin turned his back on the Tramp and invented an elegant lady killer (literally); audiences disapproved, but the film stands as a fascinating essay on himself. Finally, after his exile from the United States, Chaplin made A King in New York (1957), which is mostly flat, except as autobiography.

The Chaplin Revue gathers six essential short works, from the superb A Dog's Life (1918) to his last two-reeler, The Pilgrim. A separate disc contains film critic Richard Schickel's comprehensive documentary Charlie: The Life and Art of Charles Chaplin, which does nicely by Chaplin's life and his working process, with keen comments from admirers such as Woody Allen and Johnny Depp. This box set is more than film history; it's a living treasure. --Robert Horton

The wonder. The magic. The genius. Now for an encore presentation with stunning new restorations, all-new special features and more. The Richard Schickel documentary, "Charlie" available exclusively in this Chaplin Giftset. THE CIRCUS The Little Tramp accidentally becomes a big-top star in the comedy that earned Chaplin a special Academy Award?. CITY LIGHTS A forever classic - and an American Film Institute Top-100 Movie. The Tramp becomes a working man, saving money for an operation that will restore a blind flower girl's sight. THE KID The Tramp and his ragamuffin sidekick (6-year-old Jackie Coogan) triumph over life's hard knocks in the landmark film that changed the notion of what a screen comedy could be. A KING IN NEW YORK/A WOMAN OF PARIS Chaplin jabs at social conventions! U.S. pop culture is the target of his satiric A King in New York. And the whirl of French high society frames director Chaplin's tragic love story A Woman of Paris.

MONSIEUR VERDOUX Killer comedy! Chaplin turns his sunny nature inside out to play a roving gent who wins the love and bank accounts of spinsters, then murders the hapless biddies.

City Lights (2 Disc Special Edition)

Talkies were well entrenched when Charles Chaplin swam against the filmmaking tide with this forever classic that's silent except for music and sound effects. The story involving the Tramp's attempts to get money for an operation that will restore sight to a blind flower girl provides the star with an ideal framework for sentiment and laughs. The Tramp is variously a street sweeper a boxer a rich poseur and a rescuer of a suicidal millionaire. His message is unspoken but universally understood: love is blind.Running Time: 186 min.Format: DVD MOVIE Genre: COMEDY UPC: 085393764821

City Lights is a film to pick for the time capsule, a film that best represents the many aspects of director-writer-star Charlie Chaplin at the peak of his powers: Chaplin the actor, the sentimentalist, the knockabout clown, the ballet dancer, the athlete, the lover, the tragedian, the fool. It's all contained in Chaplin's simple story of a tramp who falls in love with a blind flower girl (Virginia Cherrill). Chaplin elevates the Victorian contrivances of the plot to something glorious with his inventive use of pantomime and his sure grasp of how the Tramp relates to the audience. In 1931, it was a gamble for Chaplin to stick with silence after talking pictures had killed off the art form that had made him famous, but audiences flocked to City Lights anyway. (Chaplin would not make his first full talking picture until 1940's The Great Dictator.) After all the superb comic sequences, the film culminates with one of the most moving scenes in the history of cinema, a luminous and heartbreaking fade-out that lifts the picture onto another plane. (Woody Allen paid homage to the scene at the end of Manhattan.) This is why the term "Chaplinesque" became a part of the language. --Robert Horton

Modern Times (2 Disc Special Edition)

Man vs. machine! And the winner is every comedy fan when Charlie Chaplin's Tramp confronts assembly-line woes in this classic chosen in 1998 as one of the American Film Institute's Top-100 American Films. The Little Tramp punches in and wigs out inside a factory where gizmos like an employee-feeding machine may someday make the lunch hour last just 15 minutes. Bounced into the ranks of the unemployed he teams with a street waif (Paulette Goddard) to pursue bliss and a paycheck finding misadventures as a roller-skating night watchman a singing waiter whose hilarious song is gibberish a jailbird and more. In the end as Tramp and waif walk arm and arm into an insecure future we know they've found neitherbliss nor a paycheck but more importantly each other. The times and satire remain timeless in Modern Times.Running Time: 83 min.Format: DVD MOVIE Genre: COMEDY UPC: 085393765125

Charlie Chaplin is in glorious form in this legendary satire of the mechanized world. As a factory worker driven bonkers by the soulless momentum of work, Chaplin executes a series of slapstick routines around machines, including a memorable encounter with an automatic feeding apparatus. The pantomime is triumphant, but Chaplin also draws a lively relationship between the Tramp and a street gamine. She's played by Paulette Goddard, then Chaplin's wife and probably his best leading lady (here and in The Great Dictator). The film's theme gave the increasingly ambitious writer-director a chance to speak out about social issues, as well as indulging in the bittersweet quality of pathos that critics were already calling "Chaplinesque." In 1936, Chaplin was still holding out against spoken dialogue in films, but he did use a synchronized soundtrack of sound effects and his own music, a score that includes one of his most famous melodies, "Smile." And late in the film, Chaplin actually does speak--albeit in a garbled gibberish song, a rebuke to modern times in talking pictures. --Robert Horton

Charlie Chaplin - 51 Features

Un Chien Andalou

Un Chien Andalou remains a startling artifact suggesting ways in which film can express the subconscious. The result of Luis Bunuel's collaboration with Salvador Dali, the 17-minute, 1929 film was designed expressly to shock and provoke. Opening with the canonical eyeball-slashing sequence and divided into baffling "chapters", this is a work of art obsessed with religion, lust, decay, violence, and death. Un Chien Andalou isn't simply one of the great works of the surrealist movement, but a segment of cinematic DNA that irrevocably altered the aesthetics of film. In its tangled corridors you find the seeds to the disappearing-mouth bit in The Matrix, the carcasses strewn through Peter Greenaway's A Zed and Two Noughts and pretty much the entire oeuvre of David Lynch. --Ryan Boudinot

Filmed in Paris in 1929, UN CHIEN ANDALOU is regarded as the first film produced purely from within the Surrealist movement and is a landmark in the history of cinema. Loving treatment to DVD includes, as bonus material, an interview/documentary with Jua

The General

Buster Keaton's career reached its creative apex with this rousing comic adventure. Not merely one of the finest silent films, this remains one of the great film comedies of all time. The Great Stone Face stars as Southern railroad engineer Johnny Gray, a man with only two loves: the sweet Annabelle Lee (Marion Mack) and his trustworthy engine, the eponymous General. When Fort Sumner is fired upon he's one of the first to enlist, but when the war office rejects him (he's too valuable as a trained engineer) his sweetie rejects him as a coward. Johnny has the opportunity to prove his bravery when Yankee spies steal his engine and inadvertently kidnap Annabelle, and Johnny pursues with all the resources at his disposal: handcar, bicycle, and finally railroad engine. Keaton's love/hate relationship with technology and machinery shines as he becomes one with his beloved locomotive and wrestles with a finicky cannon that threatens to blow his engine off the tracks; with tremendous dexterity, he nails the humor with inimitably deadpan takes. Spunky Marion Mack makes a perfect partner for Keaton, not merely a foil but a gifted comedienne in her own right. Other Keaton films contain more laughs and inspired comic stunts, but none combines romance, adventure, and comedy into a solid story as seamlessly as this silent masterpiece. --Sean Axmaker

The Harold Lloyd Comedy Collection Vols. 1-3

The Harold Lloyd Comedy Collection boxed set is the definitive account of one of the silent cinema's greatest comedians--and for a time, its most popular star. The seven discs included in this three-volume set have virtually all of Lloyd's 1920s features, most of his talking pictures, and a healthy collection of shorts. Because Lloyd--a canny businessman--retained control over much of his output, the films have remained under his (and his estate's) control through the decades, and the quality of the key titles is generally excellent.

Vol. 1 leads off with the most famous of Lloyd's pictures, the 1923 "thrill" comedy Safety Last. The bespectacled Mr. Lloyd found his spot in comedy by playing the persona seen here: an optimistic go-getter, energetic but not particularly remarkable, who perseveres as he moves up the ladder. In Safety Last, he really moves up: Harold is a department-store clerk who concocts a publicity scheme for his store, which results in a climactic, hair-raising ascent up the outside of the building (at one point hanging from the hands of a huge clock). There is at least one other masterpiece on Vol. 1, the wonderful Girl Shy (1924), in which Harold is a small-time tailor's apprentice who can't speak to women but nevertheless has penned a how-to book entitled "The Secret of Making Love." There's also the 1923 Why Worry?, which suffers just a bit with its odd milieu (tropical island beset by revolutionaries) but has some hilariously weird routines built around compact Harold and the giant John Aasen (8 feet, 9 inches). A trio of shorter films are included, plus two Paramount sound features, the oddball Cat's Paw and Leo McCarey's entertaining The Milky Way.

Vol. 2 has the brilliant The Freshman (1925), with Lloyd as a college plebe whose ridiculous ideas about making himself ingratiating to others (including hilariously inapt jig during a handshake) makes him the laughingstock of the campus. The movie concludes with a justifiably famous football sequence. The Kid Brother (1927) is Harold as the weak link in the tough Hickory family, while Dr. Jack (1922) casts him as a country doctor whose ordinary ways prove sharper than they seem (his co-star, as in some other films here, is future wife Mildred Davis). In Grandma's Boy (1922) Lloyd plays a small-town fellow who lives with his frisky grandmother; convinced of his own cowardice, he yearns to compete for the hand of a pretty girl. His courtly call to the girl's home is the occasion for uproarious battle with a ridiculous "formal" suit, mothballs, and a litter of kittens attracted by the goose grease on his shoes. The gem of the shorts here is High and Dizzy (1920), a warm-up for Safety Last, which has a great sequence with Lloyd tipsily navigating a ledge on a high building. Feet First (1930), Lloyd's second talking picture, has Harold as an upwardly-striving shoe salesman trying to finesse his way up the ladder. Some good shipboard sequences in the middle of this one, but the main drawing card is a throwback: Lloyd re-visiting the Safety Last hanging-from-a-building sequence, but this time working every variation known to slapstick.

Vol. 3 has Speedy, his last silent picture, which packs as many great gags per minute as any Lloyd film, and also has one of his sweetest love stories. But the film is also notable for its extensive location shooting in New York City. The sequences shot at Coney Island, with some wonderfully hair-raising (and understandably obsolete) rides, are gorgeous and historically valuable. Hot Water (1924) also goes into the time capsule of great Lloyd features, even if it feels like a handful of shorter films shoehorned together. This one gets its charm from basic domestic situations. Like Hot Water, For Heaven's Sake (1926) is an hour long; this funny one casts Lloyd as a rich twit who takes up with a girl whose father runs a homeless mission.

There's one talking picture, the somewhat routine Movie Crazy (1932), but the silent shorts, of which there are many here, are better. Check out Haunted Spooks from 1920, which has its share of good jokes but which is also fascinating for its place in Lloyd's career. He suffered an off-set accident midway through shooting, costing him the thumb and forefinger of his right hand; after a hiatus, he completed shooting with a prosthetic glove (which he used in films thereafter). A heartfelt 15-minute documentary on Lloyd's palatial L.A. estate, Greenacres, uses copious home-movie footage to show the marvelous place and give a hint of Lloyd's homey, likable personality (it's narrated by granddaughter Suzanne Lloyd). A bonus disc contains home movies, celebrity tributes, Lloyd's collection of 3-D photographs, and his honorary Oscar acceptance speech from 1953. --Robert Horton

Having appeared in more than 200 films and widely considered to be one of cinema's most respected comic geniuses, Harold Lloyd was one of Hollywood's first true movie stars. Now, entertainment enthusiasts of all ages can enjoy the work of the man who inspired generations of acting greats with The Harold Lloyd Comedy Collection.

DVD Features:
Audio Commentary
Biographies
Comparison Scenes
Featurette
Interviews
Introduction
Other:*All feature films and shorts are full frame versions. **All content will have Spanish subtitles. Only the pictures with sound will have English subtitles and closed captions
Photo gallery:REMASTERED! RESTORED! RESCORED!

First Kings of Comedy Collection ("The Golden Age Of Comedy" and "When Comedy Was King")

The First Kings of Comedy Collection is a hilarious joyous and timeless tribute to the era of silent slapstick comedy and all the uproarious comedians who built the comedy genre. The collection consists of two great feature-length compilations The Golden Age of Comedy and When Comedy Was King. From documentary producer Robert Youngson and the Hal Roach studios The First Kings of Comedy preserves some of the greatest moments in comedy lore and pays special tribute to all of the silent era s greatest clowns including Stan Laurel Oliver Hardy Will Rogers Carole Lombard Jean Harlow Charley Chase Roscoe "Fatty" Arbuckle Charlie Chaplin Harry Langdon and Buster Keaton.System Requirements:Run Time: 160 minutes Genre: COMEDY UPC: 796019805889 Manufacturer No: 80588

Unknown Chaplin: The Master at Work

Indispensable for any Chaplin fan and important and highly intriguing for anyone who cares about film history, this three-volume series offers the outtakes and unreleased tracks of the Little Tramp's storied career. Archivist Kevin Brownlow and David Gill meticulously and ingeniously piece together previously unseen footage from Chaplin's private collection, demonstrating in part 1 how painstakingly the director developed gags in such short films as The Cure and The Immigrant. Part 2 is less essential, but offers the famous behind-the-camera intrigue of the making of his classic City Lights, a film in which pokey perfectionist Chaplin makes Stanley Kubrick look like a caffeinated, indie tyro rushing through production. Part 3 demonstrates how Chaplin recycled ideas he discarded early in his career for use in later film. It includes a historic first--one of the first extended sequences Chaplin shot trying to break out of the Little Tramp mold. Doubly amazing is how fresh and funny and effective Chaplin's filmmaking remains today, nearly a century later. --David Kronke

With bowler hat, mustache and cane, Charlie Chaplin became one of the twentieth century's most recognized and beloved icons. But for decades, the secrets to his timeless film magic were presumed lost forever to the cutting-room floors of a bygone era. Now, available on DVD for the first time, UNKNOWN CHAPLIN captures the cinematic genius as he was never meant to be seen. Using countless reels of footage and outtakes Chaplin had wanted destroyed, film archivists Kevin Brownlow and David Gill have meticulously crafted an essential and fascinating documentary homage to the Little Tramp who will no doubt keep us laughing until the last flickering frame. Featuring the following programs: MY HAPPIEST YEARS: Early shorts reveal how constant re-working of sight gags led to Chaplin's first triumph. THE GREAT DIRECTOR: The Kid, The Gold Rush and City Lights--by 1918, Chaplin is the movie industry's top director. HIDDEN TREASURES: See the original opening sequence to Chaplin's City Lights with a new musical score. DVD Features: How UNKNOWN CHAPLIN Was Made; Two Bonus Shorts: The Making of The Count and Chaplin Meets Harry Lauder; Chaplin Biography; Interactive Menus; Scene Selection