Charlie Chaplin: The Mutual Films 1916-1917

[MichaelB]

Available on 2-disc DVD and in a limited edition 2-disc Blu-ray set, the 12 films which Charlie Chaplin made for the Mutual Film Corporation – including Easy Street, The Immigrant and The Adventurer – are now fully restored and accompanied with scores by the celebrated silent film composer Carl Davis.

Out in May.

[EddieLarkin]

Damn, I knew they'd do the Mutual Comedies eventually! They make it sound like all of the films will have Carl Davis scores, which sounds fantastic since his single score on the Flicker Alley set was the only one I could bear (others were either terrible or out of sync). It'll probably be half the price of the FA set too. Which is good because they're clearly going to make me buy it sooner rather than later since it's limited. Won't be making the same mistake with the upcoming Essanay set!

[TMDaines]

Lovely old job. I'm glad I waited on the BFI for this one.

[GaryC]

Blu-ray checkdiscs are here and I've had a quick non-detailed look. There are two discs, with six films on each. Each one has a Carl Davis score and one or in some cases two alternative scores. You can't switch between scores via your remote, but have to select each one from the main menu, as the scores on each short makes for a different title, with the name of the score composer you've selected appearing in the credits at the start. There is also a commentary on each short, which appears to be on the same title as the Davis score, but again I wasn't able to select it except from the main menu.

I first saw many of these shorts on Saturday mornings on the BBC and remember Mutual idents at the start, plus original credits. These don't appear at the start of the shorts, as you have newly-made credits and restoration captions which then cut directly to the short itself. (Having said that, I've just checked and those showings were on BBC1 in 1978, so am I misremembering?)

There's no mention I've found of the original frame rate in the booklet. A quick Google (which found an article last year from MichaelB among others) suggests that they were shot at around 18fps which would sound about right, going by other silents I've seen from the period. The running times are around 25-27 minutes including the captions at the start. Can anyone here can confirm how they were mastered for 1080p24 - repeating every third frame?

Extras are "Chaplin Signs the Mutual Contract" (25 seconds, from 1916) on Disc One and "Charlie on the Ocean to England" (5 mins, from 1921) and a 9-minute interview from 2003 with Carl Davis on Disc Two, plus the booklet.

[EddieLarkin]

I'm not 100% but I think some if not all of the shorts on the FA set were at 20fps, with every 5th frame repeating (though rarely ever uniformly).

[manicsounds]

dvdbeaver

[StevenJ0001]

Looks like a great set. Is there any reason not to buy this over the Flicker Alley?

[EddieLarkin]

There are two hour long documentaries on the FA set but other than that no. The scores are very likely to be better on the BFI, and I wouldn't be surprised if the PQ is a touch improved as well.

[StevenJ0001]

There are two hour long documentaries on the FA set but other than that no. The scores are very likely to be better on the BFI, and I wouldn't be surprised if the PQ is a touch improved as well.

Thanks!

[hearthesilence]

FWIW, The Adventurer has been given a new restoration at MoMA, and they premiered it tonight. Some info:

The Adventurer. 1917. USA. Directed by Charles Chaplin. Screenplay by Vincent Bryan, Maverick Terrell, Chaplin. With Chaplin, Edna Purviance, Eric Campbell, Henry Bergman, Albert Austin. Digital restoration by The Museum of Modern Art, with funding provided by The Lillian Gish Fund for Film Preservation. World premiere. Silent. 26 min.

One truism of film restoration is that the best-loved titles are almost always in the worst shape. Negatives wear out from overuse, old prints are duped to create new ones, and image (and sound) quality are lost with every new analog generation. That’s long been the case with Charles Chaplin’s Mutual shorts, a series of 12 two-reel comedies that Chaplin made in 1916 and 1917. Considered by many to be Chaplin’s funniest, most formally accomplished work, the Mutual shorts have nearly been loved to death after over a century in constant circulation.

MoMA’s new restoration of The Adventurer, the final and, for many, finest of the Mutuals, comes as a revelation. Assembled from seven different sources, almost all from the domestic A negative, often combining elements within a given shot, the MoMA restoration has a clarity and grain structure missing from the film for generations, and has been fitted with remade intertitles that match samples from original prints of other Mutual films. The film now looks—almost eerily—very much as it did when it first appeared on American screens.

The restoration was supervised by Peter Williamson, MoMA’s Film Conservation Manager, and Dave Kehr, Curator, Department of Film, and was carried out at Metropolis Post in New York City. We are especially grateful to Metropolis for their amazing work despite the COVID shutdowns.

The restoration in this BFI set is excellent in its own right, carried out by Lobster and completed in 2015. MoMA's new improvement probably eliminated all of the scratches and blemishes, and it's possible the contrast is an improvement on some shots, but it's impossible to make a very precise comparison without looking at them side-by-side. FWIW, the MoMA restoration has the logos on the bottom of the intertitles like the Lobster restoration (which don't pop out as being that different than MoMA's, if at all), but they also include a tiny MoMA logo on the bottom right, so it'll be easy to identify.

Also one more thing: like Keaton, Chaplin usually casts a "heavy" or antagonist that's bigger and taller - someone that will look physically intimidating compared to Chaplin or Keaton. Yet in both cases, the effect is slightly lessened whenever you see them in less clothing - both men were in pretty amazing shape in their prime, not all that surprising given the physicality of their performances. In this case, I couldn't help but notice how thick and muscular Chaplin's thighs seemed to be.