Customer Reviews

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)

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2 star:		(1)
1 star:		(1)

 

 

After the first Chaplin Collection, I expected a terrific second set, but this far surpassed my expectations. My sole concern for the set as announced was that all the First National shorts would not be included, and that only the three which Chaplin compiled into the feature, THE CHAPLIN REVUE, would be present. But lo and behold, THE CHAPLIN REVUE is now a two-disc set which includes the four additional First Nationals! True, the other three are presented in Chaplin's 1959 compilation format, but still, it's all here. CITY LIGHTS, THE KID, and THE CIRCUS are all given two-disc presentations with tons of extras, while MONSIEUR VERDOUX, A WOMAN OF PARIS, and A KING IN NEW YORK receive one disc apiece, in which there are still some dandy bonus features. Add to the pot a widescreen version of the over two hours long CHARLIE, Richard Schickel's recent and acclaimed documentary, and you've got an amazing wealth of Chaplin material that will keep enthusiasts busy for weeks. The visual and audio quality is stunning, and the packaging quite attractive. When you divide the cost of the set by these twelve well-packed discs, it seems a financial pittance for a fortune's worth of Chaplin. I could have paid three times the amount for this material and not felt cheated. Unconditionally recommended.

The Good: I'm not a complete Chaplin aficionado but I believe if you pick up this DVD set and the first Chaplin DVD collection, you'll have all his films with the exception of his early Essanay and Mutual films and his 1967 film "A Countess From Hong Kong" which Chaplin directed and features a brief cameo. Besides the films themselves, this set contains photo galleries, trailers, brief documentaries, deleted scenes, some brief but fascinating introductions by Chaplin biographer David Robinson, and other related materials - all of them presented in pristine, and in most cases stunning, condition by restoration artists MK2.

The Bad: Chaplin re-released many of these films in the '60s and '70s and the Chaplin family obviously considers these as the final word since they've included them here. I'm assuming this is a good thing because it would allow MK2 to work from newer prints rather than the old film masters from the '20s and '30s. Unfortunately, Chaplin also added new music in many cases and made some minor scene deletions. I haven't seen the earliest versions to be able to compare musical scores. And the scores used here worked fine for me. Still, it would've been nice if they included the original film instead of tacking the brief deleted scenes on separately. This was done perfectly with "The Gold Rush" set in the first Chaplin DVD collection which includes the original film and the reworked modern version with Chaplin's narration. There are several spelling mistakes on the packaging of "The Kid" - the title has dropped out somewhere along the line in its production - an error which should've been caught, considering all the care they've put into this package. There are also some isolated spelling mistakes in the title cards during "The Chaplin Revue" shorts they could've easily caught. The "Woman" disc lists that it includes movie posters on the box's contents - however, they've forgot to include them here. The box is also rather flimsy paperboard. I recently bought the Monty Python boxed set which comes in a hard cardboard box. This is another minor point but it would've been nice to get a solid housing considering the cost of this set and care put into the materials. In addition, the FBI warnings on all the movies and documentaries appear for about five minutes in several languages - which is fine - but unfortunately, you can't fast forward through any of them. The only thing you can do is stop the DVD and reboot to get back to the main menu or wait the warnings out until the menu comes back. This inconvenience could've been corrected as well.

The Ugly: In their haste to put this thing out, possibly to coincide with the current Jeffrey Vance coffee table book "Chaplin - Genius of the Cinema," they've made a few glaring errors. In the case of the A King in New York / A Woman of Paris two disc set, both discs work properly - but they've been mislabelled. (Disc One is actually Disc Two and vice versa.) I purchased this set in Canada at HMV so this is not strictly an issue with the sets Amazon are selling. What's worse is they've also made the same mistake with "The Chaplin Revue" two disc set. Again, both discs play fine but are mislabelled. These sloppy errors will probably be corrected in future print runs. But it's such a bonehead mistake - particularly making them twice in one collection - they really should've caught them.

But all in all, even these minor points still can't obscure the fact this is a really phenomenal DVD set with all the prime, sublime glory of Chaplin. You just wish they hadn't been asleep at the switch with all these careless little errors.

You owe it to yourself, at least one in your lifetime, to sit down in a comfortable chair, turn off the cell phone, turn off the lights, send the kids outside, and watch "CITY LIGHTS". And be sure to have a box of tissues close by. Released as a "silent film" when the rest of the studios were into sound, Chaplin proved once again that no amount of words could covey the range of emotion the Little Tramp could exhibit with a simple smile, and that love and laughter are universal.

The film is a roller-coaster ride of emotions, from hysterics to dispair to hope to joy, and as the ride comes to an end, you'll be left with a moment that will remain with you for the rest of your life. I first saw this film when I was 24. I am 50 now, and just picturing the last image of this film in my mind as I am writing this, is sending tears streaming down my cheeks. Sorry, I can't help it.

Likewise, "THE KID", one of Chaplin's earlier masterpieces, is filled with gushing sentimentality, as were most of the great silent films of the time, but in Chaplin's hands, IT WORKS. His anger, dispair, triumph, and playfulness are go genuinely emoted that you forget your watching an 80+ -year-old black-and-white movie with no dialogue. And 6-year-old Jackie Coogan, who grew up to be TV's Uncle Fester, matches Chaplin's range of emotion like a seasoned verteran. He is the most amazing child actor I have ever seen, possibly with the exception of "I Am Sam"'s Dakota Fanning.

DO NOT PASS UP THESE FILMS. "American Pie" is funny, but anyone can fart on-screen and get a laugh. Chaplin makes you laugh, cry, hold your breath and howl, all at the same time. These are ageless, timeless masterworks.

Once again, as with Volume 1, the main pieces of this box are first class, simply great quality reissues of Chaplins greatest (and less great) films. It's the other pieces that leave cause me to scratch my head.

So, let's start with what is good.

We have here some of Chaplin's finest silent work, including my favorite, The Circus. The films are expertly restored and projected at a speed which is about as close to the subjective "correct speed" as possible. The soundtracks are well restored, and there are plenty of cut scenes, outtakes and home movies to go along with the original films.

A couple of films are notoriously weak, and one just has to look at the box to figure out which ones those are. "Monsieur Verdoux" has only one disc, and "A Woman of Paris" and "A King in New York" actually share a 2 disc set. But these films are essential to completing Chaplin's legacy, and it is good to have them well issued and in as nice a presentation as possible.

There is a 5.1 surround soundtrack, which is really wierd, since these were issued in mono to start with. Why not just colorize the films while you're at it, M2K? (I know, some people just can't watch a film with a mono soundtrack, but this is really excessive.)

The we have the documentary by Richard Schickel, which, which good, is very frustrating. It's great to see brief clips of the Keystone films in excellent quality, but isn't it time to release the ENTIRE collection of Keystones in best-possible quality? WHEN, OH WHEN, WILL THIS HAPPEN!

Some argument could also be made that the short films in this collection could have been better considered. There are several different versions of some of these films, "Shoulder Arms" comes to mind, and it is quite possible that the version sused here are the best pictorial quality, but not the best acting quality. This is a very subjective topic, but I would have liked to see the original "Shoulder Arms" included as well, perhaps the most substantially different of the versions. This is a minor complaint, though.

The "Chaplin Today" documentaries, as in the first box set, are rather pathetic, and self-defeating in their attempts to make Chaplin relevent to today's audiences. If Chaplin wasn't relevent, then nobody would by this box set, and I wouldn't bother writing this review. But he is relevent. Trying to convice people so doesn't work, unfortunately, so we end up with these rather pathetic documentary attempts.

But overall, this is a collection of gems, and complaining about the ancillary pieces of this collection is like complaining about the floor in the room containing the Hope Diamond. It's only the actual films that matter, and they are superb.

Despite the availability of the original versions of these films, they opted to use versions edited later in Chaplin's career to make them more palatable for modern audiences of the resurgence crowd. While not as noticeable on some of the films, The Kid and Woman of Paris suffer greatly from editing and deleted scenes. To add insult to injury, it's not indicated on the packaging that you aren't getting the real versions.
The plus side is, the restoration is really great. The films that aren't too hacked up are great to see this sharp. Again, I just wish the real versions could have gotten this treatment. Sadly, I assume this will be the definitive DVD release of these titles, and we won't be seeing the original films turn up anytime soon.
Should you prefer the edited versions, this set would definitely be right up your alley, because as I said, the restoration is great.

The Chaplin Collection Volume 2 (and Volume 1 for that matter) are the very best editions of the Chaplin works in existence! There are many inferior prints of Chaplin movies out there, but the good folks at MK2 have completely restored and cleaned up each movie so they look almost like new. Only with these sets can you see the movies in anything resembling what they must have looked like in the theaters when the prints were new. There a few minor things I wished they'd have done differently. For instance the fine introductions to each movie by esteeemed Chaplin biographer David Robinson should have been on the same disk with the movies themselves and not on the extras disks. Also, on the Kid (fabulously restored), they use the version re-released by Chaplin in 1971, which deletes three of Edna Purviance's scenes (Edna plays the Kid's mother in this movie) Those three scenes are included on the extras disk, but I wish they wouldn't consider the version of "The Kid" that Chaplin tampered with fifty years later as the "official version" But the Chaplin Estate had final say and it was (similarly in the first boxed set, the shorter, Chaplin narrarated re-release of the Gold Rush was considered the official version, but they also included the longer original silent version on the second disk)

But that is nitpicking. The Chaplin Collection is the definitive edition of all Chaplin's great movies. Both box sets are essential for any serious film collector's film library. These are the editions of Chaplin's great movies that you will want to have and keep and watch over and over for years to come!

This great and very diverse collection deserves to be in your collection if you are a chaplin fan!! It includes 6 movies, a collection of shorts ('the chaplin revue', which has seven shorts that amazon's description forgot to mention) and one documentary on chaplin only available through this set, and while not all the films are masterpieces, this is $100 retail for 6 films, 7 shorts and the documentary (12 discs) while buying them separately would cost $175 retail minus the documentary! And although I know that not every film in the set will have mass appeal, if you are planning to buy 'city lights' separately from this collection with one other from here, go for the set instead. The value screams for itself: all these films are unique and what has been done to restore them is fabulous. Dont pass it up!!

Warner Brothers' "The Chaplin Collection Volume 2" gathers together numerous films from the career of one of the few cinematic geniuses. The best of the films, "City Lights," is a masterpiece of comic timing, and also features a truly engrossing love story. "The Circus" and "The Kid" are also marvelously funny and touching classics. "The Chaplin Revue," which gathers several of his short films is more of a mixed bag, but the better shorts (like "Shoulder Arms" and "A Dog's Life") are still excellent. "A Woman of Paris" is an interesting dramatic experiment, and "Monsieur Verdoux," while uneven, certainly has its moments. The only truly terrible movie in the box is "A King in New York," but it is, at the very least, an interesting document of Chaplin's views on the America that disowned him.
Like in the previous bozed set, the films look very good. Mastered from near perfect source material, the only problem is the occasional fuzziness that occurs during scenes with much movement. The sound is adequate on the 'talkies,' and fine with the musical scores on the silent films.
The set is truly impressive with its huge quantity of extras. Each of the films contains an analytical documentary "Chaplin Today," with a different international filmmaker discussing each movie (Jim Jarmusch on "A King in New York" and Peter Lord on "City Lights," for example). The discs also include introductions by David Robinson, a Chaplin biographer, which are packed with information. In addition to trailers and photo galleries, there are numerous historical curios as well, ranging from footage from the premiere of "The Circus" to newsreel footage of Chaplin in London to footage of Chaplin signing the United Artists contract to a full length Jackie 'The Kid' Coogan film. Suffice to say, Chaplin fans are going to enjoy the extras.
The problem with the set is its sloppiness. For example, the 2-disc double feature of "A Woman of Paris" and "A King in New York" has the discs incorrectly labeled (ie the "King in New York" disc is labeled "Woman of Paris"). The same problem goes for the 2-disc "Chaplin Revue." The menus are extremely ugly, the chapter links page takes a very long time to go through, and the FBI warning is in about a kajillion different languages - and no skip option.
The set also includes Richard Schikel's dry by illuminating documentary "Charlie: The Life and Art of Charles Chaplin," which includes interviews with Richard Attenborough, Geraldine Chaplin, Woody Allen, Andrew Sarris, David Robinson, Johnny Depp, Robert Downey Jr., Martin Scorsese, and many more. Definately worth watching.

Charles Chaplin was the greatst cinematic genius of the 20th century. His brilliance was celebrated and recognized for decades, but then America brutally turned against him. How it grieved him that his adopted homeland, the country that had given him fame, riches and untold fortune, denounced him as a Communist and basically didn't allow him back into the country. What a singular disgrace. His story is told magnificently in the documentary included, "Charlie - The Life and Art of Charles Chaplin." I've watched this portion alone five times and haven't wearied of it yet. It tells Charlie's story in a simple, chronological and elegant manner, including interviews with sons Michael and Sydney, as well as daughter Geraldine. The color home movies from his years in Switzerland alone make this worth the price of admission.

The movies are all stellar and includes my personal favorite Charlie film, the vastly underrated Monsieur Verdoux. What a scathing satire this was, how it showcases his incomparable talent. A bomb when it was released in 1948, it has worn well, though one wonders it was received upon it's release. America was not ready for this biting indictment of its culture.

If you're a long-time Chaplin fan or a Charlie newbie, this set has something for everyone. There was only Chaplin and this set shows the entire spectrum. My highest recommendation.

The French have done it again! A French company nontheless, have remastered and put-together these brilliant and extremely well-crafted DVDs of Charlie Chaplin's great movie classics. These aren't just the movie, done satisfactorily - these are DVDs that fully understand that Chaplin was a genius and his works were masterpieces to be preserved for all time!

Fans could wish for little better than this box set. There's almost too much here - but none of it is overkill, redundant, or "fluff" in any way. The movies within this box set should set a precedent in standards of exactly how to preserve a legendary film masterpice and prepare it for the mass-market in a way that is profitable, attractive, and yet all the while deserving of it's material in every way.

The mastering on these DVDs is done to perfection and the picture & sound quality is top-notch! Thankfully, someone got the rights to distribute this material who isn't just in it for a quick buck. In other words, Chaplin's films fell into the right hands who treated them right and gave them the level of respect that they deserve to be shared with fans everywhere to enjoy in the fullest and richest way possible to date.

Too often, quick & dirty moneymaking beancounters get their filtty vampire hooks into a great classic and put it out cheaply to simply cash in quick, all the while robbing the fans of quality and presentation in the name of corporate "profit" alone. Not so with these DVDs of Charlie Chaplin's output! Quite the contrary: every effort seems to have been made to do this "right". God bless them too.

If you are a Chaplin fan, you surely will agree and be as thankful as I.