Product Details

• Actors: Charles R. Bowers, Kathryn McGuire, Melbourne MacDowell, Buster Brodie, Blue Washington
• Directors: Charles R. Bowers, Harold L. Muller, Joseph Losey, Ted Sears
• Writers: Charles R. Bowers, Harold L. Muller, Joseph Losey, Ted Sears
• Producers: Charles R. Bowers
• Format: Color, Dolby, DVD, Full Screen, NTSC
• Language: English
• Region: Region 1 (U.S. and Canada only. Read more about DVD formats.)
  
• Aspect Ratio: 1.33:1
• Number of discs: 2
• Rating: NR (Not Rated)
• Studio: Image Entertainment
• DVD Release Date: February 24, 2004
• Run Time: 233 minutes
• Average Customer Review: 4.6 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (12 customer reviews)
• ASIN: B00016XN2A
• Amazon.com Sales Rank: #86,124 in Movies & TV (See Bestsellers in Movies & TV)
• For more information about "Charley Bowers: The Rediscovery of an American Comic Genius" visit the Internet Movie Database (IMDb)

Editorial Reviews

Product Description

Who is Charley Bowers? The inventor of the no-slipping banana skin, unbreakable eggs, and cat-pushing trees! At the end of the 1920s, this unknown genius created and directed a score of cinematic burlesques filled with surrealist imagination, crammed with fantastic sights and animated puppets, among which the most delicious include "Egged On," "Fatal Footstep" and "Now You Tell One." His body of work is unique, though the astonishing course his career took has been chronicled by few and left him as one of the more enigmatic figures of American cinema. After a childhood spent with the circus, he became interested in animated drawing, adapting comic strips for the cinema including the "Mutt and Jeff" series created by Bud Fisher. Advances in animation which developed during this period explain the astonishing illusions which emerged in these comedic shorts. In the 1930s he directed "It#s a Bird," his first sound film. Bowers returned to animation for advertising films, in particular the first short film by Joseph Losey, the oil-commissioned "Pete Roleum and His Cousins," while also continuing his puppet films. He died in 1946, completely forgotten. To this day, 11 of the 20 short comedies are still considered lost. At the end of the 1960s, vault discoveries provided more of his story and three of the exhumed films were shown in 1976 at the Annecy Animated Film Festival, where they were met with enthusiasm. After 1992, worldwide research retrieved surviving prints of the missing films with requests to the world#s notable cinema collectors, who allowed access to their original elements. For the first time this extraordinary collection assembles the complete films of Charley Bowers which survive today, magnificently restored from the original elements with the collaboration of ten cinema societies.

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

10 of 11 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Eye-popping effects! Definitely of interest to film buffs, March 9, 2004

By	Scott MacGillivray (Massachusetts, USA) - See all my reviews (REAL NAME)

Charley Bowers is an almost forgotten master of stop-motion animation. The busy world of Bowers is filled with omnivorous birds that lay miraculous eggs, frisky animals, things that appear out of nowhere, machines that assemble and dismantle themselves, and usually Bowers himself as a typical silent-comedy patsy. The craftsmanship of his films is astounding, and animation enthusiasts will especially enjoy this collection of his rare short films. They are so rare indeed that surviving elements are often incomplete or partially damaged. In this DVD set, some of the silent subjects are shown with French title cards (and optional English subtitles). Others are American prints, and the quality is often extraordinary.

A sampling of Bowers's traditional animated efforts of the 1910s reveals that Bowers was an excellent pen-and-ink artist. The Mutt & Jeff cartoon GRILL ROOM EXPRESS gives the comic-strip characters little pantomimic touches that are very enjoyable. AWOL is a cautionary tale (predating Warners' Private Snafu cartoons) showing what happens when a soldier goes joyriding. (Nothing illicit here, the soldier just has tough luck throughout). In the 1920s Bowers starred in live-action comedies that he embellished with his camera tricks; few exist but the DVD set is representative. The set claims to contain every surviving Charley Bowers title; this is incorrect. (His silent short THERE IT IS!, in which Bowers looks like Buster Keaton and acts like Harry Langdon, is not included.)

There is a certain archaeological fascination in watching the highly visual Mr. Bowers attempt the talking picture. IT'S A BIRD is the bizarre adventure of a bird whose eggs hatch into automobiles. Bowers speaks on the screen for the first time, and mixes silent-comedy visuals with dialogue sequences deftly. but his clown-white makeup is so overdone that he looks anachronistic, even for 1930. This DVD offers the 1947 reissue, circulated shortly after Bowers's death; the print shown here is infinitely clearer and cleaner than the film and video copies offered for years. BELIEVE IT OR DON'T is a rock-bottom-budget compilation fashioning old Bowers clips into a screen magazine. WILD OYSTERS, released as one of Paramount's :"Animated Antics" in 1940, shows "Mom, Pop, and Snoozer" Mouse using household objects as home furnishings, with little Snoozer bedeviled by an angry cat and some vicious oysters. Bowers's 1940 approach is visually the same as his silent-era approach, with razor-sharp photography and amazingly fluid movement of three-dimensional objects -- and on top of animating the action figures, Bowers works in some synchronized dialogue! The source print on the DVD is a French release print with French titles, but the original English soundtrack is heard. A SLEEPLESS NIGHT, from the same series, is shown mute, with what may be a home-movie-distributor title.

The most amazing find in this collection is PETE ROLEUM AND HIS COUSINS, showing the Bowers technique in vivid color. Main and end titles are not shown and there is an occasional jump-splice, but it's good to see what survives. Narrator Bowers reads clever verses about how oil products improve everyday life. PETE ROLEUM resembles one of the George Pal "Puppetoons," but without as much sweetness or polish; instead of being a cute Pal fantasy for kids, it's an odd little industrial film. Bowers's quirky humor comes through despite an inferior soundtrack (the dialogue is distant, as though Bowers recorded it at home). The reel ends on a bright but strange note, with a good swing band accompanying Bowers's peculiar chorus line! The vocalist (sounds like Buddy Clark) and the song will stay with you for days.

The DVD also has a short documentary about Bowers (in French, with optional English subtitles), but it's basically the story of how film curators finally figured out who Bowers was. There is little biography, and nothing about Bowers's behind-the-scenes methods or his longtime director, Harold L. Muller. (Could Muller actually be Bowers? Hmm.)

This DVD set will appeal mostly to a specialized audience. Silent-film enthusiasts will admire the many off-the-wall ideas, while others may consider Bowers's work a little too weird. Either way, it's definitely something different, and one has to admire his painstaking approach to filmmaking, his ingenious special effects, and his flair for the absurd. Technical quality of the DVDs is excellent; print quality varies according to the surviving film elements but is generally excellent; most but not all of the silent subjects have musical accompaniment.

3 of 3 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars The true insight to Bowers and MUTT AND JEFF, June 22, 2005

By	Raymond D. Pointer "Ray Pointer" (Los Angeles, California United States) - See all my reviews (REAL NAME)

Much of what is credited to Charlie Bowers in the documentary is in fact the work of Dick Huemer. The translated version of "Grill Room Express" is such an example. First, there was no title originally released as this. The original title appears to have been "Flap Jacks" from 1917. The level of drawing, pen work, and execution of animation in this cartoon is superior to that displayed in the short exerpts seen in the documentary that are obviously from an earlier period. These were done by Bowers and Rauol Barre. Adding to this, the documentary shows drawings credited to Bowers that were Huemer's, including a gag cartoon done in 1969 where Jeff points to the thought balloons, asking, "Gee Mutt, do we always ahve to talk this way?" Mutt replies, "Of course you sap, sound ain't been invented yet."

Regarding the translation of the title cards from French to English, this is a classic case of the joke being lost in the translation. Besides the generic and unoffical title, "Grill Room Express," the translations from French are too literal, and the original dialogue seems altered to the extent that the humor is lost due to differences in context and idioms between the languages. This is a problem where plays on words that work in one language do not translate in other languages. In spite of this, "Grill Room Express" ("Flap Jacks") is a nice suriver from 1917, and displays a great amount of skill, but most of all displays personalities in the animated versions of these important comic strip characters at a time when other animated charcters had no personality. Although FELIX THE CAT has been recognized as the first animated character with personality, he came three years after the appearance of MUTT AND JEFF.

The MUTT AND JEFF animated series began in 1916, not 1912 since there were no commercially produced animated cartoons made this early. Winsor McCay displayed his first animated work, "Little Nemo" in 1911. His more famous "Gertie the Trained Dinosaur" came out in 1914. Two years later the first commercial animated cartoon studio was opened by Raoul Barre, followed later that year by John R. Bray. Barre, who was a French Candian, is not mentioned at all in the French documentary. This is ironic since this is a fact that Louise Beaudet, currator of La Cinemateque Quebecoise is certainly aware of. But it appears that the interview with her was edited in such a way that she appears not to mention Barre at all.

It is fortunate, however that interest has been renewed in MUTT AND JEFF, which has been a part of our culture for nearly 100 years. Although many today do not connect with the comic strip characters, they are familiar with the term referring to the teaming of tall and short. Having just completed a documentary showcase on the subjectof MUTT AND JEFF has given me the insight and authority for these comments, allowing me to present a more accurate portayal than what is given in the DVD discussed here.

3 of 3 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Comic Buried Treasure, April 24, 2004

By	W.C. Snelgrove (Los Angeles, CA) - See all my reviews

This is an amazing package for any silent film buff. Genuinely ingenious comedy films by a forgotten master of comic fantasy.
This is a two-disc set with all the available information on Bowers, a former animator who moved into live-action two-reelers starring hiimself. The coup de grace of every film are the stop motion sequences--precise, inventive and surreal visual gags as bizzare as anything ever done in a cartoon. The meticulous attention to detail in the execution is awe-inspiring. There are also working mechanical marvels that pre-figure the oddball inventions of Dr. Suess and double-exposure tricks that are suprisingly sophisticated. Between "EGGED ON," "THE WILD ROOMER" and "NOW YOU TELL ONE," literally every trick in the book is employed to maximum effect.

There are only nine of twenty silent films here, and the others are considered lost. Thanks go to a Belgian filmographer for hunting down what's here and restoring it.
Each silent comedy is a gem of plotting and escalating lunacy. All are accompanied by French screen captions, which have been more or less faithfully translated back into English in the subtitles. Nice accurate piano recordings on the soundracks of the silents, too, several offer altnernate music.

The only failing in my opinion is Bowers himself, a nimble stuntman who seems like a poor man's Busteer Keaton with zero screen presence. He could almost pass for Keaton in some of the shots, and in a few scenes he seems to be trying on Harold Lloyd's everyman. Unfortunately he just comes off as ordinary.
The other problem is that every film ends on an abrupt downer for the hero. Maybe these things hindered Bowers' popularity with audiences, but he deserves considerable credit for his imaginative storylines, eccentric gag and his meticulous craftsmanship in every aspect of his work.

The second disc has a short but sketchy bio along with two early cartoons by bowers and his last few talkies. These are all technically competent and fascinating, but the advent of sound didn't help him much. The best of the bunch is IT'S A BIRD which is hampered by clumsy, spoken jokes and an anti-climactic spoken punchline.

All quibbles aside--buy this disc if you love silent comedy!