Charlie Chaplin joined Mark Sennett's Keystone Film Company in late 1913 after being seen in Fred Karno's touring vaudeville troupe. After a few initial uneasy steps his rise was meteoric making 35 films in a single year, directing more than half of them, and developing his much-loved persona, the Tramp.
This stunning 4-disc set, featuring the 34 surviving Chaplin Keystone films (including the feature Tillie's Punctured Romance), is the result of an eight-year international collaboration to reconstruct and restore the films between the BFI National Archive, Cineteca Bologna/L Immagine Ritrovata and Lobster Films, with the cooperation of UCLA Film and Television Archive, Library of Congress, and the support of Association Chaplin.
The films in this collection are presented with a new musical accompaniment by Eric Beheim, Neil Brand, Antonio Coppola, Frederick Hodges, Stephen Horne, Robert Israel, Rodney Sauer, The Mont Alto Motion Picture Orchestra, Ethan Uslan, and Ken Winokur with Tillie's Nightmare.
Special features
- Charlie's White Elephant (1916, 6 mins): an animation by John Colman Terry and Hugh Shields featuring Chaplin
- Inside the Keystone Project (2010, 10 mins): a short documentary about international restoration efforts behind the films
- Silent Traces (2010, 12 mins): historian John Bengston on several of the Keystone locations
- A Thief Catcher (1914, 7 mins, extracts): a film recently rediscovered by Paul E Gierucki, with Chaplin as a Keystone Cop
- Stills gallery
- Illustrated booklet written by Jeffrey Vance
USA | 1914 | black and white | silent with music | 561 minutes | DVD9 x 4 | Original aspect ratio 1.33:1| Region 2 DVD
Disc One
- Making a Living | Kid Auto Races at Venice, Cal | Mabel's Strange Predicament | Between Showers | A Film Johnnie | Tango Tangles | His Favourite Pastime | Cruel, Cruel Love | The Star Boarder | Mabel at the Wheel | Twenty Minutes of Love | Caught in a Cabaret
Disc Two
- Caught in the Rain | A Busy Day | The Fatal Mallet | The Knockout | Mabel's Busy Day | Mabel's Married Life | Laughing Gas | The Property Man | The Face on the Barroom Floor | Recreation
Disc Three
- The Masquerader | His New Profession | The Rounders | The New Janitor | Those Love Pangs | Dough and Dynamite | Gentlemen of Nerve | His Musical Career | His Trysting Places
Disc Four
- Tillie's Punctured Romance | Getting Acquainted | His Prehistoric Past
