Bonjour mes amis. Aimez-vous les films de Charlie Chaplin ? Are you wearing your pearls? Supping on truffle soup? Tooting your toy saxophone? Bien, alors nous pouvons commencer.
I bring some excellent news from the Criterion Collection and from the realm of Chaplinland. Charlie Chaplin’s game-changing melodrama A Woman of Paris: A Drama of Fate (1923), starring his muse Edna Purviance, will be released on Blu-ray and DVD from the Criterion Collection on 18 March in the US and 7 April in the UK. Some of you will have been waiting for this news for a long time.
And here she is, my copies arrived yesterday!
Continue reading A Woman of Paris (1923): Criterion releases Charlie Chaplin’s ‘drama of fate’ →
The Criterion Collection has shared this very special clip with Silent London to mark the release of Chaplin’s City Lights on Blu-ray in the UK. It is presented courtesy of MK2.
In this footage we see Chaplin out of costume rehearsing one of the most graceful bits of comic business in the film, as the Tramp steps back to admire a statue in a department store window – with perilous results.
It’s a fascinating insight into the working processes of this famously perfectionist filmmaker, during what was very possibly his most painstaking, and certainly most protracted, shoot. It’s just one of the glimpses backstage offered on the new Blu-ray edition of the film.
Continue reading Video: behind the scenes with Charlie Chaplin on City Lights →
The greatest political speech in film history is delivered by cinema’s most famous silent clown in 1940’s The Great Dictator. In this comic masterpiece, Charlie Chaplin writes, directs and stars as both a Jewish barber and the Fascist tyrant Adenoid Hynkel – any resemblance to a living person, in particular the leader of the Third Reich, was entirely intentional.
It is a timeless comedy of resistance and compassion in the face of evil, which uses physical comedy to puncture political megalomania. In short, a film worth breaking a vow of silence for.
Continue reading Win The Great Dictator on Blu-ray from Criterion Collection →
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Silent London 