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Chaplin fans strike gold with DVD set
Sydney Chaplin, the veteran stage actor and son of Charlie Chaplin, is finally getting a DVD player this week.
The occasion: the release on disc today of four of his father’s most important films, groundbreaking comedies starring cinema’s first comedic superstar.
The Gold Rush, Modern Times, The Great Dictator and Limelight have been remastered and restored under the supervision of the Chaplin family estate. They make their debut in lavish two-disc packages ($30 each) that include gobs of extras, including documentaries, extensive production notes, deleted scenes and rare home movies.
Though he has seen each of these films more times than he can count √≥ mostly at his dad’s home in Switzerland √≥ Sydney Chaplin, 77, is plenty excited about watching them on DVD. “It’s good that it keeps the films alive and preserves them,” Chaplin says. “He made wonderful pictures. … They deal with human problems, human feelings, much more so than most of the pictures coming out today.”
The releases kick off a major DVD initiative in which Warner Home Video, working with French production company MK2 and Associated Chaplin (the family estate), will issue 15 Chaplin films and two collections of shorts. Subsequent releases are planned for the first quarter of 2004.
“This is one of our biggest campaigns of the year,” says George Feltenstein of Warner Home Video. “Charlie Chaplin was the first superstar of cinema; he was, and still is, in a class by himself.”
Accordingly, Warner is backing the release with a major marketing campaign. The studio arranged for a special screening of the cleaned-up Modern Times at the Cannes Film Festival. A documentary, Chaplin, was commissioned and shown at the American Film Institute’s recent documentary film festival in Washington, D.C. And July 8 will be Chaplin Night on Turner Classic Movies, with back-to-back showings of all four films.
“One of the things we really needed to do was bring awareness of Chaplin to critical mass,” Feltenstein said. “There’s a natural interest in him √≥ people may know of his character, his hat and cane √≥ but they might not have seen his films. It’s our job to pique that curiosity.”
Russ Solomon, founder of the Tower Records and Video chain, says customers have been asking about the DVDs for weeks. “Chaplin is an icon,” Solomon says. “Some of this stuff was available before, but only on VHS, in somewhat crappy prints. To come out on DVD, with nice cleaned-up masters, hopefully it will turn into kind of a cult item.”