André Malraux tells of having witnessed, in Persia, the screening of a film that does not exist entitled The Life of Chaplin: “Persian movie theaters are outdoors, the films projected on walls surrounded by people and black cats, curled up, watching the screen. Some Armenian distributor had created, very astutely, a montage of lots of little Tramp clips, and the result – a very long feature film – was stunning: the Myth in his pure state”.

With eighty-one titles to his credit, of which sixty-two short comedies (including Her Friend the Bandit and Triple Trouble), Chaplin is perhaps the most ‘cut and edited’ auteur in the history of cinema, a phenomenon prompted by the very idea of ‘Myth’ referred to by Malraux (and by Bazin, who traced its ‘genesis’ better than anyone else) and which seems to perfectly reflect the modern era. In the early 1980’s, when Kevin Brownlow and David Gill did so much to illuminate Chaplin’s work with their extraordinary Unknown Chaplin, it was practically impossible to see the Chaplin comedies in any accurate version, at the right speed, or with the right music accompaniment: the Myth had assumed so many forms, but Chaplin’s original artistic intentions seemed blurred by the passage of time, while his audience, once contagious, collective laughing souls in full theatres, had become mainly Tv viewers (today’s YouTube surfers). 

Over the past thirty years the Chaplin films have made it back onto the big screen, restored. First were the great classics, the medium and full-length films, followed by the early thirty-four Keystone pictures (the origins of the Myth). The twelve comedies Chaplin directed and starred in for the Mutual Film Corporation follow a recognizable creative direction but are also, at the same time, twelve distinct films, each memorable for its uniqueness and individual charms. As we are witnessing the end of the film era and are driven to continue to restore, preserve, respect and bequeath the know-how related to film upon which cinema was born and enlightened an entire century, the restoration of the Mutual comedies seems significant and paradigmatic of the possible coexistence of the digital revolution and film tradition. A true restoration project, the fruit of countless hours of inspection and repair, involving the comparison of so many, different generation elements, coming from over thirty international archives that generously shared their knowledge and consented to allowed us access to their materials. Finally, once again, we must acknowledge our debt and gratitude to another work from the 1980’s that revolutionized our understanding, Chaplin: His Life and Art by David Robinson, a powerful biography researched through and thanks to the discovery of a monumental and inexhaustible archive. Beyond teaching us so much about Chaplin, these works reflected a method, an approach and a vision which over these years we have attempted to make our own. We would like to think that our work on the Chaplin Archive, now finally complete, will continue this trajectory.

(Cecilia Cenciarelli)

Programme curated by Cecilia Cenciarelli

Programme curated by Cecilia Cenciarelli

“Film is not my profession,” wrote Rossellini, “my profession is learning every day and describing incessantly: the human profession. And what is a human? An upright being that stands on its toes to see the universe.” As everybody knows, Chaplin did not talk much, or at least not enough for us, about his profession as a filmmaker. Some claim his reluctance to delve into the intricacies of creativity was a kind of superstition, others that it was related to his being first and foremost an instinctive director who built his films around an idea of “organic” rhythm and coherence, directing his actors as if they were an extension of his body. His archive, however, provides insight to all the rest: the urgency of an idea, the freedom and obstinacy of writing, the thoroughness of his choices. The archive’s scope is so vast in terms of content and value that it seems to extend infinitely, providing us with endless opportunities to discover new documents, like the extraordinary papers brimming with advice for Paulette Goddard (in shorthand and then transcribed) while directing the final scene of The Great Dictator. Our three events this year follow just as many itineraries indicated by this wonderful and copious archive.

CHARLIE’S FIRST SCRIPT

On November 11, 1938, the front page of The Times of London reported on the ‘Kristallnacht’: “No foreign propagandist bent upon blackening Germany before the world could outdo the tale of burnings and beatings, of blackguardly assaults on defenceless and innocent people, which disgraced that country yesterday”. On that very day, Chaplin developed a two-page draft of what was to become one of the most controversial and famous speeches in the history of cinema.
The Great Dictator marked an inevitable revolution in Chaplin’s working methods. Until then he had successfully eluded the straitjacket of a script, relying on his instinct for structure and an organic process of creation. But deciding that a talking picture had to have a script, he threw himself with great energy and originality into the process and turned out this monumental document.
The ratio of unused preparatory written material to the final script seems to parallel that between the overall footage shot (477,440 feet) and the footage used (11,625 feet).
Over three thousand pages of material were to result in a final script of 200 pages – itself exceptionally long by Hollywood standards.
This staggering amount of notes, story continuities and draft scripts produced between September 1938 and the start of showing on September 9, 1939 affords a unique insight into Chaplin’s creative methods.

David Robinson, Cecilia Cenciarelli

DOSSIER: EDDIE SUTHERLAND

The reputation of Eddie Sutherland rests upon the W.C. Fields and Mae West films he directed in the 30s. But he was yet another trained by Chaplin. He worked as his assistant
director on two seminal productions, A Woman of Paris and The Gold Rush and witnessed the production of Chaplin’s enigmatic The Professor. The documentation available in the Chaplin Archive confirms that Sutherland’s was the man who orchestrated the spectacular opening shot of The Gold Rush as well as for ‘planting’ the teetering cabin idea into Chaplin’s mind. Sutherland always acknowledged his debt to Chaplin, although one sees relatively little sign of it in his comedies. This dossier will examine his work – surprisingly successful at the box office, despite its relative lack of inspiration – through audio interviews, production stills, archival papers and extracts of films. The screening of two complete features It’s the Old Army Game (silent) and Diamond Jim (sound) will complete the dossier.

Kevin Brownlow, Cecilia Cenciarelli

SYD CHAPLIN, A BIOGRAPHY

Sydney John Chaplin (legally Hill) was born in London on March 16, 1885 to an unwed soubrette, Hannah Harriet Pedlingham Hill, who was to give birth to perhaps the most famous and successful film comedian in the world just four years later, Charlie. Much conjecture has been made about the relationship between these two brothers, but initially it seems to have been one of Sydney as loving caretaker and supporter of his younger sibling. But with fame for Charlie came complications for Sydney. Did he subsume his own ego and its needs in order to work towards what could be unparalleled success on the part of his brother? The short answer to that was “yes,” but Sydney’s competitive side could not long be quelled by his true affection for his brother and so he embarked on a film career of his own, making 37 films between 1914 and 1929. While he achieved real success in films such as Charley’s Aunt (1924) and The Better ‘Ole (1926), his career suffered major downturns, too, first in 1922 upon the release of his long overdue picture King, Queen, Joker—a major flop—and then in 1929 when he was blacklisted from the business after a debacle involving an actress and his then employer, British International Pictures. This enigmatic life is the subject of Syd Chaplin: A Biography.

Lisa Stein Haven

Section curated by Cecilia Cenciarelli

DOSSIER NAPOLEON

“I knew about Napoleon, then in some vague way. He was a great soldier who had come upon misfortune. I have seen an almanac, depicting him bidding goodbye to his troops at Fontainebleau, and it had impressed me and other prints of him look- ing brooding out at sea. His pose, the hand in the vest, the sad piercing eyes, appealed to me even more than the figure of Christ. I suppose because Napoleon’s expression was a living human grief – a tortured soul which came nearer to my understanding, while the divine, tortured innocent expression of Christ, with his eyes turned piously upward was a figure I saw objectively, but it never made any human appeal.”

The boundless geography of the Chaplin archives contains some crucial moments, almost like “geologic periods”, in which the filmmaker’s thought and artistic vision transpire from the pages revealing new aspects or completing the picture.

Within them the “political period” is undoubtedly one of the most enduring. In the annotated edition of A Comedian Sees the World, Lisa Stein shows a direct relationship between Chaplin’s travel experience in a Europe headed towards the Second World War, his social and polit- ical awakening, and the discovery of writing, which would become a constant feature of the years to come.
Before coming together in Chaplin’s quintessential films – Modern Times and The Great Dictator – these themes can be found in his unfinished work (and near obsession): a film about Napoleon Bonaparte. Hundreds of pages, ten different screenplay drafts, contracts, letters and cablegrams: different treatments, historical research and correspondence about Napoleon all bring to mind the words of Pierre Sorlin about the great French film archives “extra-filmic sources that are more cinematographic than film itself”.
Chaplin’s fascination with Napoleon is connected to childhood memories: of his mother, who with her natural theatrical abilities did comic impersonations of historical figures to entertain the children, and of his father, who was reminiscent of the Emperor Bonaparte: “I was hardly aware of father, and do not remember him having lived with us. He too was a vaudevillian, a quiet, brooding man with dark eyes. Mother said he looked like Napoleon”.

In the 1920s Chaplin considered the idea of a film about Joséphine de Beauharnais for Edna Purviance. Reading the memoires of De Bourrienne and Costant really struck Chaplin, and he decided to perform Napoleon himself, immortalizing his heroic deeds during the Italian campaign.

But it was not until the early 1930s that the idea became more concrete. Chaplin commissioned Jean de Limur with an adaptation of Jean Weber’s novel La vie secrète de Napoléon Ier and then asked Alistair Cooke to help him with historical research, which began with the works of Sir Walter Scott and Dmitry Merezhkovsky. Simultaneously, Chaplin began working on the script of Napoleon with the English left-wing intellectual John Strachey.

During Chaplin’s political years the Napoleon-hero of the 20s became the Napoleon-man in Chaplin’s first openly pacifist film, in which the speech to the crowd, identity change and exile foreshad- ow his later works and his gradual break from his adoptive home America.

Cecilia Cenciarelli

Programme curated by Cecilia Cenciarelli

The restorations

The Cineteca di Bologna has, for over five years now, sustained an important relationship with Charlie Chaplin and his heirs. The delicate and complex restoration work carried out by the Cineteca and L’Immagine Ritrovata laboratory, which began with The Kid in 1999, is still in progress, in accordance with the family’s wishes. Since then, thanks to a careful philological analysis, an accurate comparative study of existing materials and the use of the most sophisticated techniques to achieve the best possible sound and image quality, we have witnessed the restoration of Modern Times, Monsieur Verdoux, Limelight, The Chaplin Revue (Shoulder Arms, The Pilgrim and Dog’s Life), The Circus and Pay Day. In 2003, alongside the restoration project that is due to complete all the director’s work in the next few years, a new initiative has been added. Promoted by the Association Chaplin in collaboration with BFI/National Film and Television Archive and Lobster Films, it proposes to restore the 35 slapstick comedies that Chaplin made with the Keystone Company in 1914.

The paper archive

The Cineteca is carrying out an ambitious project, thanks to the fundamental support of the Fondazione Carisbo, to catalogue, digitise and preserve the monumental “paper legacy” left by Charlie Chaplin. Nearly a century of cinema is contained in dozens of stories, screenplays, drawings and sketches, short stories, set stills and private photographs, daily production reports, ideas and notes for projects never realised, press books, letters and censorship documents. The 2003 inauguration of the online catalogue, charliechaplinarchive.org, and of the Charlie Chaplin research centre at the Cineteca library, has allowed us to show the first results of a work, that, once completed, will allow the world’s scholars, researchers and film experts access to this inexhaustible heritage. The project, currently in progress, has realised over 83,000 digital scans and nearly 5,500 catalogue entries.

The publications

The original archive material, only available to a few film historians up to now, will be published and reproduced for the first time in a series of monographic volumes. The critical comments by film critics and historians of the unpublished papers, allow us to trace the crucial stages around the origins of the single films, their creation, the unused versions, the censorship and distribution issues. Following on from the monographies dedicated to Limelight, The Great Dictator and Modern Times, this year we are publishing Kevin Brownlow’s The Search for Charlie Chaplin together with the memorable documentary Unknown Chaplin – for the first time on dvd – made by the same author and by David Gill.

Cecilia Cenciarelli – The Chaplin Project

The restorations

The Cineteca di Bologna has, for over five years now, sustained an important relationship with Charlie Chaplin and his heirs. The delicate and complex restoration work carried out by the Cineteca and L’Immagine Ritrovata laboratory, which began with The Kid in 1999, is still in progress, in accordance with the family’s wishes. Since then, thanks to a careful philological analysis, an accurate comparative study of existing materials and the use of the most sophisticated techniques to achieve the best possible sound and image quality, we have witnessed the restoration of Modern Times, Monsieur Verdoux, Limelight, The Chaplin Revue (Shoulder Arms, The Pilgrim and A Dog’s Life), The Circus and Pay Day. In 2003, alongside the restoration project that is due to complete all the director’s work in the next few years, a new initiative has been added. Promoted by the Association Chaplin in collaboration with BFI/National Film and Television Archive and Lobster Films, it proposes to restore the 35 slapstick comedies that Chaplin made with the Keystone Company in 1914.

The paper archive

The Cineteca is carrying out an ambitious project, thanks to the support of the Fondazione Carisbo, to catalogue, digitise and preserve the monumental “paper legacy” left by Charlie Chaplin. Nearly a century of cinema is contained in dozens of stories, screenplays, drawings and sketches, short stories, photographs from the set and private life, daily production reports, ideas and notes for projects never realised, press books, letters and censorship documents. The 2003 inauguration of the online catalogue, charliechaplinarchive.org, and of the Charlie Chaplin research centre at the Cineteca library, has allowed us to show the first results of a work, that once completed, will allow the world’s scholars, researchers and film experts access to this inexhaustible heritage. The project, currently in progress, has realised over 55,000 digital scans and nearly 4000 catalogue entries.

The publications

The original archive material, only available to a few film historians up to now, will be published and reproduced for the first time in a series of monographic volumes. The critical comments by film critics and historians of the unpublished papers, allow us to trace the crucial stages around the origins of the single films, their creation, the unused versions, the censorship and distribution issues. Following on from the monographies dedicated to Limelight and The Great Dictator, this year will see the publication of the Modern Times volume edited by Christian Delage.

Cecilia Cenciarelli – The Chaplin Project

Strongly desired by the heirs of Charlie Chaplin, and made possible by a contribution from the Fondazione Cassa di Risparmio di Bologna, the Chaplin Project continues to fuel a rich and authentic rediscovery of Chaplin’s work. On one hand, this occurs through the meticulous and essential film restoration work conducted by “L’Immagine Ritrovata” laboratory, and on the other through the systematic recovery and study of the papers and documents held in the Chaplin archives. Restoration of the The Circus, in collaboration with Academy Film Archive, will close this seventeenth edition of the festival, bringing back, after more than seventy years, the Tramp’s tightrope walking escapades at their best “silent eloquence”. A Dog’s Life will instead wrap up the work conducted on the Chaplin Revue, re-edited by Chaplin in 1959, following last year’s presentation of Shoulder Arms and The Pilgrim. This edition of the festival will also give way to restoration of the Keystone productions in a collaboration between the Cineteca di Bologna, Lobster Films and BFI – National Film and Television Archive. While the mighty task of restoring Chaplin’s short and feature films has been continuing for several years now, the equally delicate and monumental project to digitalize and preserve his paper documentation has now reached its first milestone: over 20,000 documents scanned and 2300 catalogue entries are the partial result of this work in progress, scheduled for completion in two years. With the intention, common to any archive, of safeguarding the rare beauty of such a vital legacy (which brings us even closer to the creation of Chaplin’s art through hundreds of screenplays in the making, set designs and original drawings, entire notebooks full of handwritten notes, thousands of photographs), it seemed important to us to guarantee the diffusion of this heritage which has been completely inaccessible until now. Hence, upon completion of the archiving process, the database, designed ad hoc together with the technological partners in the project, will be available for consultation online (www.charliechaplinarchive.org). Thus, an international research center is coming together in Bologna, which will include a program of events and exhibits. One such exhibit, on the occasion of this edition of Il Cinema Ritrovato, will give a glimpse of the wealth of suggestions hiding among Chaplin’s drafts, manuscripts, and photographs (“From the Chaplin Archive: Exhibition of the original documents”). Finally, these as yet unseen documents constitute the core for a series of monographic publications, inaugurated last year with Limelight. Editing of these publications has been entrusted to several major critics in the field who will provide an authoritative reading of the documents, thus helping to reconstruct the history of the films from the first stages of ideation to release in theaters.

Cecilia Cenciarelli

The Cineteca di Bologna has been assigned the delicate task of restoring Charles Chaplin’s entire cinematographic oeuvre. All phases of this complex operation, requested by the filmmaker’s heirs, will be carried out in Bologna under the direct supervision of the specialized personnel at the Cineteca. The restoration work is based on philological reconstruction of each individual film. Thus, as has been the case for some time now with literary works, the best existing elements from throughout the world will be recovered, and through comparative analysis, we will establish which material is closest to the original version of the film. In addition to obtaining the best possible quality of sound and images, the final aim is to reconstruct the work in the version actually approved by Chaplin, taking care nonetheless to conserve all the «authored variants». Indeed, the director’s work to revise and perfect his films is not ignored: the precious documentation on modifications and changes made to the films by their author, are of great importance when researching both the history of the work in the making as well as the director’s specific method of working. The case of The Kid – restored by the Cineteca in 1999 – is a prime example: four different negatives of the film existed, as Chaplin made numerous changes to the original editing – some even fifty years after the first release.With Modern Times, instead, at the same time that the images were being restored, thanks to the work of Maestro Timothy Brock, it was possible to reconstruct the original score from 1936, written for the film by Chaplin himself. In 2001, the restored version of Monsieur Verdoux, dating back to 1947, was presented. Restoration of Monsieur Verdoux was carried out in part from comparison of various existing materials, which allowed us to identify, through a series of laboratory tests and assessments, the best sources for restoration of the images and sound. Restoration of the images was carried out exclusively using photo-chemical techniques, while digital technologies were also employed to restore the sound. Now it is time for the restoration of Limelight. Fifty years after its release in theaters, the film is being presented here in the last version approved by Chaplin. Indeed, approximately one month after the film’s premiere, the director decided to cut a scene almost four minutes long, in which Calvero meets Claudius, the armless wonder, at the bar. In recent years both in Italy and abroad, an unauthorized version of the film, which includes the cut scene, has often been distributed. In addition to Limelight, Il Cinema Ritrovato will present the restored version of Shoulder’s Arms and The Pilgrim. In 1959, Chaplin produced a remake of these films, presented to the public in the form of a compilation film entitled The Chaplin Revue, also including a Dog’s Life (1918). Restoration – not yet completed – was carried out from the materials closest to the original negatives as reedited by Chaplin for The Chaplin Revue. Approximately ten years of work are estimated as necessary to finish restoring Chaplin’s entire cinematographic oeuvre (approximately 80 films including both shorts and features).

Anna Fiaccarini

The Chaplin Project

The Cineteca di Bologna has been assigned the delicate and complex task of restoring the entire cinematographic work of Charlie Chaplin in collaboration with the laboratory L’Immagine Ritrovata and the filmmaker’s heirs. The restoration work is based on philological reconstruction of each film: the best existing material will be collected, and Chaplin’s definitive version of each film will be restored to the best possible quality. Another essential part of the  work will be conservation of the “variants”: afterthoughts and successive changes made to the films, numerous and particularly significant in Chaplin’s work, which constitute precious documentation on the director’s methods. After restoration of The Kid in 1999 and Modern Times in 2000, it is now time for Monsieur Verdoux. The film was restored starting from a comparison between different existing materials and by identifying, through laboratory tests, the best sources for image and sound restoration. While photochemical procedures were used for the image, digital procedures were applied for the sound restoration. The Chaplin archives hold a largely unexplored treasure of documents: stories and scripts, notes, drawings, photographs, production and promotional materials. The Cineteca di Bologna is committed to guaranteeing conservation of this heritage, creating a complete inventory of the materials and an electronic catalogue to be partially accessible online to scholars and enthusiasts. The materials will be made available to a wider public through a series of events and exhibits to be defined by an international committee of experts.

MK2

I am very proud that Charlie Chaplin’s heirs have entrusted the worldwide sales of his films to the MK2 group.  We plan to promote them in  theatrical retrospectives, and video, DVD and book publications, so that new generations and old may discover or rediscover the universality and modernity of his work.  As well as this prestigious library, MK2 handles a catalogue of over 250 titles including movies by François Truffaut, Krzysztof Kieslowski, Claude Chabrol, Abbas Kiarostami, Alain Resnais, Jacques Doillon, David Lynch, Emir Kusturica. I am also very happy about the collaboration with the Cineteca di Bologna which enabled us to present this year in Cannes the restored print of Monsieur Verdoux.

Marin Karmitz, Press Contact : MK2 – Monica Donati