Criterion Limelight Blu Ray / A Night At The Show
Posted: Mon Aug 03, 2015 12:30 pm
Haven't seen any discussion on this, so I'll chime in. Watched the Criterion Blu Ray of LIMELIGHT over the weekend and it is fabulous as I expected, but what really caught my eye was one of the extras - the Chaplin Essanay film "A Night At The Show" (1915).
Criterion got access to a print that is part of the Essanay Restoration project recently completed by Lobster Films / Cineteca di Bologna and Film Preservation Associates. It looks spectacular and reveals many subtleties I never noticed before in this important early Chaplin short. The hilarious byplay between Chaplin and Edna, so often lost in the murky, choppy prints we have all seen before, is a joy to behold in this restoration.
Kudos to Serge, David, et al for letting Criterion scoop them on their Essanay restorations. If the rest of the Chaplin Essanays look this good in their restored versions, I think a major rediscovery of this early period of Chaplin's career is due. It is probably too much to hope the the Essanay project will make it's way to Blu Ray, but as the Criterion disc reveals, that is what they truly deserve.
Criterion got access to a print that is part of the Essanay Restoration project recently completed by Lobster Films / Cineteca di Bologna and Film Preservation Associates. It looks spectacular and reveals many subtleties I never noticed before in this important early Chaplin short. The hilarious byplay between Chaplin and Edna, so often lost in the murky, choppy prints we have all seen before, is a joy to behold in this restoration.
Kudos to Serge, David, et al for letting Criterion scoop them on their Essanay restorations. If the rest of the Chaplin Essanays look this good in their restored versions, I think a major rediscovery of this early period of Chaplin's career is due. It is probably too much to hope the the Essanay project will make it's way to Blu Ray, but as the Criterion disc reveals, that is what they truly deserve.