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Unknown Chaplin (1983)
http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0158310/

I was wondering if anyone was familiar with this 1983 documentary. It includes a lot of 'previously unseen' footage of various Chaplin films (from his personal collection). This is the most interesting documentary I have ever seen, so I highly recommend it to anyone who would like to see more of this genius.

One of Brownlow's best works.

Brownlow has recently published a shorter book about the search for and the findings of the Chaplin material. It's called "Searching for Chaplin" IIRC.

MackSennett wrote:Brownlow has recently published a shorter book about the search for and the findings of the Chaplin material. It's called "Searching for Chaplin" IIRC.

Excellent book.

Brownlow's recent book is called "The Search for Charlie Chaplin".

Jim Gettys

It might be the best of the Brownlow docs.

It's excellent and well worth watching, but hard to track down nowadays. I seem to recall that it was on the brink of being re-released fairly recently, before some rights issue held it up.

The out-takes are particularly illuminating. Apart from seeing alternate shots of familiar sequences (and learning that as graceful as he was, he didn't always get those stunts right first time), you get a real sense of the way Chaplin crafted his films in the process of filming them. The notorious filming of Virginia Cherrill's first scenes in `City Lights', which you may have read about, are also covered in detail.

There are also a lot of `bloopers' - in some cases he laughs, but other times, he tries to concentrate, yells at people, and in one case pitches his cane offscreen in a fit of rage. It's fascinating.

Unknown Chaplin was broadcast in three parts. All three parts are contained on the A&E Home Video DVD that was released in 2005. The DVD is still in print, available for $22.49 new from Amazon, better yet, new from $5.85 plus $2.98 shipping from independent sellers on the Amazon site. There are also currently a number of copies on eBay from $6.25, plus $2.99. Deepdiscount has it at $15.47 including shipping.

It's definitely worth having.

For those who can play Region 2 discs, the UK release of "Unknown Chaplin" (Network) is still available from amazon.uk, and it's of far better quality than the R1 A&E release (I've owned 'em both).

Interesting.

I have the A & E NTSC version and a region free player.
How is the Network UK version superior...?

Picture quality is richer and sharper in the R2 edition, and seems to be derived from material closer to the original source. Also, the series were of course produced in the PAL format, so there's been no loss due to format conversion.

DVDBeaver, which only reviews the R1 version, says of it: "image quality is fairly weak, from a TV broadcast and it does not appears to be progressively transferred (possibly taken from the older LaserDisc)"

http://www.dvdbeaver.com/film/DVDReview ... review.htm