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FLICKER BLU: Chaplin Mutuals & Sennett Collection in August

Flicker Alley has announced two releases with an August 5th street date: Chaplin Mutual Comedies (Blu-Ray / DVD) - Steelbook and The Mack Sennett Collection, Vol. 1 (Blu-Ray).

The Chaplin set will be a 5-disc combo pack with 3 DVDs and 2 Blu-Ray's and will come in a limited edition steelbook. The Sennett Collection will be a 3-disc Blu-Ray set only. Bonus features (below) abound.

In the comedies Charlie Chaplin created for the Mutual Film Corporation, Chaplin sometimes played an inebriate, a fireman, or a prop man in a movie studio; but most of all, he further explored and developed his celebrated Little Tramp character that would soon join Falstaff and Don Quixote in the pantheon of immortal comic characters.

Flicker Alley and The Blackhawk Films Collection are proud to commemorate the 100th anniversary of the birth of the Little Tramp with the premiere of Chaplin's Mutual Comedies, a 5-disc Blu-ray/DVD box set, presented for a limited time in a collector's edition SteelBook case.

The collection features 12 newly restored films (The Floorwalker, The Fireman, The Vagabond, One A.M., The Count, The Pawnshop, Behind the Screen, The Rink, Easy Street, The Cure, The Immigrant, and The Adventurer), all scanned under the aegis of Association Chaplin at a resolution of 2,000 lines from original 35mm prints gathered from archives all over the world, then digitally assembled and restored, a collaborative effort of Lobster Films in Paris and L'Immagine Ritrovata in Bologna, Italy.

Each film offers the option of either improvised piano accompaniment or a full orchestral score. Among the many well-known composers and musicians featured are Eric Beheim, Neil Brand, Timothy Brock, Antonio Coppola, Carl Davis, Stephen Horne, Robert Israel, the Mont Alto Motion Picture Orchestra, Maud Nelissen, Donald Sosin, and Gabriel Thibaudeau.

BONUS FEATURES:

  • A 34-page booklet with rare, behind-the-scenes images, and an extensive essay by film historian and author Jeffrey Vance (Chaplin: Genius of Cinema)
  • The home-video premiere of a 52-minute documentary by Serge Bromberg and Eric Lange, The Birth of the Tramp, which chronicles Chaplin's rise to stardom in concordance with early cinema's growth from fairground attraction into an international industry
  • Chaplin's Goliath by Academy Award winner Kevin Macdonald, which tells the story of Charlie's nemesis Eric Campbell, who achieved screen immortality with his appearances in eleven of these comedies

The Mack Sennett Collection, Vol. 1 premieres a wealth of rare, unknown, and previously thought lost footage which had been locked away in vaults and unseen for nearly 100 years! Finally, these long neglected classic comedies may once again be seen as originally intended.

These new editions have been painstakingly reconstructed by CineMuseum and Keystone Films using original 35mm nitrate, archival negatives, preservation materials, and sometimes the lone known surviving film print, from the collections of the Library of Congress, the Museum of Modern Art, The Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences, Blackhawk Films, Lobster Films, the Richard M. Roberts Collection, Gierucki Studios, and dozens of privately held archives.

BONUS FEATURES:

  • New music scores from silent film accompanists Philip Carli, Ben Model, Dennis Scott, Andrew Simpson, and Donald Sosin
  • Commentary tracks from noted comedy historians Brent Walker, Steve Massa, Richard M. Roberts, Stan Taffel, Sam Gill, Paul Gierucki, and others
  • Memorabilia galleries featuring vintage lobby cards, glass slides, posters, scripts, studio photographs, The Mack Sennett Story by film historian Joe Adamson, and rare audio recordings
  • Long unseen rarities: newsreels, trailers, outtakes, Sennett-Color films, the dedication of the Mabel Normand soundstage, This Is Your Life Mack Sennett, and much more!
  • PLUS: A 16-page full color booklet filled with rare images, production information, restoration notes, and Keystone - Sennett player biographies

TITLES:

  1. The Curtain Pole 
  2. The Manicure Lady 
  3. A Dash Through the Clouds 
  4. The Water Nymph 
  5. A Grocery Clerk's Romance 
  6. On His Wedding Day   
  7. Bangville Police 
  8. A Fishy Affair 
  9. The Speed Kings 
  10. The Thief Catcher
  11. The Great Toe Mystery 
  12. Recreation 
  13. Shot in the Excitement 
  14. The Noise of Bombs 
  15. Ambrose's First Falsehood 
  16. A Bird's a Bird 
  17. Gussle's Day of Rest 
  18. Do-Re-Mi-Boom! 
  19. A Lover's Lost Control 
  20. A Submarine Pirate 
  21. Fatty And Mabel Adrift 
  22. His Bitter Pill 
  23. Madcap Ambrose 
  24. Teddy at the Throttle 
  25. Her Torpedoed Love 
  26. A Clever Dummy  
  27. Hearts And Flowers 
  28. Down on the Farm (Feature)
  29. Don't Weaken 
  30. Gymnasium Jim 
  31. The Extra Girl (Feature)
  32. The Dare-Devil 
  33. Black Oxfords 
  34. Galloping Bungalows 
  35. His Marriage Wow 
  36. Super-Hooper-Dyne Lizzies 
  37. A Rainy Knight 
  38. Saturday Afternoon 
  39. A Sea Dog's Tale 
  40. Hoboken to Hollywood 
  41. Ice Cold Cocos 
  42. Broke in China 
  43. The Pride of Pikeville 
  44. Fiddlesticks 
  45. Run, Girl, Run 
  46. Taxi For Two 
  47. The Dentist 
  48. Too Many Highballs 
  49. Don't Play Bridge With Your Wife (Sound)
  50. The Fatal Glass of Beer (Sound)