I had the opportunity this past Saturday, August 2nd, to catch a fantastic program at the Massachusetts Museum of Contemporary Art: Charlie Chaplin Mutuals with live music by Carl Davis and The Knights. It featured three Chaplin shorts, The Immigrant(1917), The Rink(1916), and The Adventurer(1917). It was my first time seeing all three, having before only seen snippets from various classic Chaplin moments type of programs. So, it was a great delight to see them in their entirety - and with live music no less. From the program:

"In 1916, Charlie Chaplin became the world's highest paid entertainer when he secured a contract with The Mutual Film Corporation to make twelve films in twelve months for the sum of $675,000. The Mutual Films are widely regarded as some of Chaplin's most inspired early work, as a result of his high level of creative control; Chaplin himself wrote, directed, produced and starred in all twelve shorts. Once his contract expired, Chaplin left the company to form United Artists. Mutual never recovered from losing its greatest star and ceased production in 1919."

And as far as composer Carl Davis' involvement:

"Having reconstructed several original scores for Chaplin's feature length pictures such as The Kid and City Lights, Davis turned his attention to the Mutual films, for which no original scores existed, and composed complete scores for all twelve shorts. This body of work represents a link between Chaplin's early career in film during which he was working under the control of other people, and the peak of his work when he was producing full length features. For this reason, Davis felt it appropriate to scale down the full symphony orchestra of the feature films to a smaller ensemble; seventeen musicians whom he affectionately refers to as "almost an orchestra"."

If this program should come near you, I highly recommend you attend. An absolutely entertaining evening, with Chaplin in all his early glory, and such fantastic scores. And if you should miss it, or if it doesn't come your way, at least see the shorts themselves. Absolute delight. Anyone seen them?

Link to the merged Charlie Chaplin thread (which is mainly about his feature films).

Great thread! I think the Mutuals are worth their own thread, but I say that with only vague memories. I own the laserdisc set released in 1995, and discussed here by David Shephard:

In 1995, we were still using the telecines from 1983, but video recording had come a long way. Additionally, of course, the materials used in 1983 were made from the prints. I had learned enough by then about working with film to video that every generation that you can get closer to the original is a vast improvement. It's a more dramatic improvement on video than it is with film. So in 1995, I remastered everything, no longer using prints but going back either to the negatives that were used to make the prints or earlier negatives or fine grains - whatever the very earliest generation was that we had. Since some of the very earliest material was starting to decompose at that time, I knew that it was probably going to be the last chance to use it. So, we did new digital transfers, and Mortilla re-did his music. I was able to do a few additional fixes. I had discovered, for example, that the Van Buren version of "The Vagabond" had been considerably re-edited, and I was able to get the film back into the original order. And those 1995 versions came out first on laserdiscs and then in the very earliest years of DVD. They were the very first things I think we ever did to DVD. They've been in distribution from that day until this, essentially.

So I haven't heard Davis' Mutual scores. I'm sure they're fine, although I don't remember being dissatisfied with the Mortilla scores. I do vaguely recall some dismissive remarks about the scores at the time of the 1995 release of the box set, and I count myself as a huge fan of Davis' work on scores for the Chaplin features released on individual laserdiscs in the 1990s. I've seen The Circus projected with his score, and it was marvelous.

Looks like the latest DVDs have been improved yet again, although I wonder if the new scores improve on the Mortilla work. I've pulled the box set off the shelf; maybe I'll watch these again. It's been a long time. BTW, this set retailed for $99.99, and I got it for 20% off. And I was delighted to get such a deal. The economies of scale with DVD are truly remarkable.

One of my favorite critics, Jonathan Rosenbaum, has one of Chaplin's Mutuals listed in his canon of films: One A.M.. I have yet to see that one, but am greatly looking forward to it. I've always loved Chaplin, and count his feature City Lights as one of my all-time tops. Interesting side note by the way; Tarkovsky listed City Lights in his top ten favorites. But anyway, as I have been familiar with much of Chaplin, I haven't been well-versed in his Mutual period. So I must say, I'm enjoying the ride.

IMHO, the Mutuals are among the greatest comedies ever made. My personal fave is The Cure, in which Charlie plays a drunk who gets his booze mixed up with the spa water. It's slapstick elevated to the highest level of film art.