Although it upset him, Charlie Chaplin felt he had to cut the
opening scene of his 1931 film “City Lights.” In it,
Chaplin’s Tramp finds a stick stuck in a crack in the
sidewalk, and spends almost seven minutes of screen time trying to
remove it, running into humorous challenges along the way.
“That was Chaplin’s favorite outtake,” said
Jeffrey Vance, author of “Chaplin: Genius of the
Cinema.”
“It’s seven minutes of a great comedian doing the
maximum with the minimum. It shows his genius. It was so
self-contained and so subtle,” Vance said.
For one of the first times, audiences will have a chance to see
the scene, along with other Chaplin outtakes and cuts, in the UCLA
Film and Television Archive’s series on Chaplin that begins
Saturday. The first part of the two-part series, which continues in
January, will screen four of Chaplin’s most well-known films:
“Modern Times,” “Limelight,” “The
Great Dictator” and “The Gold Rush.” The
screenings will all be from prints recently restored by the Italian
National Film Archive in Bologna, with the exception of
“Modern Times,” which will be making its digital
projection debut.
Vance will be present at and introduce all the screenings. He
has also chosen outtakes from across Chaplin’s career to
screen. He attributes the existence of so many outtakes to
Chaplin’s meticulous filmmaking style.
“He saw a film as a tree, and when he shook the tree,
anything that was loose or unnecessary fell away,” Vance
said.
With the Archive’s series and the recent release of
Vance’s book, there may be a rising interest in
Chaplin’s work that extends outside of film communities.
Warner Brothers Home Video recently released a DVD boxed set of the
four films to be screened in the series, complete with many of the
outtakes as special features. In a relatively uncommon marketing
tie-in, the Archive will sell the DVDs at the screenings, along
with Vance’s book.
“It’s becoming less rare because so many films are
being released on DVD,” said Andrea Alsberg, Co-Head of
Programming at the Archive. “Preservation is happening hard
and fast with DVD releases, and films are being restored just to be
released on DVD.”
According to Alsberg, the Archive’s decision to sell DVDs
is a natural one, as the action will provide people with another
way to access film history.
“Any way we can get classic films into people’s
hands, we’ll take,” Alsberg said. “Classic film
history is really important to us.”
However, the DVDs are no substitute for seeing the films in a
movie theater. According to Alsberg, this is especially true for
silent comedy because audiences react together to a film.
“Silent comedy is imperative to see in a crowd,” she
said. “The laughter is infective.”
It may be especially important to see Chaplin’s silent
comedies on a big screen. While other silent comedians like Buster
Keaton and Harold Lloyd got laughs through big gag routines,
Chaplin’s humor came from a much smaller source, according to
Vance.
“Chaplin did things very subtly, and if you reduce that to
a 13-inch TV, it’s going to be lost,” Vance said.
“He really needs to be on a big screen.”
Log on to www.cinema.ucla.edu for more information and a
calendar of screenings.