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The Chaplin Collection, Vol. 2 (City Lights / The Circus / The Kid / A King in New York / A Woman of Paris / Monsieur Verdoux / The Chaplin Revue / Charlie - The Life and Art of Charles Chaplin) Posters
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The Chaplin Collection, Vol. 2 (City Lights / The Circus / The Kid / A King in New York / A Woman of Paris / Monsieur Verdoux / The Chaplin Revue / Charlie - The Life and Art of Charles Chaplin) DVD
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Rating:  -
The fine Humor and art creativity found in this treasure films are incomparable. It's worth the price.
Rating: -
Once again, as with Volume 1, the main pieces of this box are first class, simply great quality reissues of Chaplins greatest (and less great) films. It's the other pieces that leave cause me to scratch my head.
So, let's start with what is good.
We have here some of Chaplin's finest silent work, including my favorite, The Circus. The films are expertly restored and projected at a speed which is about as close to the subjective "correct speed" as possible. The soundtracks are well restored, and there are plenty of cut scenes, outtakes and home movies to go along with the original films.
A couple of films are notoriously weak, and one just has to look at the box to figure out which ones those are. "Monsieur Verdoux" has only one disc, and "A Woman of Paris" and "A King in New York" actually share a 2 disc set. But these films are essential to completing Chaplin's legacy, and it is good to have them well issued and in as nice a presentation as possible.
There is a 5.1 surround soundtrack, which is really wierd, since these were issued in mono to start with. Why not just colorize the films while you're at it, M2K? (I know, some people just can't watch a film with a mono soundtrack, but this is really excessive.)
The we have the documentary by Richard Schickel, which, which good, is very frustrating. It's great to see brief clips of the Keystone films in excellent quality, but isn't it time to release the ENTIRE collection of Keystones in best-possible quality? WHEN, OH WHEN, WILL THIS HAPPEN!
Some argument could also be made that the short films in this collection could have been better considered. There are several different versions of some of these films, "Shoulder Arms" comes to mind, and it is quite possible that the version sused here are the best pictorial quality, but not the best acting quality. This is a very subjective topic, but I would have liked to see the original "Shoulder Arms" included as well, perhaps the most substantially different of the versions. This is a minor complaint, though.
The "Chaplin Today" documentaries, as in the first box set, are rather pathetic, and self-defeating in their attempts to make Chaplin relevent to today's audiences. If Chaplin wasn't relevent, then nobody would by this box set, and I wouldn't bother writing this review. But he is relevent. Trying to convice people so doesn't work, unfortunately, so we end up with these rather pathetic documentary attempts.
But overall, this is a collection of gems, and complaining about the ancillary pieces of this collection is like complaining about the floor in the room containing the Hope Diamond. It's only the actual films that matter, and they are superb.
Rating:  -
Warner Brothers' "The Chaplin Collection Volume 2" gathers together numerous films from the career of one of the few cinematic geniuses. The best of the films, "City Lights," is a masterpiece of comic timing, and also features a truly engrossing love story. "The Circus" and "The Kid" are also marvelously funny and touching classics. "The Chaplin Revue," which gathers several of his short films is more of a mixed bag, but the better shorts (like "Shoulder Arms" and "A Dog's Life") are still excellent. "A Woman of Paris" is an interesting dramatic experiment, and "Monsieur Verdoux," while uneven, certainly has its moments. The only truly terrible movie in the box is "A King in New York," but it is, at the very least, an interesting document of Chaplin's views on the America that disowned him.
Like in the previous bozed set, the films look very good. Mastered from near perfect source material, the only problem is the occasional fuzziness that occurs during scenes with much movement. The sound is adequate on the 'talkies,' and fine with the musical scores on the silent films.
The set is truly impressive with its huge quantity of extras. Each of the films contains an analytical documentary "Chaplin Today," with a different international filmmaker discussing each movie (Jim Jarmusch on "A King in New York" and Peter Lord on "City Lights," for example). The discs also include introductions by David Robinson, a Chaplin biographer, which are packed with information. In addition to trailers and photo galleries, there are numerous historical curios as well, ranging from footage from the premiere of "The Circus" to newsreel footage of Chaplin in London to footage of Chaplin signing the United Artists contract to a full length Jackie 'The Kid' Coogan film. Suffice to say, Chaplin fans are going to enjoy the extras.
The problem with the set is its sloppiness. For example, the 2-disc double feature of "A Woman of Paris" and "A King in New York" has the discs incorrectly labeled (ie the "King in New York" disc is labeled "Woman of Paris"). The same problem goes for the 2-disc "Chaplin Revue." The menus are extremely ugly, the chapter links page takes a very long time to go through, and the FBI warning is in about a kajillion different languages - and no skip option.
The set also includes Richard Schikel's dry by illuminating documentary "Charlie: The Life and Art of Charles Chaplin," which includes interviews with Richard Attenborough, Geraldine Chaplin, Woody Allen, Andrew Sarris, David Robinson, Johnny Depp, Robert Downey Jr., Martin Scorsese, and many more. Definately worth watching.
Rating: -
The Good: I'm not a complete Chaplin aficionado but I believe if you pick up this DVD set and the first Chaplin DVD collection, you'll have all his films with the exception of his early Essanay and Mutual films and his 1967 film "A Countess From Hong Kong" which Chaplin directed and features a brief cameo. Besides the films themselves, this set contains photo galleries, trailers, brief documentaries, deleted scenes, some brief but fascinating introductions by Chaplin biographer David Robinson, and other related materials - all of them presented in pristine, and in most cases stunning, condition by restoration artists MK2.
The Bad: Chaplin re-released many of these films in the '60s and '70s and the Chaplin family obviously considers these as the final word since they've included them here. I'm assuming this is a good thing because it would allow MK2 to work from newer prints rather than the old film masters from the '20s and '30s. Unfortunately, Chaplin also added new music in many cases and made some minor scene deletions. I haven't seen the earliest versions to be able to compare musical scores. And the scores used here worked fine for me. Still, it would've been nice if they included the original film instead of tacking the brief deleted scenes on separately. This was done perfectly with "The Gold Rush" set in the first Chaplin DVD collection which includes the original film and the reworked modern version with Chaplin's narration. There are several spelling mistakes on the packaging of "The Kid" - the title has dropped out somewhere along the line in its production - an error which should've been caught, considering all the care they've put into this package. There are also some isolated spelling mistakes in the title cards during "The Chaplin Revue" shorts they could've easily caught. The "Woman" disc lists that it includes movie posters on the box's contents - however, they've forgot to include them here. The box is also rather flimsy paperboard. I recently bought the Monty Python boxed set which comes in a hard cardboard box. This is another minor point but it would've been nice to get a solid housing considering the cost of this set and care put into the materials. In addition, the FBI warnings on all the movies and documentaries appear for about five minutes in several languages - which is fine - but unfortunately, you can't fast forward through any of them. The only thing you can do is stop the DVD and reboot to get back to the main menu or wait the warnings out until the menu comes back. This inconvenience could've been corrected as well.
The Ugly: In their haste to put this thing out, possibly to coincide with the current Jeffrey Vance coffee table book "Chaplin - Genius of the Cinema," they've made a few glaring errors. In the case of the A King in New York / A Woman of Paris two disc set, both discs work properly - but they've been mislabelled. (Disc One is actually Disc Two and vice versa.) I purchased this set in Canada at HMV so this is not strictly an issue with the sets Amazon are selling. What's worse is they've also made the same mistake with "The Chaplin Revue" two disc set. Again, both discs play fine but are mislabelled. These sloppy errors will probably be corrected in future print runs. But it's such a bonehead mistake - particularly making them twice in one collection - they really should've caught them.
But all in all, even these minor points still can't obscure the fact this is a really phenomenal DVD set with all the prime, sublime glory of Chaplin. You just wish they hadn't been asleep at the switch with all these careless little errors.
Rating: -
Marvellous compilation, but you already knew that reading the other reviews. Just a couple of issues; I agree with A viewer from Culver City, CA United States, that the shorts should have been restored to the same standard as the others, it immediately strikes you if you are watching on a big-screen front projection. And, just like the GOLD RUSH in the first set, it would have been nice to have the original versions of THE KID in Disc-2. I fervently hope that they bring out a complete and restored collection of the shorts very soon--the ones that are available in the market today aren't of the same standard.
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