Reviews of silent film releases on home video. Copyright © 1999-2024 by Carl Bennett and the Silent Era Company. All Rights Reserved.

The Immigrant (1917)

Charles Chaplin was delighted when he began fulfilling his 1916 contract with the Mutual Film Corporation, a distribution outfit that handled the films of many of the top film producers of the time. The contract was the first made with Chaplin’s own production company, which meant that he could produce his comedies with total creative control.

The Mutual comedies show signs of Chaplin maturing as a cinema artist. His Mutual stories became more carefully constructed and less reliant on senseless bash-and-bop slapstick. The gags show flashes of comic brilliance.

— Carl Bennett

This Blu-ray Disc/DVD edition of the most-famous of the twelve Chaplin Mutual contract films features a new high-definition pillarboxed video transfer from 35mm archival materials, including additional footage and quality improvements from film materials which have surfaced since David Shepard’s earlier home video editions. The edition has been a cooperative project of Cineteca de Bologna, Film Preservation Associates and Lobster Films, Paris, in cooperation with Association Chaplin.

As stated in the introduction to the film, The Immigrant was restored from a 35mm full-aperture safety duplicate negative held by Film Preservation Associates, which was duplicated from a print held by the Museum of Modern Art. The English language intertitles were reconstructed from records of the original Mutual intertitles and styled according to contemporary prints. The restoration work was performed by L’Immagine Ritrovita film laboratory in 2012.

The running times are slightly longer here than in previous home video editions. We hope that apart from a different video transfer frame rate this also means that additional footage will be seen that has not been part of previous editions. The opening shot of the ship carrying the immigrants is repeated three times to lengthen the establishing shot.

As would be expected, the film has never looked better on home video as from the Blu-ray Disc in this collection. However, there are still fragments missing from the restoration as evidenced by a very few abrupt changes in narrative locations.

The film is presented with optional music scores; the default score is an orchestral score performed by the Teatro Comunale di Bologna Orchestra, composed and conducted by Timothy Brock, with an alternate improvisational piano score by Donald Sosin.

The supplemental material includes a 28-page booklet, the documentary The Birth of the Tramp (2013); the documentary Chaplin’s Goliath (1996) on Chaplin star heavy Eric Campbell.

The collection is issued in limited-edition steelbook packaging, which we feel must be handled gingerly to avoid damaging its discs and the case itself.

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The presentations include new orchestral scores composed and conducted by Carl Davis.

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This Region 0 NTSC DVD edition has been discontinued and is . . .

That being said, readers have noted that there is surviving footage from these films that does not appear in this home video edition. Our understanding is that most (if not all) of these films have originated from the Van Beuren Company 35mm negatives that were prepared in the 1950s. Those prints featured music by Winston Sharples and synchronized sound effects, and they can be viewed in their 1950s form (transfered at sound speed) on early laserdisc and VHS collections from Image and Republic. While these 35mm negatives feature superior visual quality, portions of the original footage and intertitles were removed in the 1950s. Some early 16mm reduction prints from Blackhawk Films and others, which originated from other surviving positive prints, feature footage that doesn’t appear in this DVD edition. Logic would lead some to assume that this extra footage survives in 35mm prints held by the world’s film archives and by private collectors.

Previously we recommended the now out-of-print The Chaplin Mutuals DVD series with the caveat noted that there was missing footage. David Shepard has now released a new edition of the Chaplin Mutual comedies that are more complete and feature some improvement in visual quality.

This Region 0 NTSC DVD edition has been discontinued and is . . .

This DVD-R edition has been prepared from a very-good 16mm reduction print of the sound-film version synchronized to music by Winston Sharples with goofy sound effects.

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For this low-budget DVD edition, the film has been transferred from a very-good 16mm reduction print prepared by Blackhawk Films. The quality of the video transfer is coarser the original 1980s laserdisc releases of these films. The picture image retains most of the film’s original greyscale tones, but is slightly greyed in its shadows and picture detail is lacking due to the low video bit rate and overcompression of the video information. The image looks particularly rough on an HD monitor. The transfer cropping is tight but is different from the 1980s laserdiscs, indicating new transfers from the same source materials. Because each source print was from the Blackhawk sound versions (all produced at the sound film speed of 24 FPS), each of the Mutual films on this disc run noticeably faster than the original camera speed of approximately 18-20 FPS.

We don’t recommend this edition but, despite the faster running speed, we sometimes like to return to these older Blackhawk prints, which feature Winston Sharples music, to enjoy the silly sound effects that accompany the slapstick action.

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LASERLIGHT DIGITAL has discontinued business and this Region 0 NTSC DVD edition is . . .

This low-budget DVD edition is nothing more than a 2002 Delta Entertainment repackaging of the remaining, unsold stock of the 1999 Laserlight edition. Since the only thing new about this Delta edition is its cardboard slipcover, its content is the exactly same as the Laserlight edition reviewed above.

This one isn’t recommended either.

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DELTA ENTERTAINMENT has discontinued business and this Region 0 NTSC DVD edition is . . .

Other SHORT COMEDY FILMS of the silent era available on home video.