Chaplin collection among top archive releases

By Terry Lawson
Knight Ridder News Service

The 1940 film "The Great Dictator," starring the legendary Charlie Chaplin, is part of the four-DVD release "The Chaplin Collection." Each contains an extra disc of special features. Associated Press

The new editions of "The Gold Rush," "Modern Times," "The Great Dictator" and "Limelight," also available separately, each comes with a disc full of special features that truly earns the description.

For example, the first disc of "The Gold Rush" is the 1942 re-release of the 1925 comedy in which the Little Tramp seeks his fortune in the Yukon. The re-release, to which Chaplin added narration and a score, has been remastered from a print and soundtrack provided by the Chaplin estate.

But disc two contains, along with a new 26-minute documentary, the original silent version restored by Chaplin historian Kevin Brownlow and David Gill, with piano accompaniment that approximates the music you might have heard played live during the original run. There are also hundreds of fascinating production stills and other memorabilia.

Disc two of 1936's "Modern Times," Chaplin's masterful satire of Henry Ford's production-line America, also contains a "Chaplin Today" documentary (as do the other two titles), but its real attraction is two deleted scenes. One of these is an extended version of Chaplin's nonsense song (which is dissected in a "Karaoke" feature). In the other, Chaplin's factory drone is thwarted from crossing the street by stop-and-go signs with minds of their own.

Local historians will appreciate the inclusion of a 1940 industrial film, "Symphony in F," in which Ford assembly-line employees do their jobs to the accompaniment of an orchestra, and a 1931 government propaganda film, "Behind the Scenes in the Machine Age." There's also a 10-minute 1967 documentary in which Chaplin watches Cuban peasants watching "Modern Times," courtesy of a traveling projectionist.

The extras on 1940's "The Great Dictator," in which Chaplin plays both a demented Fuhrer and a hapless Jewish barber, contain the rarest stone in this jewel box: 25 minutes of color production footage shot by Chaplin's brother Sydney, previously seen only by a Cannes Film Festival audience. There is also a fascinating Brownlow documentary, "The Tramp and the Dictator," exploring the uncanny parallels in the lives of Hitler and Chaplin, born the same week of the same year.

Finally, there's 1952's "Limelight," an unabashedly sentimental and autobiographical melodrama about an old man reflecting on his life as a "tramp comedian." Its second disc contains seven minutes of an incomplete 1919 short in which Chaplin first played a flea trainer, an idea revisited in the film; 16 minutes of home movies; and a four-minute scene cut from the film after its less-than-successful premiere.

The new transfers of the films are better than any versions I have seen, and the sound mix is greatly improved, though it's hard to imagine any true fan taking advantage of the new 5.1 Surround mixes, their tastefulness notwithstanding. These films are meant to be heard in mono.

Classic Sinatra

From one giant to another: Though much of the material on "Sinatra: The Classic Duets" (Hart Sharp) has been available before, this is an excellent collection. It consists of songs performed by the Chairman and guests on his 1957 ABC-TV series and subsequent specials, and it offers two chill-bump performances: his pairing with Ella Fitzgerald on "Moonlight in Vermont" and a reunion with the Dorsey vocal group the Hi-Los on "I'll Never Smile Again."

Also included is a fine "September Song" with Bing Crosby, a finger-snapping "Birth of the Blues" with Louis Armstrong, and the famous you-do-mine-I'll-do-yours medley of "Witchcraft" and "Love Me Tender" with Elvis.

Joni Mitchell's 1979 concert in Santa Barbara was part of the historic "Shadows and Light" tour. Originally broadcast on HBO, "Shadows and Light" (Shout/Sony Music Video) finally gets an official DVD release, remixed into 5.1 Dolby Digital.

Though everyone has a favorite Mitchell era, the Joni-goes-jazz period can now be seen as an artistic peak. Mitchell performs the art songs from her "Hejira" and "Mingus" albums with guitarist Pat Metheny and his keyboardist Lyle Mays, drummer Don Alias, saxophonist Michael Brecker and bass player Jaco Pastorious.

The aptly titled "Sam Cooke: Legend" (Abkco) is an expanded version of a VH1 special on the too-brief life of one of the most influential vocalists in history. Written by Peter Guralnick, who wrote the definitive Elvis biography, it's an excellent portrait of the gospel-singer-turned-pop-star, with longer versions of telling interviews with Aretha Franklin, family members and acolyte Bobby Womack presented as bonus material.

Archives of humor

TV watch: "King of the Hill — Season One" (20th Century Fox) collects the first tentative episodes of Mike Judge's animated series about propane salesman Hank Hill and his friends and family in Arlen, Texas, on three discs. Extras include commentary not only by Judge, but by Hank himself, as well as deleted scenes. But where are the barbecue recipes?

Paramount continues its contribution to the national humor archives with "I Love Lucy Season One, Volume 7" and "Volume 8." Each contains four episodes first aired in 1952, all hilarious. "Volume 8" contains the classic "Lucy Does a TV Commercial," in which she just cannot master the pronunciation of "Vitameatavegamin."

"Walking with Cavemen" (BBC/Warner), the third in the BBC series that took us on strolls with dinosaurs and prehistoric beasts, re-created via computer, was broadcast stateside on the Discovery Channel. But Alec Baldwin replaced original narrator Robert Winston, and the show was severely abbreviated. This involving combination of science and speculation can now be seen in its original form.

Cinema specials

The week's theatrical releases are distinguished by "Gangs of New York" (Miramax), a double DVD containing Martin Scorsese's masterfully mounted drama drawing on tabloid accounts of the mid-19th-century battles to control New York's violence-drenched Five Points.

The opposite of the ambitious and overwrought "Gangs" is the independent charmer "Tully" (Hart Sharp), with Anson Mount as a womanizing rancher's son forced to face some hard truths upon discovering the family property is in deep arrears.

"How to Lose a Guy in 10 Days" (Paramount) is a contrived romantic comedy starring Kate Hudson with Matthew McConaughey in another movie that doesn't deserve her.

More for less

Paramount dips back into the vaults for a budget-priced DVD release of Roman Polanski's 1976 thriller "The Tenant." Polanski also stars, as a withdrawn apartment dweller haunted by the suicide of a previous tenant; it's every bit as unnerving as "Rosemary's Baby."

"The Tenant" is 180 degrees removed from Wim Wenders' extraordinarily compassionate "Wings of Desire" (MGM). Bruno Ganz plays one of the angels assigned to watch over modern-day Berlin; falling in love with an equally lonely trapeze artist, he is compelled to turn in his wings.

Finally, we arrive at "There's Something More About Mary" (20th Century Fox), a two-disc set including the original 1999 Farrelly Brothers comedy, an extended version with 15 minutes of added footage, interviews, AMC and Comedy Central docs, six featurettes and a few days more of extras, proving that less in most cases is in fact more.