How many screwed up Chaplin films are there?

Sounds like most are.

In anyone's estimation, 1. how many short films did Chaplin make and 2. how many of those were butchered for rerelease and original versions are now lost or unavailable to the public?

Lets have some statistics.

This info about a lack of original, uncut versions of Chaplin films made during his prime is now about as fustraiting to me as the unavailability of the mono mix of 'Sgt. Pepper' on a non-bootleg CD.

Darren Nemeth (who is now glad he is more of a Laurel and Hardy fan.)

Well, don't go around assuming that all the L&H films are intact.

Chaplin made a total of 62 one and two reelers (assuming _Police_ and _One A.M._ weren't intended to be 3-reelers, which I doubt that they were)for Keystone, Essanay, and Mutual. They were so enormously popular that not one survives in a completely intact print, as far as I know. Versions currently available are all patched together from sources of variable quality.

The films he made at his own studio, on the other hand, are better preserved, though not necessarily identical to the versions originally released.

Connie K.

'Dough And Dynamite' and 'Gentlemen of Nerve' exist 100% intact, thanks to the paper prints in the Library of Congress.

Thanks for the information! But we'd have to say that 2 out of 62 is a pretty low score. Too bad LOC stopped using the paper print system so early.

How good are the paper prints as sources? The videos I've seen made from paper prints are pretty fuzzy, but then they're early VHS transfers, so I'm assuming it's possible to do better.

Connie K.

Actually, they stopped requiring paper prints for copyright purposes 2 years before Chaplin made his first film - Charlie's two late Keystones were submitted by Sennett as further protection against piracy.

They look great! Did you see AMC's 'Gentlemen of Nerve' years ago? That was the paper print.

100% consistent with the print submitted for copyright, anyway. But do we know the source of the paper print? Was it from a domestic, or export, or some other neg.? I know that early on, a story outline, and maybe a few stills, was considered sufficient evidence for a copyright claim. A bit later the paper prints became the acceptable defining document. But all this significantly predated the nitpicking times we now live in where the difference between an eyebrow up or down in a particular scene is grounds for fraud charges. I'm only being slightly sarcastic here. What evidence do we have that confirms which version (when there were more than one, as defined by current standards) was chosen as the copyright submittal? Anybody know for sure?

Did Keystone even make more than 1 neg?

There's no reason to believe it would be anything other than a domestic print. In fact, there's no reason to believe that foreign prints from Keystone would be any different from the domestic prints - the several examples I've seen have had identical shots.

Story outlines weren't submitted until the later Keystones.

Your chronology is wrong.

Well, I suppose in your typically amiable way, you're saying that:

1. Pointing out that vastly inferior versions of the First Nationals have been issued to the public as the original films is 'nitpicking.' 2. The differences in those prints are nothing more than 'an eyebrow up or down.'

The idiocy of these statements speaks for itself.

Oh, come on. Turn it on full blast. Let's see what you can do...

I recall hearing that many transfers from paper prints (including lots of Griffith shorts) have been rephotographed to film in like the seventies, and that improved techniques are available nowadays.

Somebody must've altered the definitions of the words 'vastly' and 'inferior' in the Encarta and Webster's Unabridged dictionaries I use.

Which of course means we ought to be even more grateful to those wo have tried to put them back together, rather than bashing them for a ten second fragment they failed to re-instate, or for choices they had to make...