Members Screening

Thanks to the splendid folks at Flicker Alley, we’re able to make this screening of Charlie Chaplin shorts available to SFSFF members starting today! Four exhilarating comedies from Chaplin’s inspired time at the Mutual Film Corporation. Mutual built Chaplin his own studio—the Lone Star Film Company—where he had unfettered freedom to produce his two-reelers. “Fulfilling the Mutual contract, I suppose, was the happiest period of my career,” Chaplin recalled. “I was light and unencumbered, twenty-seven years old, with fabulous prospects and a friendly, glamorous world before me.”

Out of the twelve shorts Chaplin made at Mutual, we’re presenting the four titles filmed in 1917—widely considered among his finest work—all presented here with superb musical accompaniment. Neil Brand and Timothy Brock accompany EASY STREET, Chaplin’s paean to the poverty-stricken South London of his youth. THE CURE has Chaplin’s character taking a not-so-abstemious cure at a health spa. Stephen Horne accompanies. THE IMMIGRANT displays Chaplin’s signature blend of comedy and pathos in the story of derelict immigrants coming to the New World; musical accompaniment by Timothy Brock. In THE ADVENTURER, Chaplin shows his slapstick stuff. The film goes along at a breakneck pace bookended by two madcap chases—all made sublime by Chaplin’s balletic grace. Robert Israel accompanies.

SFSFF members will be able to screen Chaplin’s Mutual Comedies July 16 through July 27.