Charlie Chaplin season at BFI Southbank

For the next six months, Londoners can watch Charlie Chaplin’s career unfold at BFI Southbank. Curator Bryony Dixon explains the BFI’s role in renovating the earliest, least known of Chaplin’s films

Hollywood’s first movie megastar was a Londoner of humble origins. The child of music hall performers who lived precariously in Lambeth and Southwark, Charlie Chaplin started performing out of necessity at the age of eight. When he left England in 1912 he was a star of the stage and one of impresario Fred Karno’s leading performers. When he returned from America in 1921 he was a star of the screen, having made 71 films. He was the first film star to be promoted worldwide by his image and this, aided by the increasing circulation of film and press during World War I, led to the creation of the mania known as ‘Chaplinitis’. His reception on his return to London was sensational. Only royalty attracted such crowds.

A season of Chaplin’s earliest films starts at the BFI Southbank in August, running through to early 2009, and traces his transformation from a stage performer to screen star. Chaplin is perhaps unique in film history in having taken tight control over the fate of his work. From 1918, Chaplin took charge of every part of the filmmaking process and kept watch over negatives. This has ensured their longevity: compared to other filmmakers, Chaplin’s films are in very good order.

The story is not so good for Chaplin’s earliest films, and at the heart of the ‘Early Chaplin’ season during August and September at BFI Southbank is the ongoing restoration of the 35 films that Chaplin made for Mack Sennett’s Keystone Company in Los Angeles during 1914. The BFI National Archive together with the Cineteca di Bologna and Lobster Films is restoring all these films. Good restoration work has been carried out on the Essanay and Mutual films, respectively made in 1915 and from 1916 to 1917, but for the very earliest films made at Keystone the survival rate is much lower. Chaplin had no influence over materials issued by Keystone and his popularity was still being established. Ironically, it was the growth in his popularity that devastated the original copies, which were reissued to cash in on the craze and frequently re-cut and re-edited, and given new intertitles until the negatives wore out.

The act of restoration is not merely to make the Keystone films available again but also to make them understandable. As Glenn Mitchell, author of the ‘Chaplin Encyclopedia’ says, ‘One of the more recent restorations we’ve had screened was “The New Janitor”, and frankly my eyes were opened by the restored copy. I found myself enjoying it on an entirely new level because I could see the subtlety in Chaplin’s facial expressions.’

To accompany this season, we will also be displaying some of the objects and images that are collectively known as ‘Chaplinalia’ – promotional material, merchandising and objects such as Chaplin’s original hat and cane, along with the costume worn by Robert Downey Jnr in the 1992 film ‘Chaplin’. You’ll find them at the BFI Southbank throughout August.

Bryony Dixon is curator of silent film at the BFI National Archive. ‘Early Chaplin’ is at BFI Southbank in Aug and Sept, and the Chaplin season continues until Feb 2009.

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