Charlie Chaplin Complete Box Set [DVD]

I fell in love with Charlie Chaplin at the age of 10, and it has been a lifelong love affair.So you can imagine the sheer delight when I received this handsome box set in the mail from Amazon. The press release stated the set will allow you to "experience the wonder, the laughter, the magic and the genius of the world's first superstar in a way no audience has experienced them before" and there's nothing more truthful. For the first time we have all of Chaplin's major feature films together, along with an unprecedented treasure trove of special features. MK2's obvious passion for Chaplin comes shining through with these stunning restorations and their neatly presented documentaries. Really, the films are in absolutely pristine condition. The quality of the prints- specifically with The Kid and A Woman of Paris- give no hint that they are over 80 years old. (Someone in an earlier review commented that they look as though they have been shot yesterday, and that is no exaggeration.)And as with all DVDs, there are plenty of extras that make for endless hours of entertainment and (more commonly) education. For Chaplin fans, the extras are a dream come true because we finally get to see what we've only read about for years: The famous home movie Nice and Friendly with Lord and Lady Mountbatten, his 1918 film How to Make Movies showing the building of the Chaplin Studios on La Brea Avenue, the original 1925 SILENT VERSION of The Gold Rush with the original ending which must have been painstaking to restore, the brilliant deleted scene for The Circus with Charlie and Rex on a lunch date with Merna, another brilliant outtake for City Lights with Charlie's attempt to get a bit of wood out of a grate in the sidewalk, **twenty-five** fascinating minutes of COLOR behind-the-scenes footage from the shooting of The Great Dictator, and there's literally HOURS more where that came from.Also included is the very well done Schickel documentary Charlie: The Life and Art of Charles Chaplin. It's full of Hollywood heavyweights (Narrated by the great Sydney Pollack!) including Woody Allen, Martin Scorcese, Milos Forman, Robert Downey Jr., Johnny Depp, Geraldine Chaplin, Sir Richard Attenborough- even Marcel Marceau! It spans his entire career from Keystone to Vevey and is a fair, honest and lovingly tended biography of this timeless genius. The documentary concludes with the words "he was a flawed man. . . that is to say, he was human. . . with the uncanny ability to reflect humanity back at us. . ."Those are indeed fitting closing words to a lovely documentary, in an exceptional Box set for this remarkable man.

If ever a release showed honour to someone, it's THIS one! But what do I start with? The beautifully restored versions of Chaplin's greatest movies? The magnificent idea of offering as well the 1942 sound version as the completely restored 1925 silent version of "The Gold Rush"? The incredible 25 minutes of (silent) colour film shot by Sydney Chaplin during the production of "The Great Dictator"? The documentary coming with this movie, also containing fragments of the colour footage, this time synchronized with the sound track of the finished film? The foto galleries? The Poster collections?You cannot avoid this collection: it is THE item for the Chaplin fan, well, for EVERY movie lover. And one of the thoughts that crossed my mind, along with the admiration for as well Chaplin's genius, as the great job done by the people who put together this collection, was: if the same people created a similar collection with ... the remaining (short) movies?I own this collection for only one week now, so I didn't have the opportunity to view ALL of it, but what I saw made 5 stars a far to small reward for such work.

I just received this set yesterday , I had read elsewhere that the restoration on these classics was good but I had not expected to see such a beautiful work,I can safely say that all those who remember chaplin with all the flicker the missing frames, all the dirt grime on the film etc ,you got to see this ,it looks as if the movie was shot yesterday.This discs are also loaded with special features and in some cases two versions of the movie.The films themselves are encoded in higher than normal bitrate which results in a picture with virtually none of the mpeg artifacts. This is THE set to buy for all who may have videos of Chaplin, and also those who may have bought the previous dvd versions.It is to be seen to be believed.

One of the discs, Monsieur Verdoux was faulty. It stopped playing roughly two thirds of the way through the DVD. Otherwise the rest of the DVD's were of good quality

The package was sent from India, and despite this fact it arrived very quickly, and in excellent condition.The movies themselves are working very well, both in the dvd player and on my pc.The only problem is that the discs are NTSC and not PAL as it said on the amazon.com site, so the quality I think could have been better. It still works fine as the dvd's are "all region".

This must be one of the best times in history to get re-acquainted with the life and times of the Little Tramp. Everything you need to know about beating the Recession Blues is here in this box set, featuring virtually all of Chaplin's major longer works. How to get food. How to find romance. How to get a job or put up with a soul-destroying one. How to get your hands on a bit of money. How to beat a bully at work. It is a little bit frightening how little society's priorities have changed since these films first delighted a public in need of cheering. Or is it a case of true art never losing its relevance ? In my view, this box set will work more wonders than ten holidays in the sun. So give yourself an absolute treat and invest in one today.

According to wikipedia, Charlie Chaplin made 82 official films. This box set only contains 8....how can this be classed as a complete box set ?!!!!

This set offers a complete approach to the genius of Charlie Chaplin. However, here was a genius that also underlined his work with a demand for meticulous detail to a degree only found in the filmed choreography of Astair and Kelly. The supporting material, including unpublished takes are joy to behold.