Modern Times is easy to find on video, but no one gussies up a classic quite like Criterion, right? Here's what you'll be buying, alongside the masterpiece itself:
Disc Features
•New, restored high-definition digital transfer, with uncompressed monaural soundtrack on the Blu-ray edition
•New audio commentary by Chaplin biographer David Robinson
•Two new visual essays, by Chaplin historians John Bengtson and Jeffrey Vance
•New program on the film’s visual and sound effects, with experts Craig Barron and Ben Burtt
•Interview from 1992 with Modern Times music arranger David Raksin
•Chaplin Today: “Modern Times” (2004), a half-hour program with filmmakers Luc and Jean-Pierre Dardenne
•Two segments removed from the film
•Three theatrical trailers
•All at Sea (1933), a home movie by Alistair Cooke featuring Charlie Chaplin, Paulette Goddard, and Cooke, plus a new score by Donald Sosin and a new interview with Cooke’s daughter, Susan Cooke Kittredge
•The Rink (1916), a Chaplin two-reeler highlighting his skill on wheels
•For the First Time (1967), a Cuban documentary short about a projectionist who shows Modern Times to first-time moviegoers
•PLUS: A booklet featuring an essay by film critic Saul Austerlitz and a piece by film scholar Lisa Stein that includes excerpts from Chaplin’s writing about his travels in 1931 and 1932
*****
Chaplin's Depression-era tale of men, machines and Paulette Goddard is available for preorder today. While you're waiting for the mailman to arrive, re-read my Silent Volume post on Modern Times then ponder the connection between the Tramp and Alex DeLarge.
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