00:00La giornata del Cinnamomoto, the Pordenone Silent Film Festival, welcomes you to its 44th edition.
00:21We're delighted to have you here joining us for our online streaming program, which will be lasting throughout the week.
00:26The largest retrospective that we have this year is called Six Degrees of Chaplin, and this forms part of a program that we've been doing for the last few years called The Origins of Slapstick, curated by Steve Masse and Ulrich Rudel, in which they've been looking at the influences, the cross-Atlantic, trans-Atlantic influences between Europe and the United States, how comedy developed, specifically how slapstick comedy developed, how each one was influencing the other, not just in the early days of film itself, but even through into the 20s.
00:56And this series has truly been a revelation for so many of us in exploring how gags developed, how there was a constant dialogue across the Atlantic Ocean that fed so many comedians of the day.
01:10This year we've arrived, shall we say, at the great man himself, Charlie Chaplin, which also is fitting, given that our past director, David Robinson, is the official biographer of Charlie Chaplin.
01:20But we're not looking just at Chaplin himself, we're really looking at Chaplin mania, so Chaplin's influences, also who influenced Chaplin, so his origins from the Music Hall, the Fred Carnot troupe, but then also the people that he worked with, like Marie Dressler, Mabel Norman, Jackie Coogan.
01:37We're looking at Chaplin, we're looking at Chaplin, we're looking at the imitators of Chaplin, we have Chaplin cartoons, Chaplin figure cartoons, which came from various studios.
01:44All of it is to show the enormous popularity, the explosion.
01:49I mean, he was the most famous man in the world at that time, and well into the, even into the 30s.
01:55And so with this program, we're exploring all of that.
01:58We're also, we have the tremendous fortune to have a collaboration with the Chaplin office, and it's thanks to them and to the Chaplin family that we have a wealth of home movies.
02:08We have backstage studio shots and on-set films that add so much to our understanding of Chaplin himself.
02:17We're not able to stream those films, but do check out the catalogue notes, which describe so much of it, and hopefully you will have a chance sometime to see them.
02:26The three films that we're showing today, though, the first is with Chaplin himself, The Bond, 1918.
02:31It's a classic propaganda parody for the First World War, so parody, or rather propaganda, a la Chaplin.
02:40David Robinson has discussed its proto-expressionist look, and indeed you can see it's very stripped down, it's very elemental, and very, very funny.
02:49It also co-stars the incandescent Edna Purviens, his muse at the time.
02:54The second film, also from 1918, is very different, His Day Out, which stars the best of the Chaplin imitators, Billy West.
03:03Now, I do want to add here, Billy West was born in Ukraine, his name was Roy Weisberg.
03:07My last name is Weisberg, my antecedents are in Ukraine, quite close to where Roy Weisberg was born.
03:14Are we related? I don't think so, but who knows.
03:16Chaplin himself understood, recognized, that Billy West was the best of his imitators.
03:21Now, already by 1915, there were huge numbers of Chaplin imitator contests.
03:27If you open up any newspaper from the time, you see so often contests throughout the world, really, of lookalikes.
03:34It was an explosion of imitators, which Chaplin himself felt uneasy about, but he did recognize that Billy West was the best.
03:41And indeed, you'll see, there are times when the resemblance is uncanny.
03:45West has taken on the grace of Chaplin, the movements of Chaplin, the sweetness, and yet with a twist, of so many of Chaplin's characterizations.
03:55And yet he's also been able to introduce some of his own gags.
03:59This film has as a set piece a barbershop, which in and of itself was something that Chaplin and his half-brother, Sidney Chaplin, went back to a number of times.
04:07One thinks of The Great Dictator, one thinks of King, Queen, Joker, and quite a number of others.
04:12I urge you to read Dan Kamen's catalogue note on this film, because it really helps to understand where West was getting some of his gags from and how he and Chaplin intersected with each other on an artistic level.
04:26The film also has as co-stars two actors who became very famous quite soon after, the lovely Leatrice Joy, a terrific actress who perhaps more people know now as the wife of John Gilbert, but she was so much more than that.
04:41And, of course, Oliver Hardy, The Great Oliver Hardy.
04:44So this is a film, I think, that's really going to give you an understanding of how Chaplin imitators shouldn't be only considered as imitators, but can create great works on their own.
04:53The main feature of this afternoon or this evening, whenever you're watching this, is a little bit of fluff, a 1928 film starring Sidney Chaplin that was directed by Jess Robbins and Wheeler Dryden.
05:07Now, Wheeler Dryden, by the way, is another half-brother of Chaplin's, less well-remembered than Sidney, of course, but he himself is a kind of mysterious figure who had a fascinating influence bisecting, shall we say, Charlie Chaplin's life on occasion.
05:23A Little Bit of Fluff was made in the UK, so it's Sidney Chaplin's film made in the UK.
05:28It's also Sidney Chaplin's last film for scandalous reasons.
05:34You can look that up.
05:34I'm not going to go into that now.
05:36And it co-stars Betty Balfour, one of the greatest actresses, and particularly comic actresses of Britain, not just in the silent era, but also in early days of sound.
05:46Sidney Chaplin is a particular favourite of ours.
05:48A few years ago, we were thrilled to be presenting Oh, What a Nurse.
05:53Sidney Chaplin was often typecast, maybe is, I'm not sure that's the right word, in sort of cross-dressing roles.
05:59So Charlie's Aunt, of course, people think of, which is an absolutely delightful film.
06:03And by the way, if anybody's watching this who has a 35mm print, please get in touch, because it's very difficult to find good material on Charlie's Aunt, and we need to work on this.
06:12Oh, What a Nurse is dressing as a woman as a cross-dressing, in a little bit of fluff is just a little bit of that.
06:17It's not as much as maybe we would like, but it is a delightful film.
06:20There's also The Tiller Girls, always wonderful to see in a terrific nightclub sequence.
06:25It's a joyful, boisterous, very, very funny film that's extremely rare to see.
06:32So the fact that the BFI has allowed us to stream this film for you today is really quite a special occasion.
06:39I know you will enjoy the screenings, and I very much look forward to seeing you later on this week, as we come back each day with a new presentation.
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