| Becoming Charley Chase |  | Director: David Kalat
Actor: Charley Chase
Studio: VCI Entertainment
Category: DVD
List Price: $39.99
Buy New: $19.00
as of 3/11/2010 23:46 MST details
You Save: $20.99 (52%)
New (20) Used (1) from $19.00
Seller: silentlyspeaking
Rating:  11 reviews
Sales Rank: 22,697
Format: Box set, Black & White, Color, Dolby, DVD, NTSC, Restored, Silent
Language: English (Original Language)
Rating: NR (Not Rated)
Region: 1
Aspect Ratio: 1.33:1
Number Of Discs: 4
Running Time: 460 Minutes
Shipping Weight (lbs): 0.3
Dimensions (in): 7.5 x 5.3 x 0.6
MPN: 8562
UPC: 089859856228
EAN: 0089859856228
ASIN: B002A2B348
Release Date: July 28, 2009
Availability: Usually ships in 1-2 business days
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| Features:
| • | Name a comedian in the first part of the 20th century Charley Chase worked with them, either on or off screen. He was a brilliant comedy writer, film director, and a major movie star. Almost single-handedly, he transformed the world of screen comedy from chaotic slapstick violence into a newly sophisticated comedy of manners, and laid the groundwork for the modern sitcom. He was the world s bigges |
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Showing reviews 1-5 of 11
Chase Down this One December 17, 2009
Brent R. Swanson (Crooper, Illinois)
2 out of 3 found this review helpful
Quite a bit of lip service has been paid to Charley Chase and his brand of comedy, but not much has been done to make it available, other than a pair of fine anthologies from KINO. This new 4-disk collection from VCI goes some distance to bring Charley and his films back into the limelight. And in so doing, VCI has created an archival collection that's a must for fans and students of silent film and comedy alike.
This collection covers a 10-year period, from 1915 through 1925. As Charley was evolving from a bit player to a featured player and director, film comedy was evolving with him, going from the mad-dash Keystone farce comedy to the slower, carefully paced comedy that became the hallmark of the Hal Roach Studios. As Charles Parrott, the comedian worked with Charlie Chaplin and most of the Mack Sennett players in the teens, directed Chaplin imitator Billy West and (forgotten) superstar Lloyd Hamilton in the late teens, then became chief director at Hal Roach, becoming Jimmy Jump and then Charley Chase, while also directing the likes of his brother, James Parrot, Snub Pollard, and Will Rogers, before embarking on his own starring series that would carry him into the sound era.
While it would have been nice to have a hard copy table of contents for these disks, as well as absolutely perfect music tracks for each subject, I can copy my own table of contents from each disk, and turn down the sound if need be. But the range of material in this set makes the imperfections seem less than trivial. Each short comes with optional commentary tracks featuring the expertise of David Kalat, Ben Model, and others. Music tracks include scores from Ben Model, the RedwineJazz Band, the Snark Ensemble, and Andrew Earle Simpson. Pictorial quality runs the gamut from fair to sharp. One subject, "Young Oldfield," was viewed from six different prints before a suitable master was selected, so it's not like the compilers weren't trying to find the best. The Will Rogers short, "Just Passin Through," was mastered from a newly discovered print in the Library of Congress. Some of the best pictorial quality is seen in "Accidental Accidents," but the heartbreak of that is, only two minutes survive of what appears to have been one of the best of Chase's mid-twenties comedies.
This collection is supplemented by an excellent documentary, "The Parrott Chase," and a bright interview with one of Charlie's daughters. But the heart of this collections is the excellent cross-section of comedies. Charley Chase and American screen comedy evolved together. Not too long ago you would have had to travel to many festivals and archives to see all this material. Now it's all in one collection. Let's hope that this is a big-seller and will lead to more collections like it. It's impossible to say enough good about this set.
 Incredibly Fun Set of Shorts with Questionable Music November 17, 2009
frankebe (redwood city, ca United States)
2 out of 2 found this review helpful
I certainly enjoyed these complete vintage movies. I was happy to see that in spite of being over-exposed, under-saturated, and generally decomposed, most of the movies are pretty complete, with very few missing frames. The film speed does not seem excessive, so the performers seem less cartoonish than you often see in presentations of old movies. Shorts are my favorite form of film entertainment, and this splendid set of well-put-together shorts, none of which I had ever seen before, was very entertaining indeed!
It was also a delight to see a comedian who doesn't play the fool. 20th century comedians too often thought that stupid is funny--a mistake that mars too much of Keaton's work. Only Stan Laurel brought dopey to the level of high art, yea even exaltation. Here, with a few exceptions, Charley's characters are good looking, good-willed and smart; and he kisses all the girls without fainting: what a relief!
Even in the earliest movies, you can already see that Charley's films are a little different than the usual Keystones: the editing is a little slower and the performances breath a little. The continuity is better than usual. It is charming to see such a juvenile Charley Chase, and Mae Busch is actually cute. (Her facial expressions and pantomime are as good and snappy as the best of them.) The ensemble work is certainly enjoyable to watch; when there are three or four or even more actors gesticulating at once, they still most often manage to highlight the main character and the central point of the moment.
Charley's starring films are in chronological order, a manner of presentation that I ALWAYS appreciate(!!). There is some problem with the way the menus are set up, and trying to get the commentaries turned OFF required re-starting the DVD from the beginning. The 45 minute documentary is very boring and the sound is poorly mixed. I do find it a plus that every film has its own optional commentary.
Now for my pet peeve: My biggest concern with the presentation of silent films is the music. In this compilation, the music isn't really bad, in fact it's generally fairly pleasant, and diverse enough that if you don't like the music for one film, you'll very possibly like it on the next. At any rate, the music rarely kills the movie, which bad music so often does. I have to admit I was a little surprised that the Snark Ensemble did not even try to match their music to the action of some films ("Married to Order" being an example). Sometimes Snark does pretty well, and they even add a few well-placed drum thumps and instrumental coo-coos but they could certainly be a great deal funnier, particularly when the action speeds up. Often they just keep playing cutsie frothy medium-tempo music even when the visuals are frantic. It's hard to understand what they were thinking... I have to admit here and there they really enhance a movie, starting in the 2d DVD with "Hard Knocks". (Took 'em a while to warm up, I thought.) Then the very next movie, "Don't Forget", credits Snark Ensemble, but it's only piano, and it is TERRIBLE! And then, happily, for "Publicity Pays" (an awe-inspiring stunt movie, by the way), they are borderline brilliant. Then, VERY happily, they do a STUPENDOUS job with "Sittin' Pretty" (the magic name here is Maurice Saylor). And "Sittin' Pretty" is THE movie you want to own the whole set for, by the way. Then back to the most horrendous, ill-fitting music imaginable for "The Poor Fish"--in fact it is SO bad I actually had to turn OFF the sound to make it through the movie! ...So we have widely variable performances.
Overall, the really jarring lapse with the sound accompaniments to these films is the lack of noise effects, which would really bring the comedy alive, particularly when films are set to such modest (and occasionally inferior) music. A great musical score would do this too, of course, but just adding a few sounds here and there works wonders. Interestingly, the piano scores composed and played by Ben Model are generally acceptable as ambient sound but not usually very perceptive; on the other hand, play DVD #2, and watch the clip from "Accidental Accidents" to hear how his ORGAN accompaniment seems to be so much more alive. And in "The Fraidy Cat", he really come SO CLOSE to getting it right! His organ accompaniment is about 30% spot on, and the rest of the time it's adequate. It's almost as if he's afraid of being criticized for 'Mickey Mouse-ing' the music to the action too much, so he fits the music beautifully to one gag, and then completely ignores the next bit of comedy or drama.
The best music on the DVD's is on the menus, by the way. Too bad the movie soundtracks themselves were not so entertaining as this.
Overall, in spite of my 4-star rating (due to the menu problems, lack of index notes, a poorly made documentary and mostly pedestrian musical accompaniments) I certainly and heartily recommend purchasing this. Shorts are great because if you get tired of watching, you probably just finished a complete film so you won't miss anything by turning off your DVD for a day or two. A set of shorts this full (4 DVDs -- WOW!) is really a treat, and seeing such GREAT films for the first time was very satisfying. I agree that we should support VCI Entertainment by buying this compilation, and let's hope they can recover enough of their costs to put out more anthologies. And maybe use some better prints, if they can procure them. I recommend buying ALL of VCI's compilations that you can find.
Another great silent movie collection November 9, 2009
MARK C. BALE (SWANSEA, WEST GLAM UNITED KINGDOM)
Very good collection of silent movie comedies starring the forgotten Charley Chase. Hope VCI have more stuff like this lined up - I have the Weiss-o-rama, Arbuckle and Langdon box sets. Suggestions for future sets..... Ben Turpin, Snub Pollard, Mack Sennett stuff.
A number of these shorts are in poor visual condition, but it does add to the charm. My only disappointment is VCI could not include any of Chase's sound shorts from Roach (or get a licence for the Columbia ones), in fact of the Roach talkie era we only have the Our Gang and Laurel and Hardy shorts widely available to us
A well presented set of silent shorts by a forgotten comic September 6, 2009
calvinnme (Fredericksburg, Va)
2 out of 2 found this review helpful
I had never even heard of Charley Chase until I saw one of his sound shorts - "The Pip From Pittsburgh" - on Turner Classic Movies between features two years ago. His lanky features and unique solutions to problems in that short won me over in just two reels. I was very happy, therefore, to hear about this set. It was postponed a couple of times, but it finally made it out the door.
The shorts are excellent, even the early Keystone ones, and that surprised me. I've viewed Chaplin's Keystone shorts, and quite frankly the comedy never rose much above pants-kicking fests, so I really wasn't expecting much from disc one. Chase's Keystone shorts were much more focused on story and using his outrageous facial expressions and lanky build to add to the comedy. Charley Chase never played the guy out to distinguish himself either through legitimate channels (Harold Lloyd's young man in the big city) or illegitimate ones (Chaplin's Little Tramp). Neither was he an outrageous victim of circumstance with great physical prowess and little facial expression (Buster Keaton). Instead, Charley plays an ordinary guy who is trying to keep what he's got - his wife, his job - or, if he plays a single guy, maybe get the girl, not in a big way, but at least to get her to go out with him.
The quality of the video here will take a little getting used to. Don't expect "The General" on Blu-Ray. Instead, most of these shorts appear to have come from 16mm material and there are some noticeable scratches in the video. It's not enough to really bother you, just don't be shocked by the shape that the video is in. The music that has been recorded for the shorts is excellent and the mood of the music for each short fits well.
Every short includes an audio commentary by one or more of the following film scholars: David Kalat, Ben Model, Ken Gordon, Yair Solan, Robert Arkus, Steve Massa, Bruce Lawton, and Richard M. Roberts. They don't go off on tangents, and they seem to have great knowledge of Chase and his supporting cast and crew and have a real enthusiasm for dispensing their knowledge to the viewer. There are also several informative featurettes. The whole package reminds me of what Warner Home Video used to do with their classic boxed sets.
Last year the company that now holds the rights to the Hal Roach sound shorts put out a great set of Our Gang comedies. It would be nice if this same bunch would let us see the rest of the Charley Chase story and release the talking shorts that he made for Roach.
Long Awaited Chase Set Is Almost Perfect. July 29, 2009
Chip Kaufmann (Asheville, N.C. United States)
7 out of 7 found this review helpful
Charley Chase began his career as Charles Parrott (his real name) at Keystone in 1914 where he worked with Arbuckle, Normand, and Chaplin in small unbilled parts. He turned to direction at roughly the same time and eventually went to work for Hal Roach in the early 1920s where he met a young fellow named Leo McCarey. Together they made a 1924 short called SITTIN PRETTY which has an almost identical version of the mirror gag McCarey would later make famous in DUCK SOUP (It features Charley and his younger brother James Parrott who would also become a comedy director). This 4 DVD extravaganza clocks in at 450 minutes and covers his career as comedian and director from Keystone to the end of the Hal Roach era.
He became Charley Chase (hence the name of the set) to distinguish the comedian from the director. His onscreen character bears a remarkable resemblance to Dick Van Dyke who must have been familiar with Chase's comedies. It was initially based on a once popular comedian named Lloyd Hamilton. He became Roach's number one comedy headliner until he was eclipsed by Laurel & Hardy in the late 20s. He continued to act and direct (at Columbia including a few 3 Stooges shorts in the late 30s like VIOLENT IS THE WORD FOR CURLY) until his early death from a heart attack at the age of 46. That was in 1940. The various audio commentaries on the shorts and the brief bio THE PARROTT CHASE provide excellent background information.
This set has been years in the making as some of the early material was very hard to come by and there were a number of complications over who was going to release it. Thanks to Allday Entertainment and to VCI Entertainment for finally getting the job done. Chase had a significant influence on screen humor directing it away from outright slapstick and more into the situational comedy we know today. It's astonishing how much of his late teens and early 20s stuff got recycled by others. My initial reaction is one of admiration tinged by a touch of sadness over how he has been forgotten. Hopefully this set will change that. The only thing that keeps it from being a perfect release is the lack of liner notes or at least a listing of what shorts are on which disc. Still a 5 star effort.
Showing reviews 1-5 of 11
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