Reviews of silent film releases on home video. Copyright © 1999-2024 by Carl Bennett and the Silent Era Company. All Rights Reserved.

Recreation (1914)

This collection of the Keystone Film Company short comedies that feature Charles Chaplin is the result of a multiyear cooperative restoration program between the British Film Institute, the Cineteca di Bologna, and Lobster Films, Paris, in cooperation with Association Chaplin.

Some of the restoration footage has never been seen on home video before as the source prints utilized for previously-released DVD, laserdisc and VHS videotape editions were often incomplete.

This DVD edition has been mastered from a duplicate 8mm preservation reduction negative held by Film Preservation Associates, with inserts from an extremely fragmentary 35mm nitrate positive held by the British Film Institute. The results are very poor as the 16mm source material is quite blurry.

The film is accompanied by a music score composed by Antonio Coppola.

The collection’s supplemental material includes Charlie et sa Belle [Charlie’s White Elephant] (1916), Inside the Keystone Project (2010) documenting the Chaplin Project (10 minutes), Silent Traces: The Keystone Locations (2010) with John Bengtson, author of Silent Traces (12 minutes), and a stills gallery.

Overall, the improvement in quality over previous home video editions is so great that you’ll toss your other Keystone Chaplin discs when you see this collection. Highly recommended!

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Other KEYSTONE comedy films available on home video.