Charlie Chaplin
© AFP/Intercontinentale/FilePARIS (AFP) - Chaplin died 30 years ago this week, December 25, 1977, but the biting burlesque of works such as "The Gold Rush", "The Kid" and his last silent movie "Modern Times" have stood the test of time, wowing film-lovers from Bangladesh to Brazil.
Since 2001, some 2.8 million Chaplin DVDs have been sold worldwide, including 725,000 in Spain, 420,000 in the U.S, 300,000 in Britain and France and 100,000 in Brazil.
Yet in the late 1990s, Chaplin had all but slipped off the movie map. Copies of his films had aged and were rarely screened, prompting his descendants to loook around for a way to give them a second life.
It was during those years that films by the then late French filmmaker François Truffaut were re-issued as DVDs by MK2.
"These high-quality editions allowed us to show what we could do, to position ourselves at the top end of DVD productions," said Nathanael Karmitz, who with his father Marin runs MK2.
Confident Chaplin would get equally good treatment, his heirs in 2001 handed over the international rights to 18 top Chaplin movies to Marin Karmitz against a sum that remains confidential to this day. They asked however that his work be given new life in movie-theatres.
MK2 handed over restoration to the Bologna film archive and film lab Immagine Ritrovata and asked Warner to manage DVD releases worldwide, while maintaining editorial leadership.
"Gathering together all the necessary elements to restore a film from archives or from individuals the world over can take five or six years," said Gianluca Farinelli, who heads the Bologna film archive.
If the original negative has been lost, restoration work can be carried out on copies, which sometimes are not high-quality, and which are them "homogenised" by reducing the differences in the contrasts.
After finishing the old Chaplin features, Immagine Ritrovata, along with London's National Film and Television Archive and France's Lobster, next year plan to complete the restoration of 33 Chaplin shorts produced by Keystone in 1914 and 1915 (two of the 35 made have been lost).
Karmitz said the response in the US had been disappointing "because Americans have a short memory and are not very interested in film heritage", but "in Brazil, Argentina and Japan, Chaplin is very popular."
The restored films have also been screened in mainstream movie-houses. "The Dictator" was acclaimed on its release at the Berlin film festival in 2002 and "Modern Times" unveiled at the Cannes film fest the following year.
Pending the opening of a Charlie Chaplin museum in Switzerland, where he died, his scripts and drawings have been digitalised by the Bologna film archive. They can be consulted free of charge on Internet.
A deal to purchase his house overlooking Lake Leman (Lake Geneva), his home for the final 25 years of his life, was reached last week. The museum will house a permanent exhibition, a 200-seat cinema, a shop and a restaurant.
©AFP