"Actor: Paulette Goddard"

• Charlie Chaplin - Modern Times | DVD | (01/06/2006) from £N/A   |  Saving you £N/A (N/A%)   |  RRP £13.99

  Modern Times marks the last proper appearance of Charles Chaplin's iconic Little Tramp, and finds our hero struggling to make ends meet in the Depression of the 1930s. Along the way he takes up with a juvenile delinquent (actually 24-year-old Paulette Goddard) and plays a prison incident with "nose powder" for drug-induced laughs--both plot elements seeming quite innocent here, though both would provoke controversy today. Modern Times' most famous sequences portray the dehumanisation of factory labour to fine comic effect, balancing satire with slapstick to perfection in several superbly executed set-pieces. While the film has sound-effects and musical score, speech is only presented through mechanical means, via a gramophone, or through wall-sized TVs far more futuristic than in those in HG Wells' Things to Come (also 1936)--it's an interesting footnote that the comic and the SF visionary were friends. Chaplin famously not being a fan of sound cinema acknowledges the need to move with the times, yet hilariously spoofs the exploitation of man and machine while doing so. Amid some great laughs, the political message comes though clearly: the boss is making a fortune while doing jigsaw puzzles in his luxury office, the workers are toiling ever harder on the production line for their pittance. On the DVD: Modern Times is offered in the original 4:3 black and white with good mono sound evidencing just a little distortion and a very clean, clear picture with minimal grain to give away its age. Also included are French and Italian dubbed versions and a pointless and ineffective English Dolby Digital 5.1 version of the soundtrack. The disc features multiple subtitle options, including English for hard of hearing. Disc Two begins with a six-minute introduction by David Robinson. Next comes a very worthwhile 26-minute documentary by Philippe Truffault, Chaplin Today, centred around a perceptive subtitled discussion between French filmmakers Luc & Jean-Pierre Dardenne. There are three trailers, beautifully reproduced posters, an eight-part photo gallery and one entertaining deleted scene, as well as Chaplin's "nonsense song" from the film in isolated form and in a "Karaoke" version. The Documents section begins with a silent 42-minute 1931 documentary/propaganda film, In the Machine Age made by the US Dept of Labor. Along similar but more entertaining lines is Symphony in F a 1940 colour film combining music, manufacturing footage and animation celebrating the Ford motor company, while also included is a sequence from the Liberace Show (1956) with the star performing the vocal version of "Smile", the theme from Modern Times. Demonstrating the truly universal appeal of Chaplin is a 1967 short For the First Time, documenting what happens when the people of the remote Baracoa mountains in Cuba see their first ever movie, Modern Times. This is a remarkable collection which does a great film justice. --Gary S Dalkin

• An Ideal Husband | DVD | (06/02/2006) from £N/A   |  Saving you £N/A (N/A%)   |  RRP £5.99

  If we men married the women we deserved...We should have a very bad time of it. 1890s high society provides the setting for Oscar Wilde's sparkling comedy of morals and manners in which an 'ideal' husband must fight to save both his marriage and reputation when a blackmailing adventures threatens him with a political scandal.

• Charlie Chaplin - Modern Times | DVD | (17/11/2003) from £N/A   |  Saving you £N/A (N/A%)   |  RRP £44.99

  Chaplin's last 'silent' film filled with sound effects was made when everyone else was making talkies. Charlie turns against modern society the machine age (the use of sound in films?) and progress. Firstly we see him frantically trying to keep up with a production line tightening bolts. He is selected for an experiment with an automatic feeding machine but various mishaps leads his boss to believe he has gone mad and Charlie is sent to a mental hospital... When he gets out he is mistaken for a communist while waving a red flag sent to jail foils a jailbreak and is let out again. We follow Charlie through many more escapades before the film is out.

• Reap The Wild Wind | DVD | (21/02/2005) from £N/A   |  Saving you £N/A (N/A%)   |  RRP £9.99

  In this turbulent swashbuckler Cecil B. DeMille presents a tale of daring piracy and hot-blooded love! 1840s Key West is filled with salvage businesses thriving on the cargo of wrecked ships. Ship owner Loxi Claiborne suspects salvager King Cutler of foul play since he's always first on the scene at a wreck. Meanwhile Loxi's suitor Captain Jack Stuart is another suspect - at least to jealous lawyer Steve Tolliver. Who will be found guilty - and how - hinges on some amazing developments. Along with the star-studded cast (including Robert Preston and Susan Hayward) this glorious sea spectacle has stars of another kind. There are huge clipper ships gliding in the mist storms splintering them on the rocks and a giant squid in a memorable underwater battle. With Given DeMille's robust direction it all adds up to an Oscar for Special Effects

• Charlie Chaplin - The Great Dictator | DVD | (17/11/2003) from £N/A   |  Saving you £N/A (N/A%)   |  RRP £44.99

  ONCE AGAIN THE WHOLE WORLD LAUGHS... During the last days of the First World War a clumsy soldier saves the life of devoted military pilot Schultz. Unfortunately their flight from the advancing enemy ends in a severe crash with the clumsy soldier losing his memories. After quite some years in the hospital the amnesia patient gets released and reopens his old barber shop in the Jewish ghetto. But times have changed in the country of Tomania: Dictator Adenoid Hynkel who accidentally looks very similar to the barber has laid his merciless grip on the country and the Jewish people are discriminated against. One day the barber gets in trouble and is brought before a commanding officer who turns out to be his old comrade Schultz. So the ghetto enjoys protection from then on. Meanwhile Dictator Hynkel develops big plans he wants to become Dictator of the whole world and needs a scapegoat for the public. Soon Schultz is being arrested for being too Jewish-friendly and all Jews except those who managed to flee are transported into Concentration Camps. Hynkel is planning to march into Osterlich to show off against Napaloni Dictator of Bacteria who already has deployed his troops along the other border of the small country. Meanwhile Schultz and the barber manage to escape guised in military uniforms. As luck would have it Schultz and the barber are picked up by Tomanian forces and the barber is mixed up with Hynkel himself. The small barber now gets the once-in-a-lifetime chance to speak to the people of Osterlich and all of Tomania who listen eagerly on the radio.