"Director: Charles Chaplin"

• The Great Dictator | DVD | (10/05/2010) from £N/A   |  Saving you £N/A (N/A%)   |  RRP £15.99

  Chaplin plays two characters in his first full talkie. Adenoid Hynkel the dictator of Tomania and a Jewish Barber. The Barber recovers from amnesia to discover Hynkel is persecuting all the Jews in his country. The film ends with a message of hope for the world.

• Limelight (Chaplin Collection) | DVD | (28/03/2011) from £N/A   |  Saving you £N/A (N/A%)   |  RRP £15.99

  The legend of silent films, Charlie Chaplin, plays an ageing music-hall comedian who befriends a young despondent ballet dancer, Terry (Claire Bloom). Terry is in slow recovery, learning to feel confident about life after her attempted suicide.Also included in the highlights is a famous Chaplin and Buster Keaton comedy skit in this Academy Award-winning film, as the two comedians portray faded stars seeking an audience in a contantly changing world.

• The Gold Rush (Chaplin Collection) | DVD | (07/02/2011) from £20.23   |  Saving you £-4.24 (N/A%)   |  RRP £15.99

  The Gold Rush is widely reported to be the film that Chaplin most wanted to be remembered for. It sees The Tramp as a lone prospector venturing to Alaska looking for gold. He gets mixed up with some burly characters falls in love with the beautiful Georgia (Georgia Hale) and tries to win her heart with his singular charm. This edition includes two versions of the film: the digitally restored 1942 film where Chaplin took the 1925 original composed and recorded a musical score for the film added narration and re-edited as well as the 1925 silent original.

• City Lights (Chaplin Collection) | DVD | (28/02/2011) from £20.23   |  Saving you £-4.24 (-26.50%)   |  RRP £15.99

  This 1931 silent comedy drama from Charles Chaplin sees The Tramp fall in love with a beautiful blind flower girl whose family is in financial trouble. When he learns that an operation may restore the girl's sight he sets off to earn the money she needs to have surgery. The Tramp's friendship with a wealthy man allows him to be the girl's benefactor and suitor but will she love him even when she discovers that he is not a wealthy duke but a tramp?

• Modern Times (Chaplin Collection) | DVD | (14/02/2011) from £N/A   |  Saving you £N/A (N/A%)   |  RRP £15.99

  In Modern Times one of Charles Chaplin's most popular films The Tramp struggles to live in a modern industrial society with the help of a young homeless woman. played by Paulette Goddard. The film is both the last of The Tramp films and the last silent film Chaplin made and is another masterful mix of drama social comment and wonderful comedy.

• The Kid | DVD | (10/05/2010) from £24.28   |  Saving you £-8.29 (-51.80%)   |  RRP £15.99

  The Tramp and an abandoned child (6 year old Jackie Coogan) triumph over life's hard knocks in the landmark film that changed the notion of what a screen comedy could be.

• City Lights | Blu Ray | (15/11/2010) from £24.28   |  Saving you £-4.29 (N/A%)   |  RRP £19.99

  Made in 1931 shortly after the introduction of the talkies, Charlie Chaplin's City Lights is nonetheless near-silent. Chaplin was afraid that, should his universally known and beloved Tramp speak onscreen, he would be severely limited and compromised as a character. And so, City Lights is billed as "pantomime", a piece of cinema harking back to the manners and methods of an already defunct era. Chaplin fell out of fashion towards the end of the 20th century as a new wave of comedians (Rowan Atkinson for one) castigated him for what they saw as his excessive, maudlin sentimentality. Certainly, City Lights--which sees Chaplin's Tramp befriended by a blind flower girl who mistakes him for a rich benefactor--is hokum indeed. Accepting this, however, what makes the film so marvellous is the deceptive skill and artistry of Chaplin the filmmaker, the immaculate timing and acrobatic grace of his seemingly slapstick comedy, in particular a justly famous boxing sequence. Chaplin's sparing use of sound is inventive also: the wordless waffle of public speakers in the opening scene and another in which the tramp swallows a whistle. Moreover, the conclusion, in which the dishevelled Tramp encounters again the flower girl, her eyesight restored is--sentimentality notwithstanding--one of the most moving and superbly executed scenes in cinema history, not least for its economy and restraint. On the DVD: City Lights contains a generous package of extras on this two-disc set, including an introduction by David Robinson, in which he relates how poorly Chaplin and his leading lady Virginia Cherrill got on, an extended documentary/interview with Peter Lord (partner in animation to Nick Parks), who sings the praises of Chaplin's screen art, and a deleted scene, an immaculate piece of business involving a grate and a stick. There's a bonus in the form of an excerpt from 1915's The Champion, in which Chaplin prefigures the boxing scene from City Lights. Meanwhile, the "documents" section includes a wealth of behind-the-scenes footage, including a test screening for alternative actress Georgia Hale, rehearsal shots, chaotic scenes of Chaplin being mobbed in Vienna, a meeting with Winston Churchill and 1918 footage of Chaplin horsing around with famous boxers of the day including Benny Leonard. It also contains trailers, photo gallery and subtitles. On the first disc, the film's transfer to DVD is splendid. --David Stubbs

• Modern Times - Dual Format Edition | Blu Ray | (23/08/2010) from £22.99   |  Saving you £-3.00 (-15.00%)   |  RRP £19.99

  In Modern Times one of Charles Chaplin's most popular films The Tramp struggles to live in a modern industrial society with the help of a young homeless woman. This Dual Format Edition (Blu-ray and DVD) includes the 1936 feature which has now been restored in high definition.

• The Circus | Blu Ray | (15/11/2010) from £29.14   |  Saving you £-9.15 (-45.80%)   |  RRP £19.99

  The Little Tramp brings his slapstick hijinks to the big top. Charlie Chaplin's film The Circus begins in a fading circus where the equestrienne can't jump the hoops and the clowns can't make the audience laugh. Outside on the midway The Little Tramp falls into a series of wonderful comic routines that end when pursued by a cop he bursts into the tent's centre ring and wows the audience. The circus owner/ringmaster auditions The Little Tramp as a clown but discovers he is only funny when he isn't trying. He tricks The Little Tramp into joining the circus as a prop man who wreaks havoc with whatever he does and who unknowingly becomes the star of the show...

• Charlie Chaplin Marathon - Vol. 2 - A Dog's Life / The Kid / Behind The Screen | DVD | (09/02/2001) from £N/A   |  Saving you £N/A (N/A%)   |  RRP £9.99

  Featuring 'A Dogs Life' and 'The Kid' and 'Behind The Screen'.

• The Chaplin Revue - Restored Edition | DVD | (15/11/2010) from £21.58   |  Saving you £-5.59 (-35.00%)   |  RRP £15.99

  The Chaplin Revue - Restored Edition

• Charles Chaplin: A First National Collection | DVD | (14/03/2000) from £N/A   |  Saving you £N/A (N/A%)   |  RRP £N/A

• 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

• Charlie Chaplin - The Essanay Films - Vol. 2 | DVD | (25/08/2003) from £N/A   |  Saving you £N/A (N/A%)   |  RRP £19.99

  The films Charlie Chaplin made at the Essanay Studios in 1915 show some of cinema's greatest comedian's most individual work. As director as well as star he was able to make films around his own performance style rather than force himself into Max Sennett's frenzied 'beystone comedy' mode. Despite their huge importance and comic brilliance these films have rarely been seen in recent decades mostly because of poor or incomplete prints. This edition of all sixteen films in two volumes

• Charlie Chaplin - The Essanay Films - Vol. 1 | DVD | (25/08/2003) from £N/A   |  Saving you £N/A (N/A%)   |  RRP £19.99

  The films Charlie Chaplin made at the Essanay Studios in 1915 show some of cinema's greatest comedian's most individual work. As director as well as star he was able to make films around his own performance style rather than force himself into Mack Sennett's frenzied 'beystone comedy' mode. Despite their huge importance and comic brilliance these films have rarely been seen in recent decades mostly because of poor or incomplete prints. This edition of all sixteen films in two volume

• 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.

• Chaplin Mutuals, Vol. 1 | DVD | (19/11/1997) from £N/A   |  Saving you £N/A (N/A%)   |  RRP £N/A

• Chaplin's Essanay Comedies, Vol. 2 | DVD | (28/09/1999) from £N/A   |  Saving you £N/A (N/A%)   |  RRP £N/A

• Chaplin Mutuals, Vol. 2 | DVD | (19/11/1997) from £N/A   |  Saving you £N/A (N/A%)   |  RRP £19.16

• Chaplin's Essanay Comedies, Vol. 3 | DVD | (28/09/1999) from £N/A   |  Saving you £N/A (N/A%)   |  RRP £N/A