Charlie Chaplin: official website

105 years! An outrageous abuse of copyright law.

In many ways Tati was a silent filmmaker in an era of sound; he neverthelsss embraces sound in a remarkably intuitive way that makes him one of its great film interpreters.

For instance, the buzz of the neon light transformer in PlayTime — an annoying sound we've all experienced. It's a seemingly trivial inclusion in an otherwise complex and 'active' scene. But it's not really trivial, for often when one's experiencing or recalling some real life drama it's often the trivial that one remembers—the main event cannot be recalled without the 'trivial' coming to mind as it's contextually important memory.

Another excellent example is from Mon Oncle, the scene where Monsieur Hulot's 'competence' is being questioned, but one cannot forget the seemingly trivial sound of the secretary's short click-clack high-heel steps† as she briefly enters and leaves the scene—yet her presence is only incidental to the scene's transpiring events. Not only was Tati a master at using sound this way he was also a genius at observing human nature in action.

The other ingredient that makes Tati's films so delightfully memorable is their simple humanity. Decades ago, I first saw Mon Oncle as a kid of about ten—about the same age as Gérard (Hulot's nephew). That was well before I'd learned any French and the version I saw had no English subtitles yet I enjoyed the film enormously and understood what was going on without language—and I still do, I never tire of seeing it. That's part of Tati's genius, he has the remarkable ability to appeal to all ages and new generations.

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† Edit: this is not the scene I described above (that occurs about 1h 31m in the film) but it's the same secretary walking and sounding the same: https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=YdCSijdyI6E.

Rather than dwell on that I think it important that we consider the future of early silent movies and how we can revitalize them for modern audiences who have become accustomed to—even jaded by—the visual 'pyrotechnics' of modern high definition video technology. By comparison, silent movies are deficient on multiple fronts, they're not only missing sound but also their visuals are in B&W and generally of low quality (low resolution).

These technological limitations present a high barrier for modern audiences to jump over, so they're often dismissed (many of today's audience have never seen classics from the silent era). How we should go about overcoming the barrier is an important and huge topic and cannot be covered in depth here but I'll mention a few ideas that I think are relevant.

1. Much of the footage that's currently in circulation from the silent era is of terrible quality, it consists of copies that are multiple generations away from the original camera stock. So often what we see today is footage with crushed blacks and washed out highlights to the extent that most of the detail in those areas of the image is lost.

This is unfortunate as the quality of the original camera negatives/masters are often surprising good—much, much better than one would expect. So why aren't modern copies made from the original negatives? Is it because they no longer exist, or if they do then they've deteriorated, or is it that for some reason the originals remain inaccessible?

I've limited knowledge of the reasons but all three are implicated—depending on the film of course. This came to my attention several decades ago when the actor James Mason presented a multi-part TV series on Chaplin's films wherein he compared some original film stock with the more widely circulated poor copies and the difference in quality was dramatic—the original stock being quite excellent.

2. Mason pointed out that accessibility was often a problem as Chaplin usually immediately destroyed footage he wasn't happy with, and second, he kept extremely tight control over master footage. Even though Chaplin died in 1977, the current copyright holders are keeping to this tradition by stressing that any Chaplin footage from 1918 onward is still in copyright (as I mentioned in my earlier post, it's likely Chaplin's works won't come out of copyright until 2067). Clearly, this is a disincentive for those wishing to gain access to the films with the view of reconstructing them. Moreover, it also seems the current copyright holders aren't doing much to either make these films readily accessible or doing much by way of reconstructing them. In essence, ridiculously long copyright law is standing in the way.

3. Even after copyright expires, it doesn't necessarily mean that owners of the physical masters/negatives/media will make them available. We've seen this nasty ploy used by many art galleries whose artworks are long out of copyright but who have refused third partly access to them for copying (high quality copies are thus restricted from entering the public domain). Copyright laws ought to be amended to remedy this anachronistic anomaly.

That said, some copyright holders have made reasonably good copies available on DVD such as Buster Keaton's The General. (the Kino release). Unfortunstely, whilst this release is certainly much better than the low quality versions that once circulated on TV decades ago, it's not a proper high quality digital reconstruction of same as dust, scratches and other artifacts are still visible. It's better than nothing but still not good enough.

4. As mentioned, unfortunately modern audiences aren't accustomed to viewing old B&W silent movies. Unlike when I was a kid, TV stations no longer broadcast these movies, so kids no longer grow up appreciating them for what they are. It's similar to when 78 sound recordings became passé when vinyl became available. Retraining audiences is possible but I've little idea how one would go about it. (Incidentally, I've worked in radio and TV broadcasting and I'm experienced with modern digital recording techniques but I have no difficulty in viewing old films or listening to 78 recordings. (Listening to, say, the great Caruso on a 100-year old recording still brings me pleasure because I've learned to mentally tune out surface noise and distortions, but I'm realistic enough to realize that this will never become a widespread practice.)

5. Thus, the only practical option left is to upgrade these films using the best technology available. It's clear that in the near future that both AI and other techniques such as cleaver Fourier analysis and reconstruction will be able to improve these films out of sight—much better than any version currently available. It would happen all the sooner if copyright holders were more cooperative and or if archaic and unreasonable copyright laws were dragged screaming into the Twenty-first Century.