To a motion picture, "public domain" is the placard on the graveyard gate.
It can mean a movie is ancient, utter crap, or both. For reasons long forgotten, nobody gives a damn – likely because everyone connected to the epic is dead, or at least old and broke. The film has been reduced to its mere value as an historical curiosity, or lack thereof; hardly even worth the watch. Now it belongs to no one, and therefor, everyone.
The quickest clue that the DVD in your hand is a PD property, is when you spot other copies with differing box designs, by competing distributors.
Someone found an old neg, or print, of a movie with an expired copyright – or inherited it from a previous distributor – paid a duping fee, hired a cheap designer to produce zippy new packaging, and put the film back on the market. Nothing illegal.
If it's a film on your list, you'll likely have no problem finding it in abundance, and cheap. Your only hardship will be selecting which ugly package design you most tolerate. Your only real risk the quality of the source used for duping, which may be anything from pristine to an animation of projector-burn bubbles and jagged splices.
The shortfalls can be offset by the purchase price. I've paid anywhere from 99¢ for titles that became welcome additions to my collection, up to $10 for some that ended up in the Goodwill donation box. Clinkers abound, but there are some real treasures lurking on poverty row.
George Romero's original "Night of the Living Dead" (1966) is an ultimate must-have for any serious horror aficionado – and the cheapest ticket at the video store. Romero sold his film outright just to get it into theaters. Years later the copyrights lapsed and "Night" was lost in limbo. Before Romero could blink, dozens of fly-by-night video houses had their own releases on the market, cashing in on its growing "post mortem" popularity, denying him, its own author, of a rightful payday. All legally.
At last he bit the bullet and produced a remake in 1990, just to recapture his copyright on the title.
In terms of Classic Comedies in the public domain, there are definitely equal helpings of gems and junk. Though the diamonds are there to be unearthed, for one willing to burrow.
For anally adamant purists, meticulously restored editions of these films do exist – usually as part of pricey, major studio-licensed box sets. If you'd settle for less-than-ideal, and your DVD library looking hodgepodge-slutty rather than virginally symmetrical, you can still own the kings of early comedy, on a budget.
The films, and a few connected anecdotes, are worth a look.
CHARLIE CHAPLIN, BUSTER KEATON and NEARLY THE ENTIRE SILENT ERA
Many of Chaplin's and Keaton's works have PD versions afloat. Early in the home-video craze, however, the keepers of Chaplin's estate swooped in to secure the rights to his most iconic titles. Who could blame them?
The only Chaplin films left readily accessible to PD hunters are his earliest, which despite the Estate's cherry-picking, still comprise a noteworthy list containing many of his landmarks.
The two films that vie for Charlie's first appearance as the Tramp, "Kid Auto Races At Venice" and "Mabel's Strange Predicament" (both 1914) are public. Also in legal freefall are "The Tramp" (1915), "The Rink" (1916), "Easy Street" and "The Immigrant" (1917), and even his surreally melancholy "Sunnyside" (1919), to name a few.
The public trail also contains two historic mileposts. Mack Sennett's "Tillie's Punctured Romance" (1914), the cinema's first feature-length comedy, stars Marie Dressler, plus Chaplin and Mabel Normand as featured players. "The Kid" (1921), starring Chaplin and prodigy Jackie Coogan, is a bona fide piece of comedy history indeed; Chaplin's first attempt at a grand opus, the moment he turned movie comedy on its head with a then-radical concept called comic-pathos: comedy that tugs the heartstrings – as well as taps the funnybone – to triumphal heights.
In the VHS era, Chaplin's first major feature, "The Gold Rush" (1925) was an ubiquitous presence on the PD shelf, released under many disparate distribution banners. Though Chaplin himself re-released the film theatrically in 1942, he'd added a narration track – creating technically a "new" work. The original silent version was, legally speaking, left out in the cold by that misstep, and the vultures descended.
The Chaplin Estate rectified the situation somewhat for the DVD market, awarding the Parisian company MK2, in league with Warner Home Video, the official rights to the Tramp's adventures – and most importantly Charlie's latter-career masterpieces. Fans desiring copies of, say, "City Lights" (1931) or "The Great Dictator" (1940) to complete their collections, must pay full retail, or hope for a deal on Amazon. Warner Home Video's "The Chaplin Collection" is the obvious first choice.
Fortunately for the PD Chaplin connoisseur, there is an almost equivalent "single purchase" instant library.
St. Clair Entertainment offers over 50 of Charlie's silents in a 3-disk compilation entitled simply enough: "Charlie Chaplin." It includes just about everything one could need, except "Tillie" and "Gold Rush," which can still be had separately, or within less satisfying sets than St. Clair's, released by other distributors. The set also contains a few of his partnerings with Mabel Normand, making it a great budget-friendly find for her fans as well.
Many of these films are available as free internet downloads, some even live on YouTube, but again there are no guarantees regarding picture quality.
Buster Keaton was not as lucky. There was no "Keaton Estate" to rescue his films from the public swamp. In fact, there were almost no films to be rescued.
In the early 1950s, actor James Mason became owner of the residence that had once been Keaton's lavish Beverly Hills "Italian Villa." While remodeling he discovered a long-ignored and deteriorating garden toolshed, which had apparently served as Keaton's editing studio. Inside sat Keaton's films – most considered lost, up until that moment – still in the canisters that the comedian had left them, years prior.
Those air-tight tins, combined with the cold of many winters, were all that had preserved Keaton's legacy, printed on the unstable nitrate film of the silent era. Buster believed that the talkies had made his work hopelessly obsolete, and so had left his classics behind to rot.
Successfully copied onto safety filmstock, the pancake-hatted "Great Stone Face" was reborn to delight modern audiences just as he had those of his own era. The rediscovery of Keaton's genius, by cinema buffs worldwide, sparked searches around the globe for other archived-and-forgotten Keaton gems. The quest yielded enough material for Public Domain distributors to become the primary custodians of Keaton's filmography. Many, many competing releases of Buster Keaton masterworks are now available, and in quite viewable condition.
Consistently the best are by Kino International. Ted Turner's TMC Archives also offers well restored Keaton keepers, and Sony recently released Keaton's rare – if less classic – Columbia shorts, in a 2006 package somewhat misleadingly titled "The Buster Keaton Collection."
The Kino release of "Seven Chances" (1925) – part of their DVD box "The Art of Buster Keaton" – screen size not withstanding, may be exactly what 1925 audiences witnessed. A picture as crystal as any digital age could imagine; it appears to have been filmed yesterday.
Also from Kino is "Arbuckle & Keaton, Volumes One and Two: The Original Comique/Paramount Shorts 1917-1920" which offers Keaton's early collaborations with his mentor, Roscoe "Fatty" Arbuckle, in digitally restored quality. Image Entertainment's "The Best Arbuckle/Keaton Collection" features practically the same den of films, plus two, also restored – with just a few differences in applied music and other peripherals. It may in fact be a superior buy.
Both sets preserve a rare, unique chapter in silent comedy history; the filmed incubation period of one of the cinema's greatest clowns.
While jewel prints of Keaton's "College," "The General" (both 1927) and "Steamboat Bill Jr." (1928) are all available at premium prices, budget-friendly gently-flawed versions can still be had by the neophyte film buff living paycheck-to-paycheck. Echo Bridge Home Entertainment's "Buster Keaton 2-DVD Pack" contains the above-mentioned three, plus a Keaton documentary, all for about the cost of lunch for two at McDonalds. Public powerhouse Alpha Video has long offered "The General" as one of its flagship DVDs, though likely not from a source as well-preserved as that in Kino's catalog. The prices are of course different, and the choice yours.
Keaton's equally collectible silent shorts can be acquired with single-box buys like BCI/Eclipse's "Buster Keaton: The Great Stone Face of Comedy." In addition to the aforementioned "General," "College" and 1931's "Parlor, Bedroom and Bath," it includes "The Boat" and "The Playhouse" (both 1921 and themselves worth the set's asking price), 1922's "The Paleface," "The Electric House," "The Frozen North" and the incomparable "Cops." Start collecting!
W.C. FIELDS
Fields's very first film, the silent "Pool Sharks" (1915) is little more than a documentation of his Vaudeville billiards act, with comic romance tacked on. Filmed at New York's Gaumont Company, and written by Fields himself, it nearly ranks as a home movie.
Its most prominent aspect today is the indirect historical reference to the state of his career at the time it was filmed. His classic persona was still years, decades, away. He sports a very fake mustache – jet black in contrast to a starkly blond head – transparently in hopes of jumpstarting his film career via resonance with Charlie Chaplin's audience.
Years before Chaplin even beheld a movie camera, W.C. Fields was already a world celebrity; master juggler, marquee dominant Vaudevillian. He prided himself as a "next-to-closing" caliber performer whom few dared follow on the bill – save the silver-haired cellist sent on to drive the audience toward the exits; "play to the haircuts."
When the scrawny, cane-twirling, derby-hatted limey in the "flickers" threatened to surpass his stardom, and income, literally overnight, alpha-male Fields took it as a cue; it was time he conquered the movies. In terms of fame, he reasoned, he simply outranked Chaplin. Assuming a quick rectification of the pecking order, he failed the classic comedian's fail – the sin of trying too hard.
By the mid-twenties, it would be arguable that Chaplin was the most recognized man on Earth, eclipsing even world leaders.
Fields did not capture great public interest with his initial run at film comedy. He burned through warehouses of film, sometimes serving as his own mogul, attempting to bottle Chaplin's thunder, with only subjective success.
Harold Lloyd fought a similarly futile battle, in over a hundred short comedies for Hal Roach, as an acutely formulated "Anti-Tramp" character nicknamed Lonesome Luke.
Fields's pre-talkie era speaks for itself regarding the sheer hell through which he put himself. Hardly any of his silents after "Pool Sharks" has survived. Near zippo. Movie historians reference them in flimsy context-free anecdotes occasionally, but rarely does an inch of celluloid ever surface.
In fact, when Fields's entire filmography is considered, including his sound-era classics – which proved he may indeed have been the world's funniest man, possibly second only to Groucho Marx – less than half his life's output is still available to modern audiences.
If all known of Eddie Murphy was his work after Saturday Night Live... or we had only Jerry Lewis's movies without Dean Martin... that's about the ratio reflected by what presently exists of W.C. Fields. The films for which he is most celebrated were produced in his autumn years, long after Fields the young skinny juggler and acrobat had cross-dissolved into Fields the wide-trousered, bulbous-nosed curmudgeon.
His luck as a film actor was better served by directors like D.W. Griffith, who recognized his natural magnetism, and cast him accordingly in work like "Sally of the Sawdust" (1925) and even a remake of "Tillie's Punctured Romance" (1928). But when he defaulted in his head, to his ego's competition with Charlie, his grinding gears became intensely visible. Only years later, after his stagnating career demanded he re-invent himself, did Fields finally gain self-awareness. His pretense of hatred against The Little Tramp had blinded him to his own true caricature.
In the public domain, one may still view the turning point: "The Golf Specialist" (1930) resulted from Fields bartering with Mack Sennett who at the time, like Fields, was rudderless, seeking an inroad back to relevance. They each offered something the other craved; Sennett a bankable star to revitalize his career as a producer, and Fields a movie industry facilitator who'd allow him to experiment divorced from a crippling need to outshine Chaplin. He'd obviously, years prior, lost that war. Finally freed, he wanted to compete instead with his own perfectionism, and get it on film.
The series of short comedies Fields embarked upon under Sennett's post-prime supervision were his second attempt to make himself a film comedian, and Sennett's last hurrah as a comedy filmmaker. Just before exposing the first reel, Fields nearly jinxed the entire deal by mentioning to Mack that he expected $5,000 per week – his customary Vaudeville performance fee. Sennett swallowed hard, but forked over nearly his last roll of dimes to keep the stalled superstar hovering in his airspace.
"The Golf Specialist," like "Pool Sharks," was made from retooling a Fields stage skit, both to minimize scripting chores, and hasten completion of the inaugural project of their partnership – quick and dirty as a back alley skirt-lift.
The budget, nearly drained by Fields's abrupt stipend demand, dropped to ultra-cheap. The final scene, supposedly on a golf course, was staged indoors upon a cinderblock platform. The fairway was a painted backdrop. A static single-camera set captured Fields's Vaudeville golf sketch for posterity, in a prolonged medium shot. The claustrophobic cinematography was intentional, however, to allow the presence of the film's real star – the crucial element that Fields had latently realized was his "keystone," pun intended – a microphone.
Unlike in his silent debut's misguided faux Chaplinisms, Fields embraced his legitimate muse – his own mother. Her outrageous, hilarious, corner-of-the-mouth wisecracks about errant relatives and neighbors were etched in his memory from childhood. Well enough that he could himself ad-lib on the cuff to equal affect.
He had spent a few previous years lab-testing this verbal add-on to his acrobatic comedy, in Vaudeville, and had brought down houses with it. When Al Jolson ushered in the talkies with "The Jazz Singer" (1927), a fire was lit under Fields. His ticket out from Chaplin's shadow had arrived. Biding his time for the right opportunity, he finally crossed paths with Sennett.
The security of the Tramp's mustache, however, was still damn hard to toss away for the trial run. He held on to it, just once more. Though he still sprinkled in bits of acrobatic whimsy, the heart of the film's comedy was verbal. Fields had discovered himself. The rest would be gravy.
"The Dentist," "The Pharmacist" (both 1932), "The Fatal Glass of Beer" and "The Barber Shop" (1933) reveal Fields's and Sennett's learning curve regarding comedy wired for sound. They were already miles ahead of the pack simply relying on their instincts, which were mutually complimentary, honed by years of combined film and stage experience.
While not direct copies of Fields stage routines, the four films still dwell in familiar Fields territory; satire of "typical" American life. Foreshadows of the modern sitcom – a theme he explored thoroughly in Broadway sketch revues, and would still throughout most of his film career. "Beer" is a spoof of the old cattletown melodramas that dominated American "theatre" in the previous century.
"Dentist" is an astonishing experience even today. Modern film theorists still see just-barely subliminal sexual aerobics between Fields and a dental patient played by the exotically gothic Elise Cavanna. Her long, gymnastic body (she studied dance under Isadora Duncan) is easily imagined negotiating positions that would make Kinsey's jaw flap – until Fields comically suggests one far more traditional, planting himself with authority between her legs to get his "tool" within striking distance. As if that weren't front-and-center enough, Fields has Cavanna "consummate" the act by ramming her bare foot phallically home into his coat pocket – a virginally white cloth vagina. He wears himself out with frustration attempting to reverse the dynamics of their symbolic coitus.
Censors were still shearing Fields's "evil" comedy to ribbons well into the television era, three decades later. Oddly, all other sinfulness cataloged in its riotous 25 minutes – abuse, sloth, violence, xenophobia, et al. – remained intact through eight decades. Is to enjoy this humor to condone such things, or appreciate, along with Fields, their ribald absurdity? The answer is within the public domain. Judge for yourself.
With equally subliminal tact in the very next film, "The Pharmacist," Fields nudged the pendulum back in favor of the cinema's temperance league, casting himself as a stoic family man and Elise Cavanna as his nagging but devoted wife. Their allegorical honeymoon was long over, but the fruitful marriage between film and W.C. Fields was just beginning.
NEXT: PART TWO... Public Domain Abbott & Costello, Laurel & Hardy, and The Three Stooges
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