Chaplin

ID: PILH-1005

Price: 25,000 yen

Discs: 2

Sound: B-Mode

Running Time: 2:25

Released: Pioneer

from IMDb

The biography of Charlie Chaplin, filmmaker extraordinaire. From his formitive years in England to his highest

successes in America, Charlie's life, work, and loves are followed. While his screen characters were extremely

hilarious, the man behind "The Little Tramp" was constantly haunted by a sense of loss.

Picture quality of this title is very good. Scenes exhibit a lot of detail, which is appreciated given all the work that went into set construction and design. Colors are a bit muted while the film takes place in England, but tend to “liven” up a bit when Chaplin comes to America. Perhaps this was the intent of the director, but an observation nonetheless. The one noticeable negative I found was the picture tended to be a bit on the warm side, emphasizing a reddish cast on the picture. It’s very slight, but present. However, it doesn’t detract very much from the picture.

Compression artifacts are present but minimally. Again, like many other MUSE discs, dark scenes tend to bring out the mosquitoes (pun intended), but they are never severe nor do they detract from the viewing of this disc in any great way.

Being a dialog driven film doesn’t leave room for much else. Music when played fills the front speakers, however the center channel is the speaker that gets the largest workout. Low frequency effects as well as surround effects are all but absent. Since this isn’t an action movie, not much reason to use the effects channels.

Overall a pleasant sounding disc.

It’s a long movie, and one you have to pay attention to, but that may be hard given the pacing in this film. Regardless, a nice addition for picture quality into the MUSE Hi-Vision laserdisc collection.