The Immigrant, which contains elements of satire, irony, and romance as well as cinematic poetry, endures in the twenty-first century as a comic masterpiece. The film, Chaplin’s eleventh in the Mutual series, is the best-constructed of his two-reelers and was Chaplin’s favorite among all his two-reel comedies

One A.M., Chaplin’s fourth Mutual, is an impressive piece of virtuosity, a solo performance except for a brief appearance by Albert Austin as a taxi driver. The film is a tour de force of Chaplin’s superb pantomime and comic creativity performed in a restricted space, a brilliant experiment that he never repeated. Chaplin reportedly remarked, "One more film like that and it will be goodbye Charlie."The film’s simple situation revolves around...

From Nothing, Something profiles creative thinkers across a variety of disciplines to find the common techniques, habits and neuroses that lead to breakthrough ideas. This is an inspiring, intimate, often funny look at the creative process — straight from the brains of some of culture’s most unique and accomplished talents. The film draws a line from a-to-b, charting the journey of an idea from "fanciful notion" to "real world actuality." Featuring...

The Cure, the tenth film in the series, is perhaps the funniest of the Mutuals. It was partly inspired in its setting by the Fred Karno sketch, The Hydro, which was set in a hydrotherapy clinic.

In Chaplin’s second effort for Mutual, he portrays an inept firefighter at Fire Station 23. Charlie, still asleep, mistakes a drill bell for a fire alarm and single-handedly drives out the horse-drawn fire engine. When he discovers his error, he simply backs up the engine into the fire station, with horses galloping backward (an early instance of camera tricks—cameramen Foster and Totheroh skillfully cranked the cameras in reverse and Chaplin...

Discovering Cinema is a 2 part collection comprised of Learning to Talk and Movies Dream in Color. Film historians Eric Lange and Serge Bromberg compiled materials from their own Lobster Films collection and material from archives throughout Europe and the USA to create these two historic documentaries illustrating the birth of sound and color cinema, perhaps the greatest cultural achievement of the twentieth century...Told from a European perspective,...

In the early 1980s, documentary filmmaker Stephen Schaller was instrumental in the rediscovery and restoration of The Lumberjack (1914), the oldest surviving film made in Wisconsin, and produced by a group of itinerant filmmakers who traveled from town to town making "local talent" pictures. Schaller's lovely and sometimes deeply emotional, 63-minute journal/essay film offers a look at the making of the Wausau, Wisconsin classic, including interviews...

Chaplin’s eighth film for Mutual, The Rink, is one of his most popular comedies. Charlie is an inept waiter who prepares the bill of Mr. Stout (Eric Campbell) by examining the soup, spaghetti, melon stains and other remnants on the sloppy eater’s shirt front, tie, and ear.

This series takes a look at some of the most powerful and enduring iconic figures of the 20th Century. Every Icon has classic images that encapsulate everything about them and their legacy remains enduring. For good or bad, their power has a lasting effect on people today. Each episode features key people who had direct family or working relationships with these important figures. We illustrate how the combination of events led them to become the...

The fifth film in the Mutual series, The Count, further develops the situations of films in which Charlie impersonates a man of means in order to underscore the contrast between rich and poor—one of his favorite themes.