The Adventurer. 1917. USA. Directed by Charles Chaplin. Screenplay by Vincent Bryan, Maverick Terrell, Chaplin. With Chaplin, Edna Purviance, Eric Campbell, Henry Bergman, Albert Austin. Digital restoration by The Museum of Modern Art, with funding provided by The Lillian Gish Fund for Film Preservation. 26 min.
MoMA’s new restoration of The Adventurer, the final and, for many, finest of the 12 two-reelers Charles Chaplin made for Mutual, comes as a revelation. Assembled from seven different sources, almost all from the domestic A negative, often combining elements within a given shot, the MoMA restoration has a clarity and grain structure missing from the film for generations, and it has been fitted with remade intertitles that match samples from original prints of other Mutual films. The film now looks—almost uncannily—very much as it did when it first appeared on American screens.
What Happened to Jones. 1926. USA. Directed by William A. Seiter. Screenplay by Melville W. Brown, from a play by George Broadhurst. With Reginald Denny, Marian Nixon, Otis Harlan, Zasu Pitts. Digital restoration by Universal Pictures, from a nitrate print held by The Museum of Modern Art. 70 min.
George Broadhurst’s 1897 Broadway farce had already been filmed twice before when Universal acquired it as a vehicle for Reginald Denny, a hale, open-faced Britisher who had become a star in silent films playing all-American strivers. Under the extremely precise direction of William A. Seiter, the film becomes a sort of Roaring ’20s After Hours, when Denny decides to slip away on the eve of his wedding (to the radiant Marian Nixon) for a final boys-night-out poker game. A police raid sends Denny and his unfortunate sidekick (the great character actor Otis Harlan) on a rooftop chase, where the only escape is through a Turkish bath where a ladies’ night is in progress. Seiter’s work is a master class on using framing and cutting to enhance physical humor; the filmmaking here is at once highly sophisticated and almost completely invisible, so closely and naturally does it guide the spectator’s focus of attention. What Happened to Jones is a forgotten gem.