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 Charley Bowers DVD 2 DVD 9 Pal, zone, 4/3 aspect ratio Black and white and color. Total length: 4hrs 30 Menus and subtitles: French/English Choice of musical accompaniment for the silent films: Original creations by Marc Perrone (accordion in 5.1 version), Bruno Letort (electronic music in stereo) and Neil Brand (piano in stereo). Buy the DVD
Who Is Charley Bowers ? The inventor of the non-slip banana peel, unbreakable eggs, trees where cats grow! Nicknamed Bricolo in France, this unknown genius directed and acted in about twenty slapstick films at the end of the Twenties. Some of the films’ surrealist imaginary blend together real shots with animated puppets, among which are Egged On, Fatal Footsteps and Now You Tell One. His work is unique and his path most unusual according to the few existing accounts on one of the most enigmatic characters of the history of American cinema. After spending his childhood in a circus he trained in a number of theatre trades, and then became a caricaturist for the press. In 1912, at the age of 23, he took interest in animation and soon participated in the adaptation of about one hundred cartoons for the cinema; most notably, as of 1916, he took part in the series Mutt and Jeff created by Jeff Fisher. During this period he developed a knowledge of animation that accounts for the impressive tricks he used later on in his slapstick comedies. As of 1930 his story became less clear. In this year he directed It’s a Bird, his first sound film which proved an aesthetic shock for André Breton when he discovered it. Bowers then returned to animation to work on advertising films – including Joseph Losey’s first film, a commissioned piece on petrol called Pete Roleum and His Cousins -, he also went back to direct some stunning films with puppets. He died in 1946, forgotten by all. An Eventful DVD Set With the advent of sound most silent films were damaged, lost or destroyed. It is therefore a real challenge to gather the works of an actor from that period of cinema. Although he fulfilled his amazing carrier in the United States the forgotten Bowers is first and foremost a European rediscovery. Of all his slapstick comedies only one was found in America. All the others were located in France, in the Netherlands, or in Czechoslovakia. To this day 11 of his 20 slapstick comedies remain lost. At the end of the 60s Raymond Borde, then director of the Cinémathèque deToulouse, discovered old rusty metal boxes labeled “Bricolo” among a batch of fairground films. He thus started an investigation to identify this mysterious actor. He linked by chance the materials to Charley Bowers and from there retraced his biography with the precious help of Louise Beaudet from the Cinémathèque du Québec. The 3 films he exhumed were projected at the 1976 animation film festival of Annecy where they aroused general enthusiasm. Since 1992 Lobster has launched worldwide research to retrieve the last copies of Bower’s missing films. The word has been spread to film archives as well as private collectors around the world who gave us access to their original materials. The other films are from the Lobster collection. This special edition from the collection Retour de Flamme thus assembles for the first time Bowers’ entire body of works surviving to this day, magnificently restored with original elements, in collaboration with 10 film archives. DVD 1 EGGED ON 1926, 24’08, Slapstick HE DONE HIS BEST 1926, 23’42, Slapstick A WILD ROOMER 1926, 24’27, Slapstick FATAL FOOTSTEP 1926, 22’18, Slapstick NOW YOU TELL ONE 1926, 22’18, Slapstick MANY A SLIP 1927, 11’36 (incomplete), Slapstick NOTHING DOING 1927, 21’17, Slapstick THERE IT IS 1928, 17’22, Slapstick DVD 2
THE EXTRA QUICK LUNCH 1917, 5’34, Animation A.W.O.L. 1918, 5’22, Animation SAY AH-H ! 1928, 14’02 (incomplete), Slapstick IT'S A BIRD 1930, 14’10, Slapstick BELIEVE IT OR DON’T ca 1935, 7’53, Animation PETE ROLEUM AND HIS COUSINS 1939, 15’41, Animation WILD OYSTERS 1940, 10’06, Animation A SLEEPLESS NIGHT ca 1940, 10’59, Animation Extras: LOOKING FOR CHARLEY BOWERS, documentary by Christophe Coutens 2003, 15’42 Photo gallery (drawings, film posters and 24 unpublished lobby cards found in a cinema in Rochester).
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