Charlie Chaplin Archive

On the anniversary of the day on which Chaplin won his honorary Oscar, and six days before his 130th birthday, Fondazione Cineteca di Bologna and the Chaplin office are delighted to announce the launch of the brand new version of the online Charlie Chaplin Archive site, developed by Keepthinking.

On April 10th 1972 AMPAS President Daniel Taradash called humour and humanity the “abiding elements of Chaplin’s artistic conscience”. He went on to say “Chaplin made more people laugh than anyone in history, yet always just beneath the hilarity [are] the fears and sorrows of everyman. The world respond[s] not only to the wondrous humor of the little tramp, but also to the love and indomitability he represents, to Chaplin’s soaring theme, that man’s humanity to man is greater than his inhumanity.”

The inscription on the Academy Award that Chaplin received that evening reads “to Charles Chaplin for the incalculable effect he has had in making motion pictures the art form of this century.” To continue to quote Mr. Taradash, “Chaplin has become more than a name, it’s a word in the vocabulary of films. And anyone who has ever seen a movie is in his debt.”

Those words could have been spoken in 2019, which marks the 130th anniversary of Chaplin’s birth. Charlie Chaplin’s hat, moustache and cane are still synonymous with, and used worldwide to illustrate, film, cinema, comedy. People still respond to the Tramp’s indomitability. Chaplin films are screened in concert halls with symphony orchestras, but also in refugee camps. Photographs and clips from Modern Times are regularly requested to illustrate the working and living conditions of today. Extracts from the final speech of The Great Dictator are in constant demand in the current political climate.

Charlie Chaplin Archive: the official catalogue and information site of and about Charles Chaplin’s very own and painstakingly preserved professional and personal archives, from his early career on the English stage to his final days in Switzerland.

On this newly developed user-friendly site for Chaplin fans, researchers, academics, students, cinephiles… there is something for everyone. FOR THE FIRST TIME it is possible to read all the documents (except those the Chaplin office requested remain private).

Over 75 years of handwritten and printed documents, photographs and press clippings spanning the career of cinema’s most universal man and shedding light on how he worked, played and lived, but particularly how he worked. From the first handwritten notes of a story line to the shooting of the film itself, stage by stage documentary evidence of the development of a film, or a project that never even became a film. Poems, lyrics, drawings, programmes, contracts, letters, magazines, travel souvenirs, comic books, cartoon strips, praise and criticism, good times and bad... the vast online catalogue reveals them all.

We have Sydney Chaplin and Wheeler Dryden to thank for the fact that the archives still exist. Charlie’s half-brothers were responsible for clearing the Chaplin Studios when the family had taken up residence in Switzerland.

Letter from Sydney to Charlie Chaplin circa Sept/Oct 1953: “I took a look in the room where they keep all the studio records. I counted over 80 filing boxes with correspondence dating back to 1918. I opened one and the first letter I looked at was from Professor Albert Einstein. So I am having Wheeler take out all the personal letter folders and put them together. I hope he will find nothing of an embarrassing nature in them, or anything bordering on the Kinsey report?”

Sydney to Charlie Chaplin November 3, 1953: “The girls in the office were surprised when I told them your press clipping books were to be retained. If I had not mentioned it I think they would have been thrown out. Good God! What do they think so much time was spent on these books for? They cover every phase of your career and private life dating back for years, also articles that appeared in the top magazines and written by some of America’s finest writers and critics. The office does not think about your posterity, and neither do you, but the public does and will continue to do so long after you have shuffled off.”

The archives saved from the bin by Sydney spent many years in the cellars of Chaplin’s home in Switzerland. In 2002 the Cineteca di Bologna undertook the enormous task of cataloguing and scanning the documents and photographs that Sydney and Wheeler shipped, as well as papers from Chaplin’s later life in Europe. The project took over fifteen years and is still ongoing, as we find more materials.

Once safely preserved for posterity thanks to the Cineteca di Bologna, the Chaplin Archives have safe, state of the art homes: the paper documents are stored at the Archives de Montreux, and the photographic materials at the Musée de l’Elysée in Lausanne.

The Chaplin family and Kate Guyonvarch thank all three organizations for their inestimable help in preserving this precious collection.

Easter egg transfer paper, 1917. Early example of officially licensed Charlie Chaplin merchandise, negotiated by Charlie's brother, Sydney, with the Paas Dye Co. of Newark, N.J.

Fondazione Cineteca di Bologna is an internationally recognised film archive with a multi-faceted mission ranging from film preservation and dissemination, film distribution of classics, training and research.

In the late Nineties, under the aegis of the Association Chaplin/Roy Export, Cineteca launched the Chaplin Project to restore Charlie Chaplin’s immense filmography (over 80 titles) with the double aim of allowing old and new generations of film-goers to re-discover this timeless master as well as ensuring the long lasting preservation of his films. In particular, for all the medium and long features produced by First National and United Artists between 1918 and 1966, special attention was devoted to the films’ different reissues and distribution history to ensure that the restored version would match with Chaplin’s final cut. As for the short comedies produced by the Keystone, Essanay and Mutual companies (1914-1917) which have been in public domain for half a century, an extremely time-consuming and painstaking process led to the identification, inspection and comparison of hundreds of different film materials from archives world-wide. Restoration work was mostly carried at Cineteca’s laboratory L’Immagine Ritrovata in collaboration with other individuals, entities and institutions such as Kevin Brownlow/Photoplay Productions, the British Film Institute, Lobster Films and The Criterion Collection.

Over the course of twenty years, Cineteca’s restorations of films like Modern Times, The Kid, and The Gold Rush have been made available world-wide for theatrical release, screenings with live orchestra and home video distribution.

The digitisation and cataloguing of the Chaplin archives has been the other main raison d'être of the Chaplin Project. Under the invaluable guidance of Kate Guyonvarch on behalf of the Chaplin family, and the valuable contribution of several scholars and historians, such as David Robinson and Lisa Stein Haven, the Chaplin Project created an on-line archive which currently allows access to close to 30,000 records (over 180,000 pages) ranging from the late 1800s to the 1990s. Over the last decade, this precious documentation has been consulted by students, documentary-makers, exhibit curators, historians and scholars alike and enormously contributed to expand the narrative and understanding of Chaplin’s art and life. Within this framework, the Chaplin Project continues its mission of disseminating the Chaplin archives through its own initiatives and publications and in partnership with other organisations world-wide.

The digitisation, cataloguing of the Chaplin archives was made possible thanks to the generous contribution of Bologna’s Fondazione Cassa di Risparmio.

Keepthinking uniquely combines a digital design agency with software development for Museums, Galleries, Archives, Libraries, Performing Art Venues and other cultural organisations. They offer standard compliant Content and Collection Management software as well as bespoke design, consultancy and development for any web or mobile application.

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