Chaplin tinkered with several of his films long after they were released, but the most egregious example by far is The Gold Rush. Originally released as a silent in 1925, Chaplin revamped it in 1942 with a synchronized sound and music track. This is a bad enough idea in the abstract; what made it worse was Chaplin’s decision to provide the entire voice track himself: he spoke dialogue for the characters and replaced the intertitles with narrative exposition (all, of course, in his trademark fake-posh, rather mincing accent). Watching this hybrid version is maddening; I can’t get through five minutes of it before shutting it off. Even worse, Chaplin altered the ending – the original version ended with a somewhat ambiguous and tongue-in-cheek note, whereas the new one ends full-on, sentimental happy. (Chaplin even says “And so it was – a happy ending.”)
Thankfully, the DVD reissue includes the original silent version as a bonus feature. I wonder how many other DVDs there are that have been purchased solely to have a superior “bonus” version of an established film.
Chaplin also added a new theme song to The Circus (sung by himself – in his eighties) and altered the projection speed of the three shorts in The Chaplin Revue, which now look like crap. (Hopefully the DVD issue fixes this; I don’t have it.) All told, Chaplin may have been an even worse caretaker of his legacy than George Lucas.
I’ll agree with the Elizabeth George suggestion. Havers and Nkata are great characters, but her past couple of books seemed to focus almost solely on Lynley (a cut-rate Peter Wimsey) and his annoying, indecisive, useless wife (sadly far from Harriet Vane).
You must be thinking of Deborah–the photographer, who all reasonable people want to maim, slowly.
Helen is a cool character–she has hinted at depths, like when she shows up on Haver’s doorstep and helps out with Haver’s mother. I like Lynley. I like 'em all, except Deborah. I could write a 1000 pages on how she bugs me. I don’t see Lynley as Wimsey at all–I have never been fond of Lord Peter (and I like Golden Age mysteries).
Robert M Pirsig - author of the brilliant work Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance (which has permanent shelf space and it’s own silk cushion in my home,) then went on to write Lila- An Equiry into Morals
The saddest bit was when He meets Robert Redford who says “don’t go see the movie I made of your first book, you won’t like it.” So he goes to see the movie, and doesn’t like it. and the other bit where he complains about how fans stop liking you when you don’t live up to their expectations in grim detail.
As an Inquiry into morals, it came across as a long winded whine about how his life sucks.
He not only pissed on his own work which none of us really understand anyway he pissed on the readers who bought Lila, hoping it would be in the same league.
