Director: Charley Bowers 

Screenplay: Charley Bowers

Minutes: 274 

Year: 1917-1940 

Score: Various 

Release: Flicker Alley

What a difference a little charm makes. Charley’s Bowers was a very clever filmmaker who doesn’t quite succeed when and where his contemporaries did. This edition is a welcome addition to Flicker Alleys ongoing mission of collecting classic silent shorts, but it pales when compared to their others.

From FlickerAlley.com: 

What for some audiences may be a delightful introduction, and others a fresh re-discovery, The Extraordinary World of Charley Bowers offers a rare portal into the imagination of one of the great innovators and creators of early cinema. Featuring new 2K transfers and new discoveries never been seen before, Flicker Alley, in association with Lobster Films and Blackhawk Films®, invite you to experience the genius of cartoonist, animator, director, and comedian Charley Bowers.

Beginning as an animator in 1915, Bowers soon turned to mixing live-action with puppet animation, producing a score of mini-masterpieces, often featuring himself (billed in France as Bricolo). Forgotten for decades, a few of these films were miraculously rediscovered in the late 1960s by archivist Raymond Borde of the Toulouse Cinémathèque in France. Over the past ten years, thanks to additional materials from the Library of Congress, Národní filmový archiv, EYE Film Institute, Cinémathèque française, MoMA, and many other archives and collectors throughout the world, the legacy of Charley Bowers has been brought back to life using the most recent restoration technologies. Lobster Films scanned the best available sources with their original intertitles, and performed an extensive digital restoration of each short. Featuring recent additions to the previous 2015 release, The Extraordinary World of Charley Bowers includes new scores from Donald Sosin and Neil Brand. This is a gift for comedy lovers and animation enthusiasts of all ages!

Produced over the course of more than two decades, this collection of short comedies, presented with optional French and English subtitles, include:

The Extra Quick Lunch (1917, 6 mins); A.W.O.L. (1918, 5 mins); Egged On (1926, 23 mins); He Done His Best (1926, 23 mins); Fatal Footsteps (1926, 23 mins); Now You Tell One (1926, 21 mins); A Wild Roomer (1926, 25 mins); Many a Slip (1927, 22 mins); Nothing Doing (1927, 22 mins); There It Is (1928, 22 mins); Say Ah-h! (1928, 14 mins); Whoozit (1928, 11 mins); It’s a Bird (1930, 15 mins); Believe It or Don’t (1935, 8 mins); A Sleepless Night (1940, 11 mins); Wild Oysters (1940, 10 mins); and Oil Can and Does (1940, 15 mins)

Based on the new collection from Flicker Alley, Bowers clear ingenuity is in animation and gadgetry, but his connection with co-stars feels a bit disingenuous. He shines when filming something without any other people involved. Take <i>He Done His Best</i>, a short comedy in which Bowers is able to pull out some lite Keaton, or Chaplin, level slapstick but when he assembles a stop motion automated food preparation machine, the creativity is next level. This is probably why I hadn’t heard of him before this set arrived at my house. 

The number of slapstick comedians who have enjoyed the mythical staying power of a Chaplin are very few and far between. Especially when you consider that Keaton barely had enough money to live on in his later years then it should not be too surprising to someone with a fair amount of knowledge of the golden age of Hollywood can be easily enamored with a new old talent. Sadly, Bowers’s career was cut short, first by arthritis, then my a life-ending illness. 

It is the work of preservation houses like Lobster Films, Blackhawk Films, and Flicker Alley that we are blessed to be able to remember the craftspeople of that bygone and magical era that we often choose to remember for their accomplishments (and not so much that tawdry extracurricular affairs, this is not to say Bowers was a philanderer, but it should not come as a surprise). Whether you keep these films on a constant rotation or keep them as an occasional treat they are worth editions to my collection as, should you find yourself reading this, they will likely scratch the same itch for you. 

Special Features:

• Looking for Charley Bowers – A short documentary by Christophe Coutens on the resurrection of Charley Bowers’ career in France (15 minutes).
• Image Gallery – Slideshow presentation featuring rare production stills and behind-the-scenes photographs.
• Souvenir Booklet – Featuring an essay written by film historian and author Sean Axmaker.