Celebrating the film restoration work of the Museum of Modern Art, the JBFC is proud to present two of their restorations, Charlie Chaplin’s The Adventurer and Ernst Lubitsch’s Lady Windermere’s Fan. The screenings will be preceded by an introduction from a MoMA film curator, and both films will be accompanied by live music from Makia Matsumura.

Lady Windermere’s Fan. 1925. 120 m. dir. Ernst Lubitsch. Rated NR.
Upon returning to London, the dazzlingly indiscreet Mrs. Erlynne (Irene Rich) becomes entangled in the affairs of the Windermere house, already being meddled with by charming Lord Darlington (Ronald Colman). Ernst Lubitsch’s pitch-perfect Oscar Wilde adaptation revels in the expressivity of the human face and the suggestive, telling detail revealed through witty editing. Largely shot on imposing sets or backlot streets, the film’s notable location sequence takes place at Toronto’s Woodbine Racetrack.

The Adventurer. 1917. 24 m. dir. Charlie Chaplin. Rated NR.
One truism of film restoration is that the best-loved titles are almost always in the worst shape. Negatives wear out from overuse, old prints are duped to create new ones, and image (and sound) quality are lost with every new analog generation. That’s long been the case with Charles Chaplin’s Mutual shorts, a series of 12 two-reel comedies that Chaplin made in 1916 and 1917. Considered by many to be Chaplin’s funniest, most formally accomplished work, the Mutual shorts have nearly been loved to death after over a century in constant circulation.
MoMA’s new restoration of The Adventurer, the final and, for many, finest of the Mutuals, 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 has been fitted with remade intertitles that match samples from original prints of other Mutual films.