Before watching the movie:

It seems strange that works entering the public domain is now an annual thing, as it’s been frozen for most of the part of my life I was aware of such matters. Is this really the sixth year of welcoming new works into common ownership? It seems like only the third, but I distinctly remember being inspired to cover Safety Last! because its copyright was expiring and that was indeed 2019. I’m going to be exploring the Public Domain Class of 2024 this month. Not every movie will itself be owned by the commons, but there will be a connection in every case.

I remember enjoying Modern Times, The Great Dictator, and to a lesser extent, City Lights (which I remember more as good cinema than good comedy), but I’m not sure I’ve ever really considered Charlie Chaplin a favorite, aside from the speech at the end of “Dictator”. As he’s one of the early film personalities that were bigger than their films, all of his works seem to blur together for me, and I’m not as motivated to see a Chaplin film as some others, so I didn’t even know this existed before it came up as among the most celebrated works whose copyright expires this year. I don’t even know what to expect other than “probably Tramp antics.”

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