The Star Boarder (1914)

The Star Boarder is one of the rarest of the Chaplin Keystones. It is still quite incomplete and lacks intertitles due to there being no reliable source for these. Picture quality is quite good however. We worked from three elements for the restoration.

The BFI held a nitrate negative of the early thirties by a company called Cavendish and a tinted nitrate print made from it. This reissue contained many spurious intertitles, some of which may, nevertheless, have had a slight relation to the original wording. As this could not be proven they were not included into the restored print.

The print from the Netherlands Filmmuseum had Dutch intertitles. There were only three and the wording was brief and simple, much more in the style of original Keystone titles. Although the print had good image quality, it was extremely damaged and required a huge amount of repair to the perforations. Some scenes were incorporated into the finished print - including very rarely an instance where we cut between sources mid shot.

From The Library of Congress we also borrowed a compilation film, a two-reeler which tries ingeniously to make clips from many of Chaplin's Keystone films support an invented narrative. The film is on 1916 stock and contained additional footage of the ending of Star Boarder

Print Sources

• Nitrate dupe negative (BFI National Archive)
• Tinted and B/W print (compilation film) (Library of Congress)
• Nitrate print (Nederlands Filmmuseum)

Original length 1020 feet (311 m) / Restored print 734ft and 01 frame

Released 04/04/14