Seven Years Bad Luck, 1921, the great Max Linder's best American comedy, Outer Galaxy Lounge version

This film is in the public domain. Some interesting things about the ordeal I went through just to get this posted. But first, a little about Max Linder and this film. Max Linder was really the first Charlie Chaplin, making Chaplin-style film comedies in France while Charlie was still a stage guy in London. Charlie no doubt absorbed the style of Max to some extent for his own comic stylings and persona. The most famous scene in this film is the mirror reflection scene, which became more famous a decade later in the Marx Bros.' "Duck Soup," and which Lucille Ball so nicely replicated in the Fifties on "I Love Lucy." But this film with Max is where that routine came from.

Now, about my ordeal. I had to do a complete soundtrack overhaul and judicious cutting on a segment near the end, to get this to pass the bogus copyright vultures. I had to strip away the soundtrack because the score going around on these prints is a more recent one, and I've replaced it with a selection of public domain, player piano roll tracks. Several of these still got copyright claimed, wrongly, and I kept editing down the tracks until I could get the film to pass through Youtube's bots copyright free. An even more bogus copyright claim was made of the dream sequence that Max has while in jail near the end of the film. A French TV company copyright claimed this video because they used that segment from this **public domain** movie in their TV documentary about the film!!!!! What BS! They claim to own the film because their show has a clip of the film in it! Seriously? That ain't how public domain works, fools. So, I edited down that sequence and shortened it to its essential components, shaving off about 50 seconds from the film. The comic idea and each shot is still there, just shorter. Sorry, but I had to do it to make this pass because public domain is just that, and some company is not going to pull this crap on me. There are too many bogus copyright claims on things that are public property, owned by everyone and owned by no one. Get it?

I work hard to get you guys the goods. Enjoy.

Creative Commons
This work has been identified as being free of known restrictions under copyright law, including all related and neighboring rights.
You can copy, modify, distribute and perform the work, even for commercial purposes, all without asking permission.