American slapstick silent comedy

Without dialogue, laughter has to be carried by the body and by space: a locomotive at full speed, a man hanging from the hand of a clock, a tramp eating his shoe as if it were a feast. Between 1912 and 1929 the American studios turned out these short films in series, often improvised around a set and a prop, with stunts performed without doubles. Chaplin added the melancholy of the poor, Keaton the impassivity of a man who is never surprised, Lloyd the vertigo of the skyscraper.

works 5

• CinemaTillie's Punctured RomanceMack Sennett · 1914A comic feature film in six reels, it brings together Marie Dressler, a Broadway star, and Charlie Chaplin, who had joined Keystone a few months earlier.Cinema
• CinemaSafety Last!Fred C. Newmeyer and Sam Taylor · 1923A silent comedy, it sets a young man from the provinces against the commerce and the publicity stunts of the big city.Cinema
• CinemaThe Gold RushCharlie Chaplin · 1925The famine in the story is modelled on a real event: the emigrants of the Donner party, trapped by snow in California, ended up eating their moccasins.Cinema
• CinemaThe GeneralBuster Keaton · 1926The film retells a real episode of the Civil War, the theft of a locomotive in Georgia by Union soldiers, and was shot on location, in Oregon.Cinema
• CinemaThe Strong ManFrank Capra · 1926A silent comedy conceived for Harry Langdon, it takes a naive Belgian soldier from the trenches to Prohibition America.Cinema