The Tramp has to be the most imperishable character in the history of physical comedy. Buster Keaton, his stoic and graceful attitude toward the beleaguered lives of his characters, his immense poise in the midst of disaster, the well-thought-out stunts and set designs—his might have been a greater talent. And…
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The Circus (1928)
Charlie Chaplin, the director of his mid-career film The Circus, was a libertine and a rake. A diminutive ladies’ man, he was having multiple affairs as the film was in production, going through a divorce settlement with his underage wife, and facing back taxes totaling six or seven figures. He…
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The Gold Rush (1925)
In the wintry world of the Klondike, located in the Yukon territory of northwestern Canada, an influx of prospectors searching for gold brought timeless fame to what was to become the mecca of many pioneers: The Klondike Gold Rush. Competing for immeasurable riches, pioneers and prospectors alike embodied the dueling…
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The Kid (1921)
The Kid is an unerring film of the Chaplin oeuvre from 1921, when the freshness of his appeal was still to meet its apex in masterworks such as City Lights, and his genius as a silent comedian of the cinema, as capable of evoking pathos as hearty laughter, had yet…
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Modern Times (1936)
Joe Franklin writes in Classics of the Silent Screen that “along with Griffith, Stroheim, Keaton and Fairbanks, Chaplin remains one of the half-dozen immortals of the American screen,” delimiting a pantheon that has since grown while retaining its primary figures, of whom Chaplin is one of the greatest.[1] By 1936…
