Chaplin & Keaton

CHARLIE CHAPLIN
Bowler hat, thick eyebrows, tiny mustache, bamboo cane, tight-fitting jacket, oversized pants, oversized shoes

Easy Street (1917): The film is 22 minutes long. The plot: short, skinny bum gets hired as policeman, gets sent to restore law on Easy Street, matches wits with 8-foot-tall troublemaker. The jokes in Easy Street are side-splitting and arranged in the perfect order, and they continue to inspire me when thinking about physical comedy. The best joke involves the use of a lamppost light in hand-to-hand combat. No, seriously.

The Gold Rush (1925): Of all the genius he used for all his films, Chaplin poured 98% of it into this hour-and-a-half thrill ride of a movie. In 1890s Alaska, an endearingly clumsy prospector (Chaplin) drifts into uncharted Arctic territory and finds himself sharing an isolated cabin with an equally goofy gold-digger (Mack Swain) and a cutthroat fugitive (Tom Murray). A love interest (Georgia Hale) shows up for Chaplin later on.

No other work by Chaplin can better prove his talent. The Kid (1921), his feature-length debut, was weighed down too much with scentimentality, and forgot the humor. The short subjects he made before that were really really funny, but they lacked heart. Gold Rush blends comedy and emotion with enviable ease. The cabin material all has a well-deserved place in comedy history: Swain & Murray wrestling with the rifle (and Chaplin dodging the barrel), the shoelace dinner, the jumbo-chicken hallucination, the dancing pastries, and (in the finale) a snowstorm that places the cabin halfway off the edge of a cliff. This material is interwoven with the time Chaplin spends in a Klondike village, and the complicated friendship that develops between him and Hale ... whose character proves to be one of the most intriguing female roles in silent cinema, lovable and unbearable at the same time.

Chaplin was married to Hale during filming. Chaplin ended up married to most of his female co-stars throughout his career. And he had MANY female co-stars.

BUSTER KEATON
Porkpie hat, baggy emotionless eyes, persistent frown, dorky striped suit

Cops (1922): At a length of 17 minutes, Cops is nevertheless the definitive Keaton masterpiece. Picture a day where everything in your life goes wrong. What you just pictured probably pales in comparison to the events in Cops. And the worst part is that Keaton, playing a regular guy setting out to impress his girlfriend with some business skill, fails to notice the snowball effect of bad things happening .... that is until the ENTIRE LOS ANGELES POLICE DEPARTMENT starts chasing him for no good reason. The super-fast, super-loony chase scene is crammed with brilliance. The punchline that resolves the chase is a pure assault on the funny bone, followed by a last-minute twist of fate that is completely heartbreaking.

Keaton based Cops on the tragic final years lived by his close friend Fatty Arbuckle, a former comedy superstar. The shit that happened to Arbuckle is historical proof that the life of a celebrity should NOT be envied.

The General (1927): What can I say about General? Misunderstandings. Wheel rides. Cannonballs. Bear traps. Train wrecks.

General has no heart whatsoever, despite its insistence on mixing in heavy levels of drama and seriousness. The parts of this film you NEED to see are the jokes, because let me tell you something, there are only so many train jokes that can be done, and Keaton did all of them. All of them.

The setting for General is the American Civil War, with the Southern side portrayed as the victorious heroes. Even though the Union won! Also, when this film was first released, the Civil War was still a relatively recent event. So, not too surprisingly, audiences turned their noses, and within a few years Keaton found his career reduced to ashes.