It's pretty much all there in my title. Looking at how inefficient and lame comedies are nowadays, how they struggle to force the slightest indulging smile from its viewers, it's completely mind-blowing to look back a hundred years ago, that's right a full century ago when film was reduced to the worst viewing quality, black and white, silent, and without any prospect of special effects or anything of that nature. Even things like makeup and setting were limited.
And along comes this guy Charles Chaplin, and he manages to be hilarious in those conditions. The scene when he's rolling in and out of his enclosure with the cops trying to trap him, the scene when he's knocked one of the two gangsters unconscious and as he's behind his seat uses his own hands to communicate with the other gangster facing him as if the guy were still awake... pure creative brilliance.
...and while always saying something, making a commentary about human nature - and despite depicting the utmost lowest condition for a man being a starving dirty tramp and everything, always a pure hearted gentleman, humane and subtle.
Surely. For a 1918 roughly forty minute short, it doesn't get much better than this.
And along comes this guy Charles Chaplin, and he manages to be hilarious in those conditions. The scene when he's rolling in and out of his enclosure with the cops trying to trap him, the scene when he's knocked one of the two gangsters unconscious and as he's behind his seat uses his own hands to communicate with the other gangster facing him as if the guy were still awake... pure creative brilliance.
...and while always saying something, making a commentary about human nature - and despite depicting the utmost lowest condition for a man being a starving dirty tramp and everything, always a pure hearted gentleman, humane and subtle.
Surely. For a 1918 roughly forty minute short, it doesn't get much better than this.