Charlie Chaplin and Buster Keaton were both comedic geniuses that rose to fame at an early age. Both known for their outstanding slapstick comedy films, it is still debated which of the two is the greater comedic genius of his time. While the two shared many similarities, their movie styles differed from one another quite a bit. Their acting, storylines, and on-screen personalities has their own vey distinct styles.
Despite some issues, The Gilded Age, or Industrial era, overall had a great impact on America. During this time, the economy saw a great increase, people were given new opportunities such as jobs, and the popularity of America increased globally. I really enjoyed watching "The Gilded Age", and found it very educational. I found the meaning of the name of the documentary interesting, the fact that America put off this image that they were perfect but behind the image were various issues. I guess you could say this proves to never judge a book by its cover.
Buster Keaton was an all-around filmmaker. I respect him for being able to execute all the different facets of film. He is mostly known for his comedic acting style during the silent era, but he was also a writer, director, and producer. I found it extremely impressive when he wrote, directed, acted in, and edited the movie, The General (1926). This movie is considered a great film today, but at the time the reviews were negative.
Many films of the silent movie era are melodramas, which was a term used back then purely as a descriptive word to describe a movie and not a ‘negative’ term the way we use the term today. Chaplin’s film is a melodrama that invokes the emotions of his audience. Some elements of melodrama are present in Chaplin’s film The Gold Rush, the characteristics of a melodrama aid in analysing how melodramatic a silent movie is. An element of melodrama is, a situation - an occurring conflict in the film created by the screenwriter to evoke an intense emotional response from the viewers.
Buster Keaton uses creative approaches using the body, landscape, and the face that qualifies The General as one of the greatest films in American history. As Cohen writes, “Keaton is a uniquely self-reflexive figure in silent film because he associates his character’s acquisition of physical mastery with the capabilities of his medium;
Nineteenth-century man with his horses, dogs, carts, slow motion. Then, in the twentieth century, speed up your camera. Books cut shorter. Condensations. Digests, Tabloids.”(52)
During the 1920s, American society began to adopt values that threatened the traditional values that remained from the 1800s. Many of these changes were a direct result of the youth culture of the time and how their uncertainty of who they were helped contribute to these changes in values. Throughout the decade, the struggle between modern and anti-modern values was exemplified in literature, drama and silent film of the American culture. “Sunrise: A Song of Two Humans” represents the conflicting modernist and anti-modernist sentiments of the time through its use of cinematography and characterization. “Sunrise: A Song of Two Humans”, the 1927 film by F.W. Murnau, is a shining example of the struggle between modern and anti-modern values that
Directed by Fritz Lang, the silent film Metropolis (1927) served and still continues to serve as an inspiration to many successful filmmakers and aspiring filmmakers alike. The techniques and editing skills used for this film pretty much lead to the development of the skills and techniques used today. Other notable people who helped make this film a success include Lang’s wife, Thea Von Harbou as the screenwriter and author of the book, Metropolis, Karl Freund and Günther Rittau as the cinematographers, Otto Hunte, Erich Kettlehunt and Karl Volbrecht for their remarkable set design, Gottfried Huppertz for the music, and Walter Schultze- Mittendorf as the sculptor. The major characters in this film include Alfred Abel as Joh Fredersen, Gustav
Between World War I and the Great Depression, the 1920’s were unique and special years in American history. The best way to represent that time would be by historian Frederick Lewis Allen providing the historical account of America in the 20’s in Only Yesterday and F. Scott Fitzgerald’s famed novel, The Great Gatsby. Both of them reflect America in the Twenties by showing lifestyles and behaviors of people who lived in that time. We can follow their beliefs, actions, and morality through the works. While Allen was seeking to capture a decade, F. Scott Fitzgerald did a good job by pointing to the main issues during that time.
Laborer’s Love (1922), a silent film made by Chinese cinema pioneers Zhang Shichuan and Zheng Zhengqiu, is said to be “the earliest complete extant Chinese film” (Zhang, 90). Despite the film’s numerous similarities to Harold Lloyd 's Never Weaken (1921), Zhang Zhen argues in her writing that Laborer’s Love was ultimately a product of the “nascent…urban culture” and “confluence of discourses and practices of shadow-play” in Shanghai during the 1910s-1920s (100). Zhang Yingjin reiterates this notion, highlighting that since it “was a transitional moment in Chinese films, the producers threw in pieces grabbed from various sources”, resulting in “a mixture of disparate, sometimes contradictory elements” within Laborer’s Love (25). This response
One of the most valuable aspects of personality is humor – we value one’s sense of humor and make friends often based on finding certain things funny. But how and why do we consider things to be funny at all? Human beings have strived to uncover fundamental truths about human nature for centuries – even millennia – but humor itself is still yet to be pinpointed. Henri Bergson is only one of many who has attempted this feat, and his essay Laughter: an essay on the meaning of the comic from 1911 breaks down comedy into what he believes to be its essential forms and origins. While Bergson makes many valid points, Charlie Chaplin’s film Modern Times that was brought to screens only twenty years later seems to contradict many of Bergson’s theories, while Bergson seems to contradict even himself over the course of his essay.
Every now and then the art world is struck by a wave of change that leaves a strong impression, which can last for a long time. Visual arts saw the rise of impressionism and cubism, surrealism and realism took literature to an opposite direction, and film has evolved over the years through cultural and artistic development such as expressionism, auteurism and film noir (House, p.61). The 1940s and post World War II gave rise to a new style of American film, these films appeared pessimistic and dark in mood, theme, and subject. The world created within these films were portrayed as corrupt, hopeless, lacked human sympathy, and “a world where women with a past and men with no future spent eternal nights in one-room walk-ups surrounded by the
This essay will discuss how the film uses these two techniques, in reference to the film, and to what ideological and political ends are the techniques used in the films with specific references from the film to support the argument. A Man with a Movie Camera is based around one man who travels around the city to capture various moments and everyday
Though in his autobiography Chaplin says that entertainment rather than social or political commentary was his primary motivation, a close analysis of his films clearly display a pattern of socio-political advocacy (Howe 46). In the “Modern Times” which was released in 1936, Chaplin used
SOUND IN THE SILENCE! Chaplin’s “Modern Times” Sir Charles Spencer Chaplin, better known as Charlie Chaplin was an English actor, director, scriptwriter, producer, composer and the great silent star, in the sound era. The speciality about Chaplin’s films is that whenever we watch it - no matter after how long you saw it the last time - it seems both endearingly familiar and inexhaustibly fresh, with a feeling of wanting to watch it again.
