Robert Youngson's affectionate, nostalgic retrospective of the Golden Age of Silent Comedy with special attention to the three acknowledged comic geniuses of the period: Charlie Chaplin, Buster Keatonm and Harry Landon. The two major comedy studios of the era, Mack Sennett and Hal Roach, especially Laurel an Hardy, are given credit as the great innovators of slapstick visual comedy.... (Full plot summary below)
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Robert Youngson's affectionate, nostalgic retrospective of the Golden Age of Silent Comedy with special attention to the three acknowledged comic geniuses of the period: Charlie Chaplin, Buster Keatonm and Harry Landon. The two major comedy studios of the era, Mack Sennett and Hal Roach, especially Laurel an Hardy, are given credit as the great innovators of slapstick visual comedy.
Leave your thoughts about When Comedy Was King.
| Ozus' World Movie ReviewsDennis SchwartzHomage documentary on the noteworthy silent era comics. |
| The SpectatorIsabel QuiglyYet another of these hundred-years-hence social historian's documents, with almost as much fun for the Freudians as the nuns have to offer. |
| New York TimesWalter GoodmanHow can you go wrong with Charles Chaplin, Buster Keaton, Fatty Arbuckle, Laurel and Hardy, Ben Turpin, the Keystone Kops and other favorites of the silents? |
| User ReviewTom AThough it's simply a compilation of short silent comedy bits from the 1910s and 1920s -- it is enormous fun. As DVD has given silent cinema short shrift, these are very welcome to see, as they are not available anywhere else. Compiled by historian Robert Youngson, there are great films with Charlie Chaplin, Buster Keaton (being chased by an entire police department), Snub Pollard (as a wacky inventor in a house that Tim Burton ripped off of for Pee Wee's Big Adventure), Gloria Swanson tied up on a train track by Wallace Beery, The Keystone Kops (mass destruction of property), Fatty Arbuckle (who is great!) and Laurel & Hardy (destroying a house a la Norman McLaren's Neighbours), among others. A voice over gives a running commentary about the thin plots (the intertitles have been removed) which, though really hokey at times, also gives a lot of historical context. Very rare, and lots of fun. |
