No contest–Buster Keaton.
What do you think?
Is this thread about which one is less funny? If so, my vote is for Charlie Chaplin, can’t stand the little tramp.
My shameful confession- last night, we rented Chaplin’s “City Lights”, and I was so bored I ended up cruising and posting here on the SDMB. Yeah, the sad thing is, I could see the brilliance, but it couldn’t hold my attention. Anyway, it was my first non-talkie- I’ll try again.
Keaton. The first time I saw The General was with a live organist at the Paramount theater in Seattle. Brilliant.
I’m a big fan of both, but I’d have to give the edge to Keaton. * The General * is brilliant. I just got it on DVD and watched it again. I continue to be amazed at how good it is.
Harold Lloyd was also pretty damned funny.
Keaton gets my vote. Chaplin’s overrated.
Well, somebody’s got to stand up for Chaplin.
City Lights, The Gold Rush, and The Kid all made me cry when
I first saw them.
I couldn’t get into The General. I think I laughed at
exactly one thing.
Besides, Chaplin showed Keaton (and the world) how to do it.
Harold Lloyd is OK - the long football play at the end of
The Freshman is amazing.
Buster Keyton.
The General
The Railrodder
Keaton
Chaplin.
Nothing beats The Gold Rush. And Modern Times, though it doesn’t all hold together, has more than its share of great moments.
Well, I should say that I hardly EVER laugh at Keaton.
It’s fairer to say that I sorta sit there, my jaw hanging slack in amazement.
“He’s gonna…no, he’s not gonna…he COULDN’T…OH MY GOD, HE’S…no, wait…he did something I completely didn’t expect!”
I watched THE GENERAL with my ten-year-old for the first time a couple of weeks ago (THE NAVIGATOR has been one of her favorite movies since she was four), and she asked me how he was able to do all those things without special effects or computer-generated stuff.
“He just did it,” I told her. “That was HIM climbing all over those moving trains. The was HIM throwing the beam on top of the other beam to save his locomotive. That was HIM in front of that cannon. That locomotive falling into the river? That was a REAL LOCOMOTIVE.”
On the other hand, Chaplin makes me laugh. Usually at the little things, like smoking the millionaire’s cigar in CITY LIGHTS, then noticing his own cigar isn’t lighted.
For the scene in The General where the cannon shoots the cannonball into the cab of the locomotive, legend has it that Keaton counted the grains of gunpowder with tweezers.
Not only did Keaton do his own stunts, he sometimes stood in for other players, too. In one film, he stood in for an actor who outweighed him by maybe fifty pounds, but thanks to the briefness of the shot and a lot of padding under the uniform, the switcheroo is barely noticeable.
Some of the stunts he did were truly frightening. Can’t recall which movie it was in, but there was the movie in which he’s standing oblivious to the front of a three-story house falls toward him. Only the top-floor’s lone window (open) leaves him standing untouched. There were no tricks involved. If his measurements are off by a couple of inches or he flinches, he’s dead.
My favorite Chaplin movie was “The Great Dictator.” IIRC, that was the first movie in which he spoke. A hilarious film and, at the same time, a very bleak one.
I rarely laugh at Chaplin, but can’t help but laugh at Keaton. He doesn’t even have to be doing anything. That utterly hapless deadpan expression is enough.
That scene in which the train goes over the blown trestle? That was the single most expensive shot filmed up to that point, and I understand that it remained the most expensive shot for several more years.
They filmed the movie in Oregon, and built a whole working trestle just for that shot… then blew it up with a genuine vintage locomotive. They planned the shot to a heretofore unprecedented degree, because a retake, of course, was impossible.
Never cared for Chaplin. His early films were mostly “hit the cop with the brick and waddle away.” His later films were “sad little clown sniffs a rose.” Feh!
Keaton, on the other hand, is a scream. Other silent comics you may want to check out: Harold Lloyd, Mabel Normand and the great French comic Max Linder (who was also as cute as a bug’s ear—considerably cuter than most bugs’ ears, actually).
I dunno I appreciate both Buster Keaton and Charlie Chaplin. If I had to choose I would choose Keaton. The one thing both of them have in common is that both of them would massage a scene until it was perfect. That is probably one reason their films are still worth watching today, while a lot of current comedies aren’t worth watching a year after they leave the theatre. I think what is so appealing about Buster is the way he stoically accepts everything that happens to him, no matter how bizzare.
Keith
Yeah, Keaton’s definitely the more “modern” of the two…he must’ve confused the hell out of contemporary audiences in the 1920s. A few years later the French Existentialists were lovin’ him, though, and Samuel Beckett wrote his only screenplay — Film — as a vehicle for the elderly Keaton.
Speaking as somebody who never fails to cry at “A Christmas Carol,” though, and who wept copiously when Little Nell died, I cheerfully admit that I enjoy Chaplin’s sentimentality.
Excuse me, I’m gonna go watch The Kid now and sob into a box of Kleenex.
Anyone who likes silent comedy, rush out like a maniac (waving your arms over your head and screaming unintelligibly) and get the video “The Man in the Silk Hat.” It’s a Max Linder collection (with some biographical material) put together by his daughter, Maud Linder. Makes that “Cholly Chepman” look like a rank amateur.
Anyone up for a “Fatty and Mabel” film fest?
Didn’t Milt Gross use “Cholly Cheplin” as a euphemism for “crook?” A reflection on the loose morals of the Little Tramp? (I mean the character stealing stuff onscreen, not the auteur having sex with teenage girls offscreen.)
Or was it a pun that went over my head?
I think I saw it in the first or second chapter of *Nize Baby…
Keaton. Chaplin was just too sappy for my tastes.