Buster or Charlie?

So I'm taking this class called the History of Motion Picture. It's really fascinating. These past few weeks we've started with the first 45 second film clips they used to show in old kinetoscope parlors and are somewhere in the 1920s. We've lecture on Tuesdays and Thursdays and each Wednesday we have film screenings. It's the screenings that I'm really enjoying because I'm getting to see all these films I've always heard about and aren't quite as easily rented as, oh say, Titanic. You know how you've always heard the story about how the first film audience freaked out when they saw a strip about a train coming toward the camera because they thought the train would run them over? We saw that clip. We've also seen The Great Train Robbery and Nosfertu, the earliest vampire movie. Coming up in the next few weeks we have a Marx Brothers film, Citizen Kane, Singing in the Rain, and several others.

Today I want to talk about comedians.

Have you ever seen a Charlie Chaplin film? I hadn't until we watched The Immigrant few weeks ago. It was ok, but I left feeling that something was wrong with me because everyone adores Chaplin, right? Well apparently, as was told us today by our professor, some people are Chaplin fans and others are Buster Keaton fans. I'd never known who Keaton was until last night when we watched a video called Sherlock Jr. but I'm definitely a Buster Keatonite. He's absolutely hilarious! He's much more physical with his comedy than situational and, as Dr. K. pointed out wasn't quite the victorian sentimentalist that Chaplain was. Sadly enough, Keaton's comedy didn't translate well after the silent era ended and his career came to a close in the late twenties while Chaplain made movies well into the 50's until he was expelled from the country by the UnAmerican Activities Council. Anyway, as many of you might not have heard of Keaton before, I though you might enjoy watching a clip from Sherlock Jr.