Keaton’s awareness of the qualities of film as a distinctive medium and ofits comic possibilities matured considerably, finding its fullest expression inthe feature-length comedies

The complex politics of gendered identity were given considerable atten-tion in silent film comedy, with comedians as diverse as Chaplin, HarryLangdon, Buster Keaton and Stan Laurel all continuing a music hall traditionof cross-dressing, a tradition that has continued via Some Like it Hot (1960)into contemporary comedies such as Mrs Doubtfire (1993) and Big Momma’sHouse (2000) (see Chapter 8). Even rotund Oliver Hardy dressed like a younggirl and posed in a bathing suit in a parody of Sennett’s Bathing Beauties.The mutabilities of gender identity and challenges to concepts of masculineauthority became pronounced in the 1920s, not least in the work of Laurel andHardy, whose films ‘present a series of experiments with different identitiesand roles, which are assumed by putting on and taking off the dress appro-priate for each masquerade’ (Sanders 1995: 2). Although Chaplin was less proneto abandon the tramp costume as his success grew, many of his films inter-rogate relations between the genders, though increasingly through the pathosthat finds full expression in City Lights (1931).Chaplin’s silent comedies were concerned with social issues and subtleclass divisions that impact on his characters. More than love, romance andthe possibilities of domestic bliss, his comedies foreground the importance ofemployment and economic survival in what is often portrayed as an affluentyet uncaring society. As Joan Mellen observes, ‘social inequality is the premiseof all the tramp films, with the tramp on the wrong side of the class divide’(2006: 10). These central themes are increasingly evident in the comediesproduced for Mutual in 1916 and 1917, including The Floorwalker, The Rink,The Pawnshop, The Immigrant and Easy Street, which represent the epitome ofthe short-form slapstick comedian comedies.In The Rink (1916), Chaplin’s impressive roller-skating skills are givenconsiderable prominence in the slapstick antics in the second half of the film,though the ending disappoints, as Charlie escapes his pursuers by hooking hiscane on to a passing car. The earlier scenes in the restaurant where Charlieworks as a waiter offer much clearer evidence of visual gags that are motivatedby the film’s context. One such gag centres on the arrival of Mrs Stout, a verylarge woman (actually played by the male actor Henry Bergman), clearly toolarge to fit into the restaurant chair; Chaplin breaks off first one then theother of the arms of the chair before helping her to sit at the table. In formalterms, the film makes use of the long takes that had come to characteriseMUP_Mundy_White.indd 34 02/11/2012 14:12This content downloaded from128.119.201.53 on Fri, 03 Jan 2025 20:22:34 UTCAll use subject to https://about.jstor.org/terms

a tendency to regard generic systems as synchronic and static rather thandiachronic, subject to change and evolution, means that we often judge silentcinema through inappropriate criteria, often ‘reading back’ from contemporarynotions of the comic in ways that do little justice to comedy forms, aestheticsand sensibilities that differ radically from our own, but which were popularin their own time. Add to this the alien, truncated experience of watchingfilms with no spoken dialogue (often on a small screen), our unfamiliarity withhaving to read sometimes quite lengthy title cards and the fact that we areless adept at lip-reading than silent cinema audiences were, and it is easy tounderstand why even the greatest films from the silent comedy era can seemremote from what contemporary audiences expect from film comedy.The history and evolution of silent film comedy from the mid-1890s to thecoming of commercially viable synchronised sound cinema in the late 1920smirrors changes within cinema itself during that period, changes which wereevident not just in film production and aesthetics but in audience receptionand consumption of films. From being a novelty whose lasting impact wasstill a matter of speculation, to becoming a medium of industrialised massconsumption, silent comedy no less than silent cinema as a whole under-went rapid transformation. This process was far from ordered and coherent,as competing companies attempted to discover comedians and comic modesthat generated box-office success. However, it is possible to outline certainbroad trends in the development of silent film comedy, trends that reflectchanges in the development of the film industry and its relationship withaudience taste and expectations, as well as broader historical and culturalchanges. While recognising the diversity that characterised developments insilent film comedy, Peter Krämer (1988: 100–1) identifies six distinct phases inthe development of American silent film comedy:1 early ‘trick’ comedies that played with technical possibilities such asstop-motion and superimposition, but which were obsolete by 19082 ‘slapstick’ comedies and parodies of emerging contemporary cinematicgenres produced by companies such as Keystone from 1912 onwards3 social and situation comedies starring featured players such as JohnBunny and Sidney Drew which, from 1912 onwards privileged charac-terisation rather than frenetic comic action4 slapstick ‘comedian comedies’ such as Chaplin’s early films at Keystone in1914 and at Essanay in 1915 which emphasised the character and perfor-mance of the star, but still involved a high degree of physical action andknockabout5 so-called classical ‘comedian comedies’ such as those starring BusterKeaton, Harold Lloyd and Chaplin’s later films which paid much greaterattention to integrating comic performance and persona into morestructured dramatic pattern

Although the work ofCharlie Chaplin, Buster Keaton, Harold Lloyd and other silent film comedianshas been made more accessible through DVD, for most people silent comedieshave become unfashionable and incomprehensible artefacts from a distan