Silent Film Comedy: From Slapstick to Sophistication

From their beginning in the late 1890s, silent films often focused on producing comedies. Mostly improvised and often rather silly, they required few if any subtitles to be understood by most audiences. Early films emphasized visual and physical humor such as sight gags and slapstick, but over time grew increasingly refined, employing special effects, title card word play, and sophisticated and visually inventive storytelling. In this course, we watch the following films: Mack Sennett's The Bangville Police (1913), Laurel and Hardy's Battle of the Century (1927), Harold Lloyd's Safety Last! (1923), Charlie Chaplin's The Circus (1928), Buster Keaton's Steamboat Bill, Jr. (1928), and Ernst Lubitsch's The Marriage Circle (1924), and discuss silent films’ increasing maturity.