ET 3: CHARLIE AND BUSTER

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Adam Sandler, Seth Rogen, Ashton Kutcher and many other contemporary comedians of today owe a huge deal to silent era comedians before them and in my opinion, the greatest two are Charlie Chaplin and Buster Keaton. Despite originating from the same time period, they both have very differing styles of presenting comedy. I am going to reference both artistes based on the movies that I watched in my Film 101 which are “The Cure” starring Chaplin and “The General” starring Keaton.

To start off, Chaplin had a toothbrush styled mustache, carried a cane, wore baggy pants, a tight suit, clown shoes and off course, his signature bowler hat! Keaton on the other hand used a pork pie hat but apart from that, dressed rather normally. Charlie Chaplin sort of limped when he walked and it evokes laughter because he looks like a duck waddling whereas Keaton sorts of walks and runs clumsily, giving me a feeling that he looks unstable and could fall down anytime.

Both characters are alike in the sense that they both are part of farce comedies where their characters receive violent physical misfortunes, thus being comical to audiences because we are grateful to not be in the same sorry situation as either Chaplin or Keaton! On the other hand, both characters are different as Chaplin made use of many facial expressions that made audiences laugh whereas Keaton always had a blank look on his face immaterial of any situation he was facing which also amuses the audiences because his expressions never changed!

Both Chaplin and Keaton have different ways to deal with problems that arise in their movies. For example, in “The Cure”, Chaplin’s character had a clash with a fat and arrogant aristocrat suffering from gout. He often escapes from trouble by being lucky most of the time. This can be seen in the scene where Chaplin tries to rescue his ladylove from the bad guy and when the aristocrat tries to catch Chaplin to hit him, Chaplin just happens to magically slide away from his grasps. Thus, it can be said that Chaplin was a rather slippery fellow and no wonder he’s known as the Trickster! Keaton on the other hand faces his problems in a different manner. In “The General”, when his ladylove was captured by the Union soldiers, Keaton risked his life by sneaking into the Union’s headquarters to rescue her. He uses his heroism and skills to fight his enemies rather than just being lucky like Chaplin.

In my opinion, I prefer Charlie Chaplin over Buster Keaton because of his perfect timing in his comedy sequences which never fails to gain my attention. The rotating door scene at the spa in “The Cure” was priceless! Also, his body language and attributes are rather unique as opposed to Keaton. In addition, the pace of Chaplin’s movies is rather fast compared to Keaton’s as the former often acted in short films. However, Keaton should also be applauded because of his contribution as one of the pioneers of slapstick comedy and also his bravery of performing his own dare-devil acrobatic stunts in his movies.

All in all, the movie industry today has indeed suffered a great loss as there will never be another great comedian that could match the talents of neither Charlie Chaplin nor Buster Keaton!