Word: chaplinitis
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Dates: during 1990-1999
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Keaton is usually enshrined with Charles Chaplin and Harold Lloyd in silent comedy's holy trinity. In fact, his true film siblings are the old adventure stars Douglas Fairbanks and William S. Hart. Like Fairbanks, Keaton performed gorgeous, reckless stunts; his films were thrillers culminating in wild cyclones (Steamboat Bill, Jr.) and boat disasters (The Navigator). Like Hart, Keaton was the American loner: a dour, improbably heroic figure beneath a hostile...
...London music halls, giving innocent performances of suggestive songs: I Don't Suppose He'll Do It Again for Months and Months and Months; Don't Stick It Out So Much. Under the tutelage of Dan Leno, London's most beloved comedian and a precursor of Charlie Chaplin, Lizzie became a star and eventually married the newly rich John Cree. In Ackroyd's opening chapter, she is shown being hanged for murdering her husband...
...Parker Brothers: Bruno (Freddie Davies) and Thomas (George Carl), father and uncle respectively to the deranged comic genius Jack, who seems to have recovered nicely from his surreal trip to the seashore. These three alone could carry the film with their physical comedy routines, evoking the genius of Chaplin and the Marx Brothers. Evans' facial manipulations make Jim Carey look like a looselipped amateur...
...American terms he's a little Clint Eastwood (actor-director), a dash of Gene Kelly (imaginative choreographer), a bit of Jim Carrey (rubbery ham) and a lot of the silent-movie clowns: Charlie Chaplin, Buster Keaton and Harold Lloyd. Says Chan fan Sylvester Stallone: "Jackie has elongated a genre that had grown pretty stale. He's infused films with humor and character-driven story while giving audiences these extraordinary stunts that are unparalleled anywhere in the world...
...there was slapstick, which was good then, but seems dated now. And Sennett begat Buster Keaton, who did physical comedy better than anyone ever did, with the exception of Harold Lloyd, and whose works are still fine (see "The General," "The Navigator" and "700 Brides"). And Sennett also begat Chaplin, who learned from him but went well beyond to become the finest comic artist ever, the Little Tramp who mixed laughter and tears. And Chaplin created "City Lights" and "The Gold Rush" and "The Great Dictator" and "Modern Times" and they were very good indeed, taking silent film...