Film History

Silent Film Comedy andThe Gold Rush

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What Is Acting?

• An art in which an actor uses imagination, intelligence, psychology, memory, vocal technique, facial expressions, body language, and an overall knowledge of the filmmaking process to realize, under the director’s guidance, the character created by the screenwriter.

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Movie Actors – Four Main Types

• Personality actors – actors who take their personae from role to role

• Actors who deliberately play against our expectations of their personae

• Chameleon actors – actors who seem to be different in every role

• Nonprofessional actors, cast to bring verisimilitude to a part

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Early Screen-Acting Styles

• Adopted the acting style favored in the nineteenth-century theater

• Exaggerated facial expressions, strained gestures, bombastic mouthing of words

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The Camera and the Close-up

• Creates a greater naturalism and intimacy between actors and audience

• True close-ups isolate an actor, concentrating on the face

• Active (commenting or reminding us) or passive (revealing an actor’s beauty)

• Reveals both the process of thinking and the thoughts at its end

Mack Sennett

• Worked in vaudeville , had natural bent for comedy…slapstick comedy

• Started Keystone Pictures with two other Film Producers

Keystone Co. Films

• Run by Mack Sennett– Learned from Griffith– Assigned to direct comedies approx. 1907 Biograph

• Most of the major comedy stars and directors worked at one time for Sennett

• Purely visual gags• Relied on improvisation• Developed the early careers of Chaplin and Keaton

Buster Keaton

• Buster Keaton• The General (1926)• The Great Stone Face• Wrote, Directed his

own films

Scene from The General (1927)

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EEDMO8iwLsM

Chaplin Film Overview

Keystone 1913 $75- $150 week – Made over 35 two

reelers, about ten-15 mins

• Essanay 1915-1916 $75,000 a year– Made about ten films

Film Overview

• Mutual – 1916-1917 $670,000

• First National 1918– $1,000,000

1919 Created • United Artists to

distribute films • with Pickfield, Fairbanks,

and Griffith

Charles Spencer Chaplin

• Keystone: Relied on long shot, physical gags, mechanical motion

• Chaplin was highly structured. Gags defined his character.

• Tramp costume.

• Chaplin wanted to develop a style…a character. Used this character repeatedly.

• Used comedy to make a point

• Began to direct his own segments himself.

The Tramp

• Comedy to examine social issues

• Tramp represents the little fellow, outsider, underdog.

• Yearns for acceptability, love, money, respect.

• Physical types contrast to tramp: – Brutish men– Part of

mainstream society

Tramp

• Women– Metaphor for what is

good– See tramp’s redeeming

qualities

• Controversial Themes• Drug addiction• Alcoholism• Poverty• Hunger• Crime• Religious hypocrisy

Cinematic Style: Auteur Director

• Director, Star, Editor, Music, Producer

• Medium shot• Unobtrusive editing– Smoothed out the

devices used by Griffith• Contributions were

what he did on film rather than with film

Major Chaplin Pictures

• The Gold Rush (1925)• City Lights (1928)• Modern Times (1936)

The Gold Rush 1925

• Comedy and Pathos– Hunger -- Cannibalism (also dog and shoe)– Cruel rejection by Georgia– Ridicule: Tied to dog– Work ethic (works for dinner)– New Year’s Eve dinner

• Happiness of dream sequence contrasted to reality• Classic CU shot of sadness/loneliness with contrast of happy dance

hall scene

Gold Rush

• Circular structure of Film– Journey to Alaska– The Cabin– Dance Hall– New Year’s Eve– Dance Hall– Cabin– Journey Home (Epilogue)

The Gold Rush

•Chaplin’s Favorite Film

•Took over a year to make

•Cost $970,000

•Grossed over $6 Million