Works featuring "comedy" (261)
And so I am a comedienne, though I, too, once wanted to do heroic and tragic things. Today my objection to playing comedy is that it is so often misunderstood by the audiences, both in the theater and in the picture houses. It is so often thought to be a lesser art and something which comes to one naturally, a haphazard talent like the amateur clowning of some cut-up who is so often thought to be ‘the life of the party’. In the eyes of so many persons comedy is not only the absence of studied effect and acting, but it is not considered an art.
--Dorothy Gish
Featured image for The Water Nymph

The Water Nymph

Seems like some footage may be missing because in the first scene Sennett gives Mabel a ring and a kiss, in the next scene he's crying with suitcase in hand, surrounded by his parents - but the reason is never revealed. In the next scene he tells Mabel to vamp the father - again, no reason given. Seems possible that this is a story of forbidden love, with the vamp used as blackmail. But this is never even hinted at - and Keystone did not build its comedic reputation on subtlety. So this ends up as mainly a showcase for Mabel's diving stunts, with help from Ford Sterling's tits-up-butt-out shtick.

Featured image for The Cameraman's Revenge

The Cameraman's Revenge

Not on the Disney Channel! Is there a performance in any Griffith film as engaging and entertaining as given here by dead bugs?

Featured image for A Grocery Clerk's Romance

A Grocery Clerk's Romance

A parody that's light on comedy, but turns a number of stock devices on their heads in just eight minutes. Unlike the numerous intemperance stories that purport to show “What Drink Did” to “Les Victimes De L'alcoolisme”, i.e. happy families torn into misery, this begins with the alcoholic slacker's family already unhappy, though still intact. In “L'Assommoir” the laundress is first abandoned when her husband runs off with another woman, then rescued by The Good Guy. Here it is The Good Guy, instead of a woman, that is splitting the laundress from her husband - and comically sabotaging a race-to-the-rescue along the way. While other intemperance tales end tragically, here the family's miserable life simply goes on as before - an ending less dramatic, more realistic.

Featured image for Rastus Among The Zulus

Rastus Among The Zulus

Surprise - no actors in blackface here! When Rastus falls asleep, racial violence lurks as a trio armed with sticks sneak up on him. Then Rastus does the Atlantic slave trade in rewind: he is forced on a ship and ends up in Africa. No surprise that he ends up in a cannibal stewpot (even though Zulus were the only Africans that Europeans explicitly declared to be not only not cannibals, but fiercely anti-cannibalism - despite causing the famines that led to cannibalism. But you didn't expect a Rastus - aka 'coon' - flick to be historically accurate, did you?). Rastus' abduction and forced labor on the route of the slave trade ends with him being beaten by a cop. Could there be a hidden message here?

Featured image for Max's Hat (Le chapeau de Max)

Max's Hat (Le chapeau de Max)

Max's hat is dogged by misfortune.