Charlie Chaplin

Media: Lecture
Title: The Fool in the Frame: Film Comedy and 20th Century America

Professor Bean is teaching this 5 session course and she began this week with a quick history of the beginning of film and then focused on its first big star Charlie Chaplin. I’ve done a good deal of my own reading on the subject but this class is helping cement my understanding of early film. A few facts I enjoyed:
The first exhibition of film for an audience was in France 1895. (Edison had motion picture machines first but they were one person arcades.)
The first fictionalized film was slap stick comedy (most early documented real events like a train arriving). Its subject, a kid tricking a man to look into a hose and getting a face filled with water.
Chaplin entered film via Max Sennett at Keystone studios, the gold standard of early film comedy, just as film was about to explode in popularity. Chaplin rode atop that explosion for a good 15 years becoming the first international film star, and the richest. There is no real comparison for his fame until Mickey Mouse.
Chaplin started with Sennett 1914-15, worked with Mutual 1916-17, worked with First National 1918, and started United Artists in 1919 which he was involved with until his death.

I'm anxious to get to the next class, I wish I didn't have to wait two weeks.