Ida Z's Film Class Notes: Slapstick Comedies and Westerns

Slapstick Comedies and Westerns

Griffith
1)managed to keep considerable control over his productions,
2)despite the growing supervision of the studio producers.
3)Other directors who began working in this era also became powerful creative figures.
4)In 1914, Maurice Tourneur emigrated from France and became known as a distinctive
filmmaker with a strong sense of pictorial beauty.
5)One of his first American films, The Wishing Ring (1914), was subtitled “An Idyll of Old
England.”
6)It is a fanciful story of a poor girl who naively believes that a ring a gypsy has given her is
magical.
7)She tries to use it to reconcile a local earl and his estranged son.
8)Tourneur created a remarkable atmosphere of a rustic English village,
even though the entire film was made in New Jersey.

Tourneur
1)was one of the many filmmakers testing the expressive possibilities of the film medium
during this era.
2)In 1918, he experimented with using modernist theatrical set design in The Blue Bird and
Prunella, though these were less popular than most of his films of the 1910s.
3)He also made some highly intelligent adaptations, including Victory (1919, from Joseph
Conrad’s novel) and The Last of the Mohicans (1920, co-directed with Clarence Brown).
4) The latter, often considered his finest film, fully displays Tourneur’s visual style, including
his characteristic use of foreground shapes silhouetted against a landscape,
often framed in a cave or doorway.
5)During the 1920s, Tourneur increasingly had trouble retaining control over his productions
as the studio system grew, and he returned to Europe in 1926.
6)Here, Tourneur uses a tent opening to create a dynamic composition for a dramatic moment
in The Last of the Mohicans.

The Last of the Mohicans (Maurice Tourneur & Clarence Brown 1920)
Entire Film Click Here

Intertitle:
Magua-seeking hospitality in the camp of the peaceful Delawares

Intertitle:

"When the sun goes down I will be on your trail!"

Slapstick Comedies

1)Some of the most popular directors and stars of this era specialized in slapstick
comedy.
2)Once feature films were standardized, they were typically shown on a program that included
shorts, such as comedies, newsreels, and cartoons.
3)Among the most successful comedy shorts were the films of producer-director Mack
Sennett. He headed the Keystone company, which used a great deal of fast action, including
chases with the bumbling “Keystone Kops.”
4)His stable of comic stars, who often directed their own pictures, included Charlie Chaplin,
Ben Turpin, and Mabel Normand.

Chaplin,
1)an English music-hall performer, became an international star with Keystone,
2)going on to direct his own films at Essanay, Mutual, and First National over the course of
the 1910s.
3)Chaplin’s style was notable for his imaginative use of objects, as in The Pawnshop (1916),
where he gauges the value of a clock by listening to its ticking with a stethoscope.
4)His dexterity led to many elaborately choreographed fights, chases, and mix-ups, such as the
breakneck shenanigans on roller skates in The Rink (1916).
5)In a few of his films, such as The Vagabond (1916) and The Immigrant (1917),
6)Chaplin also introduced an element of pathos rare in slapstick films.
7)Chaplin’s “Little Tramp,” with his bowler, cane, and oversized shoes, was soon one of the
most widely recognized figures in the world.

The Immigrant (Charlie Chaplin, 1917)

"Mother lost her money"

"You Pickpocket!"

"Miss, Come Here"

The arrival in the land of liberty

Later, Hungry and Broke...outside restaurant

Beans!

What's the trouble Waiter?

"He was ten cents short"

"Coffee for the lady"

The Western
1)also continued to be popular during the 1910s.
2)William S. Hart, one of its most prominent stars, had been a stage actor and did not enter
films until he was nearly fifty.
3)His age, plus his lean face, allowed him to play weather-beaten, world-weary roles.
4)His characters were often criminals or men with shady pasts; the plots frequently involved
his redemption by love.
5)As a result, Hart’s persona became known as the “good bad man,” an approach taken up by
many subsequent Western stars.
6)His worn clothing and other realistic touches gave Hart’s Westerns a sense of historical
authenticity, despite their often conventional plots.
7)The protagonist of Hell’s Hinges (1916, William S. Hart and Charles Swickard) epitomizes
Hart’s “good-badman” character, as he reads the Bible given to him by the heroine—with a
bottle of whiskey at his elbow.

Hell’s Hinges (William S. Hart & Charles Swickard, 1916)

Intertitle:
That Night. The "Mission" he forgot to mention his sister.