The Golden Age of Comedy

The film offers a compilation of the comic stars of the silent era. Among the pieces chosen are scenes with Laurel and Hardy, turns by Will Rogers and chases by the famous police squad of the period. The compilation lines these scenes up not as a chronological history lesson but as a show to be watched one after another. Considering the year it was made, the film is also a reminder; it puts back into circulation the work of a period that had begun to be forgotten after sound cinema settled in. The technique of silent comedy is visible in the compilation as well: a humour built on timing, on falling and on repetition. Rather than explaining these scenes, the account finds it enough to place them one after another. Robert Youngson’s seventy nine minute American compilation was completed in 1957.