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Silent Comedy
see all genres ›What many still consider the "Golden Era" of film comedy took place during the silent years when a stellar lineup of comedic talent (most famously Charles Chaplin, Buster Keaton and Harold Lloyd) churned out umpteen funny shorts and features. Considered disposable entertainment then, they've by and large stayed remarkably fresh over a century's course since.
Discover Silent Comedy Films
Genres / Silent / Silent Comedy
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His Wooden Wedding
Unusually for a comedy, this one begins with the wedding. Charley Chase is about to marry his dream girl when her jealous ex-boyfriend, a bootlegger, slips him an improbable note: “Beware! The girl you are about to marry has a wooden leg.” Once Charley imagines peg-legged children, the wedding is off. The...Start your free trial to watch
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Holding His Own
One of cross-eyed Keystone Kops-famed Ben Turpin's later shorts, HOLDING HIS OWN is a doozy. Going out for an evening isn't easy for Mr. Muggs and his exasperated Mrs. when Ben can't even get the car started, then gets into an angry tussle with his next-door neighbor. Finally making it to the scheduled society affair, our...Start your free trial to watch
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A Home Spun Hero
An Al Christie production starring Bobby Vernon and featuring Helen Darling, George Ford and Vera Steadman. Bobby Vernon was a talented comic actor during the silent era, who became a writer and comedy supervisor at Paramount for W.C. Fields and Bing Crosby, when the sound era arrived. Vernon was the son...Start your free trial to watch
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The House on Trubnaya
THE HOUSE ON TRUBNAYA was Boris Barnet's fourth production and a great hit with audiences. With its vibrant humor and a clever commentary on the historical moment, this film was unusual for the 1920s Soviet cinema. Barnet's heart lay in stories about regular people coming to terms with historical changes....Start your free trial to watch
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How Bumptious Papered the Parlor
The Edison Company offered a cycle of comedies directed by Ashley Miller and featuring John R. Cumpson as Mr. Bumptious. This one was promoted as the best Bumptious comedy yet to appear. Convinced of his own abilities, Mr. Bumptious tries to save money by wallpapering the parlor himself. The humorous...Start your free trial to watch
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How a French Nobleman Got a Wife Through the New York Herald Personal Columns
Edison's principle domestic rival in 1904 was once again the American Mutoscope & Biograph Company. Biograph was then producing a series of popular story films, which it used as exclusives for its exhibition circuits. Edison affiliated renters and exhibitors were deeply frustrated that they could not...Start your free trial to watch
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Huns and Hyphens
Larry Semon stars in this wartime slapstick comedy. The ruckus bar where he waits tables seems patriotic enough but it turns out the owner and several of his customers are German spies. In one of his first supporting roles, Stan Laurel makes for a distinctly ineffectual villain. Semon’s careening special...Start your free trial to watch
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I Do
Originally in three reels, Harold Lloyd cut a whole reel after previews went poorly. The two-reel result is classic domestic comedy, with Harold as a henpecked hubby babysitting his two young nephews. See a jug of bootleg liquor masquerade as a baby in a carriage; watch Harold try to walk into his slippers which have been...Start your free trial to watch
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I Don’t Want to Be a Man
In I DON'T WANT TO BE A MAN, a teenaged tomboy, tired of being bossed around by her strict guardian, impersonates a man so she can have more fun, but discovers that being the opposite sex isn’t as easy as she had hoped. What ensues is a gender-bending comedy that was decades ahead of its time.Start your free trial to watch
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I Fetch the Bread
Arriving dinner guests find somewhat improbably that their hostess has forgotten the bread; a quick visit to the bakery motivates this accumulation of comic incident, a variation on the chase film formula. I FETCH THE BREAD was filmed in the empty streets of Paris by Pathe Freres in 1907.Start your free trial to watch
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In the Barber Shop
Blackface proves less than permanent in this slapstick confection by French pioneer Georges Méliès. The fanciful vision of a barber shop run amok anticipates later comedies of faulty machinery in Charles Chaplin's MODERN TIMES and Jacques Tati's PLAYTIME. - Max GoldbergStart your free trial to watch
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Isn't Life Terrible
Taking aim at the sanctimonious tone of D.W. Griffith’s ISN’T LIFE WONDERFUL? (1924), this buoyant Charley Chase two-reeler plays life's tough breaks as gags. Hal Roach house director Leo McCarey’s typically patient camera setups allow for a hilarious interval between slapstick disasters and Chase’s...Start your free trial to watch
