Char­lie Chap­lin and Buster Keaton had been the 2 greatest com­e­dy stars of the silent period, however because it hap­pened, they nev­er shared the display screen till nicely into the reign of sound. The truth is, their col­lab­o­ra­tion did­n’t come about till 1952, the identical yr that Sin­gin’ within the Rain dra­ma­tized the already dis­tant-feel­ing introduction of speak­ing pic­tures. That hit musi­cal offers with once-famous artists cop­ing with a chang­ing world, and so, in its personal manner, does Lime­mild, the movie that last­ly introduced Chap­lin and Keaton togeth­er, deal­ing because it does with a washed-up music-hall star within the Lon­don of 1914.

A spe­cial­ist in down­trod­den professional­tag­o­nists, Chap­lin — who hap­pened to have made his personal tran­si­tion from vaude­ville to movement pic­tures in 1914 — nat­u­ral­ly performs that star­ring function. Keaton seems solely late within the movie, as an previous half­ner of Chap­lin’s char­ac­ter who takes the stage with him to per­kind a duet at a ben­e­match con­cert that promis­es the sal­va­tion of their careers. In actual­i­ty, this scene had a few of that very same enchantment for Keaton him­self, who had but to recov­er finan­cial­ly or professional­fes­sion­al­ly after a ruinous divorce within the mid-nine­teen-thir­ties, and had been strug­gling for trac­tion on the brand new medi­um of tele­vi­sion.

Although Lime­mild could also be a sound movie, and Chap­lin and Keaton’s scene could also be a musi­cal num­ber, what they exe­cute togeth­er is, for all intents and pur­pos­es, a piece of silent com­e­dy. Chap­lin performs the vio­lin and Keaton performs the piano, however earlier than both of them can get a observe out of their instru­ments, they have to first cope with a sequence of tech­ni­cal mishaps and wardrobe mal­func­tions. That is in preserve­ing with a theme each per­kind­ers essayed time and again of their silent hey­day: that of the human being made inept by the com­pli­ca­tions of an inhu­man world.

However after all, Chap­lin and Keaton’s char­ac­ters usu­al­ly discovered their methods to tri­umph at the least tem­porar­i­ly over that world ultimately, and so it involves move in Lime­mild — moments earlier than the hap­much less vio­lin­ist him­self move­es on, the vic­tim of an onstage coronary heart assault. In the actual world, each of those two icons from a bygone age had at the least anoth­er act forward of them, Chap­lin with extra movies to direct again in his native Eng­land and Europe, and Keaton as a form of liv­ing leg­finish for rent, referred to as up when­ev­er Hol­ly­wooden want­ed a shot of what had been redis­cov­ered — not least due to TV’s re-cir­cu­la­tion of previous motion pictures — because the magazine­ic of silent pic­tures.

Relat­ed con­tent:

Char­lie Chap­lin & Buster Keaton Go Toe to Toe (Almost) in a Hilar­i­ous Box­ing Scene Mash Up from Their Clas­sic Silent Films

Dis­cov­er the Cin­e­mat­ic & Comedic Genius of Char­lie Chap­lin with 60+ Free Movies Online

A Super­cut of Buster Keaton’s Most Amaz­ing Stunts

When Char­lie Chap­lin First Spoke Onscreen: How His Famous Great Dic­ta­tor Speech Came About

30 Buster Keaton Films: “The Great­est of All Com­ic Actors,” “One of the Great­est Film­mak­ers of All Time”

Primarily based in Seoul, Col­in Marshall writes and broad­casts on cities, lan­guage, and cul­ture. His initiatives embrace the Sub­stack newslet­ter Books on Cities and the e-book The State­much less Metropolis: a Stroll by Twenty first-Cen­tu­ry Los Ange­les. Fol­low him on the social internet­work for­mer­ly referred to as Twit­ter at @colinmarshall.