The Mutual Approval of Keaton and Lloyd

Abstract

While ours is an age that certainly has the milieu to produce sick or black comedy, films like Dr. Strangelove and The Loved One, it might puzzle us to find the re-emergence of an elder tradition, the light-hearted, fast-moving slapstick comedy -a genre spawned in the formative age of cinema. I'll leave it to those with stronger sociological inclination than I have to decide whether these types have similar roots, are merely examples of the widening tastes in humor, or a revolt from the genteel comedy of the past twenty-five years. I'm concerned mainly with the failures of those who try to revive this older tradition. Directors and actors today seem to be poor students of comedy and I question their affection for the past models for they do not seem able to capture the vigorous freedom and spirit that has produced excellent works in the past -films by such masters of laughter as Chaplin, Lloyd, Keaton, and Langdon. Abortive efforts to resurrect the tradition, such as It's a Mad, Mad, Mad, Mad World, Those Magnificent Men in Their Flying Machines, and The Great Race, not only leave me cold, they also fill me with something short of outrage when I view an audience, like Romans viewing the spectacle in the arena, soaking it all in with apparent glee. It's a Mad, Mad, Mad, Mad World is probably the most colossal failure. A barrel full of contemporary comedians -Milton Berle, Sid Caesar, Buddy Hackett, Phil Silvers, Jonathan Winters, and Terry-Thomas -plus color and Cinerama (a Cinemascope version for the provinces) could not save this epic farce from grinding away until it entered the strange valley of antic boredom. More chases, numerous comedians, a larger screen, and a longer script obviously do not make a first-rate comedy. Hollywood's strange affection for elephantiasis when it tries to create often reveals that its producers realize (perhaps unconsciously) they are on shaky ground. I'm afraid that directors and writers of such products as Those Magnificent