8 sessions, 2:30 PM – 5:30 PM
September 27 through November 15, 2017
Hanover Senior Center - Hanover, NH
Course Fee: $80

Before sound, comedy on screen was almost completely visual, and the ingenuity required to create laughter has never been surpassed. With no possibility of easy verbal jokes and wise cracks, silent film comedy had to use the uniquely expressive possibilities of the new medium of film to touch our human funny bones with the universal language of silence and motion. Silent film was an international art form, and comedy, perhaps, its most eloquent and timeless creation.

The 18th Century English writer, Horace Walpole profoundly observed, “The world is a comedy to those who think and a tragedy to those who feel.” In the 20th Century, John F. Kennedy once said, “Only three things in the world are real. One is God; one is human folly; the last is laughter.” This course focuses specifically on the comedy and laughter that was produced by American film during the so-called “silent era,” roughly the thirty years between 1898-1928. Some of the figures to be covered include the obvious “biggies,” such as Mack Sennett and his Keystone crew, Charlie Chaplin, Buster Keaton, Harold Lloyd, and Laurel & Hardy. But we will also study Harry Langdon, Charlie Chase, John Bunny and Roscoe “Fatty” Arbuckle, and introduce some of the prominent female comics of the time such as Mabel Normand, Fay Tincher, Louise Fazenda, Polly Moran, and Minta Durfee. We will screen films in class (most of them are quite short), prefaced by a brief lecture on the comics involved. This will be followed by discussion of the films and relevant readings each week.