Directed by Mabel Normand • 1914 • United States
Starring Mabel Normand, Charles Chaplin, Chester Conklin
This short farce is often only discussed as the screen debut of Charlie Chaplin’s Tramp (here more lecherous and inebriated than in later incarnations). However, director Mabel Normand, who also stars, captures the chaotic slapstick violence with expert clarity, staging for the camera a comedy of manners and miscommunication.
Up Next in Early Women Filmmakers: An International Anthology
-
Discontent
Directed by Lois Weber and Allen G. Siegler • 1916 • United States
Starring J. Edwin Brown, Charles Hammond, Katherine GriffithDirector Lois Weber also provided the script for this short family drama, which follows a discontented Civil War veteran who leaves the home for aging soldiers where he...
-
Harlequin
Directed by Lotte Reiniger • 1931 • Germany
Lotte Reiniger had already completed her full-length masterpiece THE ADVENTURES OF PRINCE ACHMED when she made this animated tale of romance. A love story set to a baroque score, HARLEQUIN is a delicate black-and-white ballet rendered through exquisite...
-
A Night on Bald Mountain
Directed by Claire Parker and Alexandre Alexeieff • 1933 • France
Taking eighteen months to make, this dizzyingly surreal pinscreen animation interprets music by Mussorgsky as interplay between shadow/light, permanence/impermanence, motion/stillness, human/animal, and night/day. Claire Parker an...
