Before sound came to Hollywood, comedians could be very personal and heroic -- which only added a certain naive luster to their white-faced appeal as untutored waifs under God's own care.
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Emerging from the godless slapstick rough house of Mack Sennett's Keystone Studio, clowns such as Chaplin, Keaton, and especially Harold Lloyd drew apart from the meaningless hurly burly of mere physical absurdity to work out their own frail destinies -- while keeping all the props and schtick of pratfalls and pies in their elemental scenarios.
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Before movies could bark, they wagged their cinematic tails in many remarkable and fetching ways. They could be visually lush and striking, with casual nods to artists like Vermeer, Rembrandt, Titian, Van Gogh, and even Picasso. Backgrounds and settings, the entire mise en scene, when in capable camera hands, could evoke anything from the grimy off-kilter reality of Chaplin to the mystic bucolic splendor of Harold Lloyd -- especially in the several 'rural' films he made in the mid-Twenties; films that celebrate a vanished cinematic heartland that nowadays many dismiss as 'flyover country.' This is never more apparent than in his film "The Kid Brother." The trees, the dirt roads, the shanties, the river -- even the actors -- carry a sometimes stark, sometimes gauzy, nimbus about them ~ as if the whole movie were a fairy tale narrated by one's grandmother on a snowy evening.
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The movie opens on Lloyd washing the laundry for his widowed father and older brothers on their farm -- and drying the clothes by stringing them up on a soaring kite line. Complications ensue, leading to the first of several imaginative chases, with a goat, a bully, and other sundry and frenetic characters trying to get the best of Lloyd.
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And so we come to a consideration of the comic chase -- perfected in silence during the 20's and never really improved upon even after sound crashed the party.
Movies are supposed to move -- and their function as speed and action personified are never more absolute and entertaining than in the slapstick chase. Always based on misunderstanding combined with ignoble happenstance, the comic speeds along city streets and country lanes, usually pursued by a cop or two or other figures of authority and/or menace.
And hark ye, the old silent chases as manufactured by the great movie clowns and their cameramen were not simply a blur of violence and speed; they had an athletic grace and wry ingenuity that produced vivid and admiring chuckles from cinema audiences.
The several chases in 'The Kid Brother' are no exception. How many different ways are there for one man to chase another? You'd be surprised. Lloyd and his gag men come up with dozens of variations on the alarums and excursions that are the lifeblood of most silent comedies. I won't go into narrative detail here about the Lloyd chases -- they need to be seen in person, like a fine painting or dazzling dance routine, to be savored and appreciated.
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Ancient comedy, with Shakespeare and earlier, always had a romance and then a wedding to tie things neatly into a bourgeoisie package at the end. The silent clowns did the same. In 'The Kid Brother' Lloyd is enamored of a traveling medicine show girl, and through courage and determination (plus the sprightly machinations of the unseen goblins that launch every comic into the abyss only to pull him back at the last second) he not only saves the girl from peril but manages to prevent his own father from being lynched. Lloyd and the girl stroll down a country lane straight out of Currier & Ives, hand in hand, as the camera irises out.
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Certainly there were female comics during the Silent Era -- but audiences of the time didn't care for the zany and flippant spirit of the slapstick clown in a woman. Women were to be wooed, rescued, and brought into domesticity during the last reel. And we may cavil against our grand daddies for holding such medieval and chauvinistic opinions -- but maybe we should be asking our grandmothers just what they thought about the whole subject before sending anyone to the guillotine.
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Lloyd and his comic colleagues are recognized as brilliant delineators of the Human Comedy by critics and pundits today -- but what of the masses who, presumably, yearn for a good belly laugh nowadays as much as their predecessors? Not being omniscient yet (although I'm working on it) I can only relate the sad experience of inveigling some of my grand kids into watching 'The Kid Brother' when it recently played on Netflix. Within ten minutes they were clamoring for the Teen Titans on Cartoon Network.
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The great cinema clowns require our patience as they silently build their castles on custard pies. Cell phones and tablets are inherently inimical to the enjoyment of silent comedy. And so I fear that the inspired buffoonery of Harold Lloyd and his contemporaries will remain relegated to something akin to a museum tour -- a phenomenon people approve of but rarely participate in.
But no use crying over spilled nitrate negatives -- let's all binge watch Seinfeld . . . again.
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