Chaplin's Essanay Comedies (1915-1916)

[AgentOrange]

Originally Posted by Professor Echo

Of course! And Charley Chase is right up there as well. I notice as I get older I'm not as all encompassing as I once was when ranking favorites. Not sure why, but list making doesn't come as easily to me as it used to.

I've always preferred Keaton to Chaplin, or at least I find his comedy better. Both are truly wonderful though. You pretty much can't go wrong with them. I cannot fathom how a person can't enjoy their work, it might not be laugh out loud "hilarious - it rarely is to me, but I can always appreciate the humor and find the films a breeze to watch.

I had never checked out Harold Lloyd until blu-ray, and I've still only the few films that have been remastered to blu-ray, but he's right up there on that same level from what I have seen.

There is a dropoff after that for me as far as silent comedies go.

One that could be interesting would be Harry Langdon. I bought the "Forgotten Clown" set from Kino a couple of years ago. I believe one of those was an early Frank Capra directed film as well! Problem was the PQ was absolutely horrible, it seemed like these were solid silent comedies, but it's hard to appreciate a fuzzy pictue where you can barely make out the characters face. Particularly compared to the silents that have been fully restored with nearly perfect image quality. The facial expresssions are HUGE to these films, and if the PQ is too poor to capture that it really takes away from the film IMO.