Silent Comedy
see all genres ›What many still consider the "Golden Era" of film comedy took place during the silent years when a stellar lineup of comedic talent (most famously Charles Chaplin, Buster Keaton and Harold Lloyd) churned out umpteen funny shorts and features. Considered disposable entertainment then, they've by and large stayed remarkably fresh over a century's course since.
Watch Silent Comedy Films
Genres / Silent / Silent Comedy
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Cops
One of Buster Keaton's greatest and most famous comedies, COPS is universally enjoyed for the inventive comedy and amazing chase sequences. However, its darker aspects (Keaton's use of an anarchists bomb risked painful reminders of the horse and wagon, similar to the one Buster drives, that...Watch Movie
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Ghosts Before Breakfast
The Dadaists were closely attuned to cinema's native surrealism. And so it is fitting that Hans Richter's GHOSTS BEFORE BREAKFAST should return to so many of the medium's first loves: trick shots, fisticuffs and slapstick are all thrown in the dada blender, unfettered from the...Watch Movie
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What's the World Coming To?
This zany Hal Roach production of WHAT'S THE WORLD COMING TO? takes place in a future "one hundred years from now, when men have become more like women and women more like men." The film opens with the "blushing groom" approaching the altar where his tuxedoed bride awaits to...Watch Movie
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Number, Please?
Arguably one of Harold Lloyd’s best two-reel comedies, NUMBER, PLEASE? takes place at a Los Angeles amusement park. It’s an unusual day: Mildred Davis is with another man, Harold is desperate to find her lost dog and Harold and Roy Brooks vie to take Mildred for a balloon ride. In the midst of...Watch Movie
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A Winter Straw Ride
Two groups of young women get into a pair of horse-drawn carts and go off for a straw ride through the snowy streets. As they pass by a group of children, the children throw snowballs at the riders and they and other persons begin to join in the fun. Then one of the carts tips...Watch Movie
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The Enchanted Spectacles
A parlor full of bon vivants pass around an enchanted pair of spectacles that “reveal the personality and pleasures of the one who wears them.” As always in Émile Cohl’s films, there is a thin line separating everyday reality from fantastic apparitions. The glasses reveal free...Watch Movie
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Laughing Gas
With African-American Bertha Regustus in the principle role, this comedy seems to depart from conventional black stereotypes. Indebted to other comedies of the period (Vitagraph made a film with an identical title less than a year earlier), LAUGHING GAS is based on the premise that laughter is...Watch Movie
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His Uncle's Wives
An artist unexpectedly inherits six wives who come to him from his uncle in Constantinople. His wife makes serious objections, and he finally packs them off to join a theatrical troupe, and happiness is restored. This simple situation comedy enjoys opulent sets of the home of...Watch Movie
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How a French Nobleman Got a Wife Through the New York Herald Personal Columns
Edison's principle domestic rival in 1904 was once again the American Mutoscope & Biograph Company. Biograph was then producing a series of popular story films, which it used as exclusives for its exhibition circuits. Edison affiliated renters and exhibitors were deeply...Watch Movie
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That Fatal Sneeze
One of producer Cecil Hepworth’s most popular short subjects, THAT FATAL SNEEZE is an enduring work of slapstick surrealism. After a codger pranks a young relation with a dab of sneezing powder, the boy ups the ante considerable while the old man sleeps. His sneezes become...Watch Movie
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A Suburbanite's Ingenious Alarm
A SUBURBANITE'S INGENIOUS ALARM's slapstick humor centers on a commuter's attempts to find a foolproof way to wake up in the morning. Once again, director Edwin S. Porter tells a simple story using a widely recognized situation. Overlapping time and action are employed as the...Watch Movie
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The Strenuous Life
A lighthearted spoof of family life and fatherhood. President Roosevelt, who had just won reelection, believed Americans had to lead "the strenuous life" (it was the title of one of his books) if the United States was to retain its position of world leadership. He also...Watch Movie
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An Interesting Story
Annoyed by the modern phenomenon of pedestrians staring at their cellphones, oblivious to everything around them? Well, that's nothing new. In the thoroughly analog world of the previous century, there was a close equivalent (according to this comic short). Our protagonist is...Watch Movie
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Fantasmagoria
Émile Cohl was already 50 by the time he made his first breakthrough work for Gaumont. FANTASMAGORIA's squirmy chalk drawings are infused with the same anarchic spirit which inspired his earlier work as a caricaturist and art provocateur. Pointedly crude, the animation skewers a bourgeois lady at...Watch Movie
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Airy Fairy Lillian Tries on Her New Corsets
A heavyset young woman asks for help in fitting into a new corset but it proves a challenge even for two assistants in this unattributed 1905 comic short from New York-based American Mutoscope and Biograph. The company was founded in 1895 originally to produce flip-card movies...Watch Movie
