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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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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Too Much Johnson
In 1938, three years before CITIZEN KANE, New York theater tyro Orson Welles filmed comedy sequences for his stage production of TOO MUCH JOHNSON, a rapid-fire farce of mistaken identities. The slapstick prologue features Joseph Cotten doing Harold Lloyd antics through the...Watch Movie
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Too Much Johnson [workprint]
In 1938, three years before CITIZEN KANE, New York theater tyro Orson Welles filmed comedy sequences for his stage production of TOO MUCH JOHNSON, a rapid-fire farce of mistaken identities. Long assumed lost, the reels were found in 2008 and preserved through an international...Watch Movie![Watch Movie - Too Much Johnson [workprint], the Silent film by Orson Welles | Fandor](//d3uc4wuqnt61m1.cloudfront.net/films/images/000/005/698/5698.D_210_118.jpg?1478223322 "Watch Movie - Too Much Johnson [workprint], the Silent film by Orson Welles | Fandor")
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Fatty's Suitless Days
Fatty Arbuckle needs a suit to attend the ball. He snatches another man’s finery off the clothesline, squeezing himself into the jacket and improvising a cummerbund. What goes around comes around which, in Fatty’s case, means he’ll find himself at the ball without pants....Watch Movie
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Ambrose's Fury
When Mack Swain, suffering from his domineering wife’s orders, starts flirting with the neighbor, AMBROSE'S FURY slowly rolls to a boil. He arranges to meet the young woman for some extramarital swimming and the ocean setting invigorates the slapstick in no time. The young woman’s clothes are...Watch Movie
![Watch Movie - Too Much Johnson [workprint], the Silent film by Orson Welles | Fandor](http://d3uc4wuqnt61m1.cloudfront.net/films/images/000/005/698/5698.D_210_118.jpg?1478223322 "Watch Movie - Too Much Johnson [workprint], the Silent film by Orson Welles | Fandor")
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Ambrose's Nasty Temper
Ambrose's amorous antics at the garment factory get him fired. In retaliation, he hires a couple of crooks to menace his boss but they mistakenly target the boss' daughter he fancies instead. Her mortal peril necessitates a call to the police so it's the Keystone Kops to the...Watch Movie
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Her Fame and Shame
Louise Fazenda was a natural comedienne (not unlike Carol Burnett) who rose quickly to the front ranks of early silent comedy kingpin Mack Sennett's Keystone company. Here she gets a prime role as the starstruck daughter of a provincial hotel and cafe's owner. At their...Watch Movie
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That Little Band of Gold
Fatty weds Mabel though, unfortunately, married life is a bit of a letdown for her since she's stuck at home while he goes galavanting drunkenly around town at all hours. When he reluctantly takes her and Mother out to the opera, his boorish behavior attracts the whole...Watch Movie
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Won by a Fowl
This Keystone-Triangle three-reeler, produced by silent comedy maestro Mack Sennett's company and the shorter-lived major studio that briefly flourished in the late-1910s, features a cast of lesser-remembered players. It's a sunny day, which some choose to spend at the park kissing babies or...Watch Movie
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Willful Ambrose
WILLFUL AMBROSE’s farcical plot may not be much for continuity but all the better to focus on the slapstick pageantry of slipups, extramarital flirtations and enough thumps for a game of Whack-A-Mole. Mack Swain stars as a beer-guzzling, sharpshooting lout. Louise Fazenda is his wife and pretty...Watch Movie
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All Wet
"Snub" Pollard plays a hick whose pa packs him off to his aunt's home in the big city. He fits in awkwardly with her hoity society world. News of his oil-well inheritance makes the more mercenary flappers pay attention, notably a vampish cousin (named Cleopatra, no less). It's a funny...Watch Movie
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When Ambrose Dared Walrus
Hefty Ambrose (Mack Swain) is an unlikely acrobat who checks into the Walrus Hotel with his petite trapeze-artist wife. Proprietors Mr. and Mrs. Walrus, whose marital union is no more harmonious than their guests', suffer several embarrassing encounters with the newcomers....Watch Movie
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Little Billy's Triumph
The first of several “Little Billy” films produced by Mack Sennett starring Billy Jacobs as a pint-sized hellion, LITTLE BILLY’S TRIUMPH pioneers the boisterous terrain later taken up by OUR GANG. A couple of older bullies steal Billy’s ice cream money. Enterprising rascals,...Watch Movie
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The Plumber
House calls don't come much messier than the one answered by a plumber (Charles Murray) at the upstanding bourgeois home of the Felixes, where a bathroom gusher is making life very wet. The tradesman proceeds to get likewise, nipping into the family's hooch supply with disastrous results. Murray...Watch Movie
