Chaplin’s silent comedies still hilarious nearly a century later

CHARLIE CHAPLIN AND JACKIE COOGAN
IN THE KID (1921)

By TERRY R. CASSREINO

“Blazing Saddles,” “Annie Hall,” “Animal House” and “The Hangover” have more in common than simply being smash hit film comedies at the time they played in theaters.

The common denominator is simple: Those films – and, by extension, any and all successful film comedies – owe a large debt of gratitude to the brilliant, unsurpassed work of the screen’s first comic superstar, Charlie Chaplin.

Chaplin was an English comic actor and a silent film auteur, a man who wrote, directed and starred in a series of slapstick comedies in the early 1900s that remain as fresh and funny today as they were almost 100 years ago.

Best known for his endearing on-screen character, “The Tramp,” Chaplin created such timeless, feature-length, silent classics in the 1920s and 1930s as “The Kid,” “The Circus,” “The Gold Rush,” City Lights” and “Modern Times.”

Mel Brooks’ ‘Blazing Saddles’ unequaled in film comedy

BLAZING SADDLES (1974)

By TERRY R. CASSREINO

Madeline Kahn spoofs the great Marlene Dietrich, Slim Pickens runs a railroad chain gang, Gene Wilder plays a drunken gunslinger and Cleavon Little stars as Rock Ridge’s new black sheriff.

Together, they make up the cast of the funniest, and one of the most socially conscious, screen comedies: Mel Brooks’ classic “Blazing Saddles.” This is Brooks at his side-splitting best, a movie that has no equals.

Brooks came close with “Young Frankenstein,” his black-and-white parody of the classic “Frankenstein” films. But “Blazing Saddles” is something different – a zany, no-holds-barred, non-stop, laugh-fest masterpiece.

Working from a script by five writers that included Brooks and Richard Pryor, “Blazing Saddles” finds the small Western town of Rock Ridge getting its first black sheriff. Brooks pokes fun at Western film conventions and uses his off-beat, crude humor to criticize racism.

Welcome to Top Five week at Sneak Prevue. Today’s edition: The Top Five Film Comedies.