The Sound Of Silents

Bristol played host to its third silent comedy festival this weekend and I thought it would be a nice treat to take my father to a show. Paul Merton compèred three old American films and a composer called Neil Brand played new scores for each of them.

Harold Lloyd does little for me but there's a great sequence in Get Out And Get Under where he drives over a bump in the road and his case falls out of the car. He gets out to retrieve it and then has to catch up with the driver-less still-moving vehicle before it crashes! I watched a lot of Laurel and Hardy when I was younger so there was nostalgia value in this for me as well as for Pops. Apparently a third of their catalogue is silent, and they lasted all the way to colour.

I'd never seen Buster Keaton's work before, however, so I viewed Steamboat Bill Jr. with fresh eyes. The jokes stood up well after 79 years, especially the one where he clumsily knocks a life preserver over the side of a boat... and it sinks out of sight. He's fearlessly physical and his deadpan face kills me. No sound, no colour, no tits, no explosions: with luck, his films will be cheap as chips on eBay.