The Hero in Chaplin and Keaton

When a prominent film director interprets his main characters, the heroes that arise capture their mastery of movies and become memorable over the ages. In this essay the heroes of the two most prominent directors of the silent era, Charles Chaplin and Buster Keaton, are described and compared to one another. To accomplish this, we will explore each director’s background and then contrast their main characters personality, physical attributes, and how they interact with their environment.

Let’s start with a short overview on the background of these two directors. Charles Chaplin was raised in poverty in the London slums where he was exposed to the hardships and dangers of the street, an experience that would later be reflected on some of his movies like Easy Street. From a very young age, he learned how to sing, dance and perform on the stage, an ability that served him well in his movies. Similarly, Buster Keaton was raised in middle of a family act since he was three years old. During this time he was involved in solving complex mise-en-scène problems which provided him the skills he would later use while filming his slapstick comedies. In an interview with the Detroit News in 1914, Keaton expressed that learning how to do acrobatics from a very young age turned out to be one the keys to his success.

“. . . the secret is in landing limp and breaking the fall with a foot or a hand. It's a knack. I started so young that landing right is second nature with me. Several times I'd have been killed if I hadn't been able to land like a cat. Imitators of our act don't last long, because they can't stand the treatment." (Detroit News, December 4, 1914)

Chaplin’s most famous hero, the little tramp, is a sad little clown with oversized shoes, baggy pants, undersized coat and a derby (A History of Narrative Film, London, 2004, p. 173) who has to withstand the social pains of being poor and unemployed during the Great Depression. His appearance started early on...