Anatomy of a Gag

In one of his most ambitious sequences, the silent-comedy legend throws his innocent “glasses” character into a death trap of a setting.

One of cinema’s most charismatic canines shows off his comedic chops in Leo McCarey’s screwball masterpiece The Awful Truth.

In 1921’s The Kid, Charlie Chaplin gave his lonely Tramp a five-year-old sidekick in Jackie Coogan, turning the boy into Hollywood’s first major child star.

In the image of the Little Tramp choking, Chaplin found the perfect motif for evoking the horrors of hunger and modern consumption.

In some of his most elaborately choreographed set pieces, the silent-comedy master confronted the chaos of the world with balletic grace and rhythmic precision.

David Cairns takes a close look at the carefully calibrated minimalism of Hal Ashby’s masterful satire.