Keystone capers

"All I need to make a comedy is a park, a policeman and a pretty girl" Charles Chaplin.

The BFI London Film Festival has begun and I had a glut of wonderful movies - from Costa Rica to China - to choose from. So what did I choose to see? A series of shorts from Charlie Chaplin's Keystone days. Well, it had been a hard day in the office and I needed a few laughs.

Keystone was the first movie studio Chaplin worked with after a successful run on the British and American stage with the Karno comedy troupe. In 1914 he made 35 silent comedies there.

They're your standard Keystone affairs - slapstick mayhem and alot of people bashing each other over the head - but they're worth watching for the introduction and development of Chaplin's alter ego the Little Tramp, who makes his first appearance in Kid Auto Races at Venice, California.

Kid Auto is hilarious and features Chaplin as the tramp who annoys the film crew at a car race by continually posing in front of the cameras - a national pastime even today. What adds to the humour is the fact that Kid Auto was filmed at a real car race and the responses of the spectators to Chaplin's capers are classic. At one point a young boy also decides to ham it up in front of the camera and Chaplin promptly punches him in the face. You're not quite sure if the spectators realise Chaplin is acting. Of course, in 1914 he would have been unknown to them.

Tonight the NFT also showed Getting Acquainted, Mabel at the Wheel and Mabel's Married Life.

There's little of the pathos and subtlety that made Chaplin great in the years to come, so the most striking thing about tonight's screening was the quality of the film reels. The Chaplin Project has begun the difficult process of restoring all Chaplin's films, including the Keystone series, by sourcing negatives and positives from all over the world. The picture quality of the Keystones they showed tonight were as clean as they can be from the turn of the last century. And it made for a satisfying viewing.

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