THE SMART TRICK OF THE SILENT COMEDY GENIUS AND LAVISH LIFE THAT NO ONE IS DISCUSSING

Charlie Chaplin produced audiences giggle, but he also manufactured us come to feel. His movies usually balanced delicately, as poet Lawrence Ferlinghetti observes, on “a good line in between sentiment and sentimentality.”  Buster Keaton might not have elicited just as much laughter or emotion as Chaplin, but his comedy was no less than as Art