THE SILENT AGE THUMBNAIL MOVIE

Sad to say, none of SemonвЂ™s features did well at the boxoffice, and by 1927 he was bankrupt and scrambling to regain his audience. The recovered footage of 'Stop, Look and Listen' is also an addition to the existing filmography of Oliver Hardy, who is making the last of his many appearances with Semon as well as being an assistant director. Chases with autos, motorcycles, trains, and sometimes airplanes were one of his specialties, and this sequence in particular is very well-directed and plotted. Long unseen and considered lost, this surviving final reel shows the comic expertly re-working the train finale from his 1922 short 'The Show' for the big climax. 'Stop, Look and Listen' (1926) was the fourth and next to last. When Charlie Chaplin, Buster Keaton, and Harold Lloyd moved into feature films Larry decided that he should too.ДЇrom 1924 to 1927 Semon headlined in five slapstick features.

It wasnвЂ™t long before he was starring as well, and by the early 1920s thanks to shorts such as 'The Bell Hop' (1921) and 'The Sawmill' (1922) he was one of the Kings of Silent Comedy. As a director the plots of his films were just excuses to set his gags in motion, and his fondness for explosions, chases, crashes, and spectacular falls from high places created in his best films a mad, surreal world.Д¬oming from a background of appearing onstage as a child, and working as a newspaper cartoonist as a young adult, Semon made his film debut in 1914 as a writer and director. The heavy white make-up on his horse face that made him look like a slapstick version of Nosferatu, the wind-up toy movements, the clodhopper shoes, bowler hat, and chest-high balloon trousers вЂ“ all of the above merged together in the character of a happy dumbbell caught up in a whirlwind of chaos.

THE SILENT AGE THUMBNAIL MOVIE

Look up вЂњsilent movie clownвЂќ in the dictionary and youвЂ™re liable to see Larry SemonвЂ™s picture. The film, dating back to the Golden Age of Silent Films, and long thought to be lost, was directed by the famous American silent film actor, Larry Semon (1889вЂ“1928), who also starred in the film, together with Oliver Hardy (1892вЂ“1957).ДЄlthough only the last ten minutes of the originally sixty-minute-long film were discovered, according to specialist, this is a valuable discovery for the history of silent films.Д¬ommentary from Steve Massa, Author and Film Historian TOKYO-( BUSINESS WIRE)-'Stop, Look and Listen,' a 16mm silent film comedy originally released in the United States in January of 1926, has been discovered in February of 2020, by Japanese film archivist, Toshihiko Sasayama, aged 39.

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