Charley Chase at Hal Roach: The Late Silents 1927

As a niche within a niche, silent films are certainly a hard sell for modern audiences.  Even Turner Classic Movies can only spare a couple hours a week in their schedule on late Sunday nights.  Perhaps because silents are positioned as something to be appreciated rather than enjoyed, dry history lessons held back by their crude technical limitations.  But the newly restored Charley Chase at Hal Roach: The Late Silents 1927 proves silent comedy was anything but. 

A “do-it-all” comedian, Chases’ on camera persona relied less on slapstick than farcical domestic situations.  Unlike Chaplin’s tramp character, Charley often played a put-upon everyman just trying to catch a break.  The first two shorts in the set are a prime example: There Ain’t No Santa Claus follows his character’s attempt to hide the purchase of a Christmas gift for his wife from his rent-hungry landlord…while Many Scrappy Returnsplays up the choreographed confusion of a cheating spouse full of misunderstandings and Scooby-Doo style room swapping.

Chase, who began his career directing icons like Chaplin, Laurel & Hardy and a series of Our Gang shorts, doesn’t merely perform, he constructs scenes with the camera in mind.  As much of luminaries like D.W. Griffith are hailed for advancing the medium, it’s the fast-paced cinematic language of silent comedies that helped film evolve.  But the experience of watching them is never a chore.   

Each running about 20-minutes in length, this new collection gathers 15 of shorts from 1927 with several restored “segments” included as bonus features.  Pulled from personal collections and studio vaults, the restoration work here varies from amazing to damn good considering no original elements survive.  Meanwhile, Richard M. Roberts contributes a commentary on each chapter to spill some behind-the-scene tea.