The stars (1962)

lies inexplicably deeper. It seems that all his life he regarded the policeman as one of God's more absurd creations. Probably it was the silly majesty the law attempts to maintain in the pursuit of minor offenders, its pitiful attempts at dignity in the face of man's obvious irrationality, which attracted Sennett to his great theme. In any case, he tapped a basic American feeling about policemen and allowed the nation to vent its dislike of regulations in gales of laughter. Law is such a sad thing, trying as it does to capture the basic absurdity of human behavior and pen it behind walls of rationally conceived rules. Our instinctive knowledge of the hopelessness of the task is what triggers our laughter at a Sennett comedy. In this we are aided by the Kops themselves. We think of Sisyphus, toiling to push his rock up the hill, fully aware that, at the moment of triumph, the gods will send it tumbling back to the ground below. The Kops seemed to sense the futility of their activities, but the game itself was the fun, and their hopelessly befuddled chase after the miscreant, typically in a decrepit flivver from which their blue-clad arms and legs protruded in wild tangles, their faces meanwhile maintaining a stolid dignity that defied us to comment upon the mess they were making, was something into which you could read a dozen meanings. Certainly, it is not too pretentious to say that the Kops, who in Agee's phrase, "zipped and caromed about the pristine world of the screen as jazzily as a convention of water bugs," made a valid comment on all who pursue goals with too much zeal and not enough thought about ultimate values. Beyond all this, there was the beautifully simple cinematic style in which these splendid fellows went through their paces. Sennett believed speed and grotesquery were the basis of comedy. Few Sennett gags took more than ten seconds of screen time from initial statement, through elaboration, to culmination. Ideally the next gag was built off the first and sight gag followed sight gag in dizzying succession. Even when he was supervising the entire product of his busy studio and directing very little, he reviewed every scene shot, the creakings of his projection-room rocker an index to his responses. He always called for more speed. As to his liking for the grotesque, one need only look at the faces and figures of the actors he employed. They were parodies of the human form, and that made their parodies of poor man's attempts to cope with the essentially unmanageable modern world even more delicious. The backgrounds against which they moved, the wasteland of southern California when it was a subdivider's paradise, with only the skeleton of the megalopolis to come sketched in, enhanced the mood of dreamlike realism in Sennett's films. Finally, the girls, really quite lovely, and the first direct screen statement of the pleasures inherent in the female form were a perfect touch. The bathing beauties represented a healthy kidding of our sexual preoccupations. They were neither simpering nor blatant in manner. They simply existed, delightful, not quite bright, ideal foils for the cavorting grotesques around them. The Sennett star faded quickly after the coming of sound. His most talented mimes had already left him, and then tastes changed, and the ve bal gag replaced the visual one in films. Sennett ended his days broke and — like so many movie pioneers — almost forgotten by the industry he helped create. Most of the artists who followed his traditions and work, were also ruined by sound. It is only now — too late — that we see in the artless art of Mack Sennett more real worth than in all but a handful of the more grandiose productions of his contemporaries. He is one of the few who made genuine folk art while working in the mass media. The bathing beauties seem to be under the impression they work for Isadora Duncan instead of Mack Sennett ( above) .