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28 ANCIENT HISTORY
of things are made visible in it which cannot be shown on the real stage, but also because these new motifs represent a type of grotesque psychological reaction which could not have been shown in the past.
The first brilliant shorts made by Charlie Chaplin were in a similar style. His struggle with a demoniac rocking-chair from which, once seated, he cannot escape. Or his duel with the malicious revolving door that always turns him out into the street again, Or the first lesson in roller-skating, when the skates strapped to his feet rebel and declare their independence. The deeper meaning of Chaplin's 'clumsiness' lies in the fact that his struggle with objects not only reveals their demoniac personality but turns them into equal, even superior, opponents. They defeat Chaplin because he, in his unobjectivized humanity, cannot adapt himself to their mechanical nature. This art grew out of the very essence of the silent film, out of the essence of the silent, but distant, undifferentiated and hence theatre-like picture. At that time movement had not yet acquired that intimate emotional significance which could be observed only in close-up. On the contrary, the whole of the movement, the amusing struggle of the hero, provided the comic effect.
It is characteristic that the birth of the sound film and the talkie marked the end of this type of slapstick comedy which had given us the first world-famous film stars such as Max Linder, Prince, Cretinetti and Charlie Chaplin. The great comedians of the second generation, Harold Lloyd and Buster Keaton, appeared when the silent film was already fully developed, when the new art was already using camera angles and close-ups. For this reason these new protagonists had more of the individual, psychologizing character-actor, even in their performances as comedians. Nevertheless they were unable to adapt their art to the needs of the sound film, because their humour was born of the spirit of the silent photographed stage. Even for the great Charlie Chaplin the change-over to the sound film brought a profound crisis, the significance of which is to be discussed later.
From its earliest years the film also had yet another special feature. The film could conjure better than any platform