Gareth Evans

As some of you will be aware, I’ve long been a fan of Jackie Chan. And as a child falling in love with his brand of action cinema, I was introduced retrospectively to two absolute masters of silent era cinema - Buster Keaton and Charlie Chaplin.

So when it came time for me to select some titles for this Carte Blanche - I knew immediately that I wanted to go back to the very beginning. The inspiration of my inspiration.

For Keaton’s work I chose to pick from a collection of his two-reel shorts in COPS and ONE WEEK. While I love and cherish his feature length films - Steamboat Bill Jr and the masterpiece that is The General are particular highlights in a career full of them - there’s a purity to the two reel shorts that showcases Keaton’s particular strokes of genius.

The sheer inventiveness and ability to mine every situation for every conceivable visual gag is a defining part of Keaton’s oeuvre. Entire sets have been built and rigged specifically to keep the audience watching slack jawed at the stunt work and ingenuity. Eschewing a reliance on title cards in favor of telling the story through visuals alone there’s a real finesse to his work that relies not solely on the rhythms of performance and the often death defying stunts being performed but also the meticulous framing in camera to aid every joke land twice as hard. It’s about as pure a visual storytelling as you can get.

Keaton was way ahead of his time in this regard. And it is a true pleasure to be able to share with audiences an opportunity to see these films on the big screen.

As for Charlie Chaplin’s The Kid, well I’m sure this film needs little in the way of introduction. There’s a reason it appears on so many top 100 lists. A film packed to the brim with vaudevillian humor but also a ton of heart - the relationship between Chaplin and Coogan never fails to bring me to tears. I watch this film every year without fail and marvel at it each time.

A true masterpiece.