extra credit event1

Mikayla Chiarello
Extra Credit 1
Library Event-- “Silents Please!”

For extra credit I attended a library sponsored event in the library auditorium. It was a night devoted to silent film, so I went into it knowing very little and assuming I would be bored for most of the night, thinking a silent film would not be able to hold my attention or entertain me for its entirety. I was very wrong. At first we were given a brief background to the entertainment industry back when silent films were one of the main sources of entertainment. We were then told about an actor, Buster Keaton, who was very popular at this time and who remains entertaining to this day by those who actually know of his work. That is a very big accomplishment. They then compared him to other entertainers of this time such as Charlie Chaplin, and compared their styles of acting. Chaplin was known to make comedies in which he over-acted and really over dramatized his comedy acts, as was the popular thing to do at the time. Keaton on the other hand was very different from other actors and he portrayed humor in the opposite way, slightly under-acting, which we still find humor in today, making it a timeless piece of entertainment. With this new knowledge I felt a little bit better about what I was getting into, but it wasn’t until about half way through the movie when I realized how into it I was and how anxious I was to know the outcome. The movie we viewed was called “7 chances” and was about a man (Buster Keaton) who would inherit a million dollars if he were wed by the end of that same night. He faces a variety of challenges in trying to accomplish this goal and is wildly entertaining while doing so. I now have a completely different view of silent films and how entertaining they can actually be.