From · Pioneers: Buster Keaton

1925 · Directed by Buster Keaton

Keaton, 1925, from a Roi Cooper Megrue play. Inherit a fortune if he marries by 7:00. He proposes badly, then the church fills. The boulder chase was added after a preview when a rock he kicked started a laugh; they went back and built more. The rocks in the finished film are props and real stone mixed. The first two acts are the play. The last reel is not.

From · German Expressionism

1920 · Directed by Paul Wegener, Carl Boese

Paul Wegener had already played the clay servant twice. In 1920, with Carl Boese, he went back to Rabbi Loew's Prague and made the version that survives. Hans Poelzig built the ghetto as a set of leaning houses that look inhabited from the inside. The rabbi shapes a protector for a community under an emperor's decree. Once the word is in its mouth, the creature does not stay a tool. Wegener, huge and almost still, is the Golem. Watch the gate, not the magic.

From · Spotlight: Charlie Chaplin

1923 · Directed by Charlie Chaplin

Chaplin's last film for First National, 1923: an escaped convict in a stolen parson's suit is taken for the new minister of a Texas town. The sermon on David and Goliath, done in pantomime, is the picture. So is the sheriff who waits until after the wedding. Edna Purviance is the girl; Syd Chaplin is the eloper. Chaplin directed. It is the Tramp as a man the law and the church have both misread, and the joke is that he is better at the job than the man who was supposed to arrive.