Liverpool Silent Films: Help Wanted / A Dog’s Life / One Week
Tom Grieve, Cinema Editor
Chaplin vs. Keaton is basically The Beatles vs. the Stones for film nuts. Debate rages as to what’s better: Charlie Chaplin’s Little Tramp and his hard wrought pathos, or Buster Keaton’s heroically optimistic Stoneface and his astonishing physicality. It’s a long running debate, that’s fiercely contested on both sides—but why chooses when you can have both? For their Scalarama short film night, Liverpool Silent Films have a film apiece from the two masters of silent comedy.
They’ve gone for Chaplin’s 1918 gem A Dog’s Life, in which the Little Tramp finds an equally down-on-their-luck friend in a plucky pooch named Spot. Meanwhile, Keaton finds endless possibilities for physical gags in One Week, his spectacular account of a young couple trying to build a flat-pack house.
Sitting alongside the two near century-old comedies is Daniel Drape’s Help Wanted. This contemporary silent film follows a day in the lives of a boy struggling with benefit sanctions and a girl affected by a zero-hour contract. Screening at The Black Lodge Brewery in Liverpool, all three films will be accompanied by live music and whilst there’s no entry fee on the door, there will be a donation bucket floating about if you would like to support the musicians.
