Fellow Citizens of Nitrateville,
I am teaching a semester-long symposium on Charlie Chaplin vs. Buster Keaton. Disclaimer: Obviously, both men were superb filmmakers and some of you may deem that pitting them against each other diminishes their independent relevance, but please understand, this was an angle designed to be interesting and marketable to students and to present an educational question to guide our learning throughout the course.
I will be focusing on the silent shorts (primarily from Chaplin's Mutual library and Keaton's time with Schenk, but certainly other periods such as Keystone, Essanay, Educational, and even features are not necessarily totally off-limits). I would like to create some logical pairs of shorts so that each week, my students can closely study one Chaplin and one Keaton. I want the films to pair nicely in terms of technique, mise en scene, content, themes, stunts, etc. (Ex. The Floorwalker may pair with The Haunted House in their extended use of stair/escalator gags; Easy Street and Cops for their contemporary portrayal of police, etc.). It's not necessarily a question of "who wore it better" but I am merely looking for intriguing comparisons between individual films to spark student discussion and discovery alongside the obvious general comparisons between Chaplin and Keaton as artists.
I will be spending the summer months preparing this class but I thought I would reach out to you lovers of silent film to perhaps suggest some possible topics for the class. Do you have any suggestions for a Chaplin and a Keaton short that would pair nicely and why? Do you have any general suggestions? Can you recommend any books or articles that may illuminate certain topics for the students (these are undergraduate honors students, who I suspect will have very little experience with silent film--much less silent comedy). Thank you in advance for any great ideas!