From Harlequin to Chaplin: The Clown Nobody Could Banish

The commedia dell'arte characters, Harlequin, Brighella, Columbina, Pantalone and the Doctor, explained, and how these comedy types reached Max Linder, Charlie Chaplin and Kemal Sunal. In 1737 a German professor tried to banish a clown from the stage. It did not work, and this is why. CHAPTERS 0:00 How do you get rid of a clown? 2:28 Why the movies needed a type 4:09 Better and worse 6:07 Rome, and a thousand quiet years 6:52 Padua, 1545 7:53 The commedia dell'arte family 10:58 Harlequin takes the road 13:07 The professor and the clown 16:09 Max Linder 17:37 Chaplin, the disciple 19:37 Istanbul: Kemal Sunal 20:54 You have met all of them SOURCES Johann Christoph Gottsched, Versuch einer Critischen Dichtkunst (Leipzig, 1730), pp. 567, 590, 596 to 602 (Deutsches Textarchiv) Gotthold Ephraim Lessing, 17th Literaturbrief (1759); Hamburgische Dramaturgie, 14th and 18th Stück (1767) "Die Verbannung des Harlekin vom deutschen Theater", Die Grenzboten, 1877, vol. III Neue Deutsche Biographie 19 (1999), "Neuber, Friederike Caroline" Susan Sontag, "Film and Theatre", The Tulane Drama Review 11:1 (1966) Aristotle, Poetics, trans. W. H. Fyfe (Loeb, 1932) Theophrastus, The Characters, trans. Bennett and Hammond (1902) Marvin T. Herrick, Italian Comedy in the Renaissance (1960); M. A. Katritzky, The Art of Commedia (2006) Il Cinema Ritrovato programme note on La Terroriste (Mariann Lewinsky); Cinéa (Paris, 1922) Efe Teksoy, MA thesis, İstanbul Kültür University (2015), quoting Kemal Sunal, "TV ve Sinemada Kemal Sunal Güldürüsü", Marmara University (1998) CREDITS Jacques Callot, Balli di Sfessania (about 1622): The Metropolitan Museum of Art, Open Access Portraits of Johann Christoph Gottsched (1739) and Gotthold Ephraim Lessing (1772): Rijksmuseum, Amsterdam (CC0) "Weiße und Lessing bei der Neuberin", Die Gartenlaube, 1860 (public domain; an imagined scene) Max Linder, Max au couvent (Pathé, 1914), public domain Kid Auto Races at Venice (Keystone, 1914, directed by Henry Lehrman), public domain Music: made for this video with ElevenLabs Music Narration: synthetic voice. Animation: drawn by Cheat the Shot. Opinions in this video are marked as ours; everything else is sourced. Part of Cheat the Shot: Film History. More from the series: Muybridge's Horse in Motion: What Really Happened Cheat the Shot is a film channel from EgeTech (egetechnology.net). How movies are made, and how they're faked. #CheatTheShot #CommediaDellArte #Chaplin