Mack Sennett
Mack Sennett (1880–1960) was a Canadian-American filmmaker who directed and produced silent comedies and founded Keystone Studios.
Keystone Studios: An American film studio founded by Mack Sennett in 1912, known for fast-paced silent comedies. Sennett built his comic production style around this studio.
Silent film: Motion pictures made without synchronized recorded dialogue as part of the film’s soundtrack. Sennett’s comedy relied on visual action and title cards rather than spoken dialogue.
Vaudeville: A form of popular theater built from a program of short, varied acts, including comedy, music, and specialty performances. Sennett drew on vaudeville’s performers and gag traditions when making screen comedy.
Roscoe Arbuckle: An American silent-film comedian, actor, and director known for physical comedy and feature films. Arbuckle became one of Keystone’s prominent comic performers and directed films for the studio.
American comedy film: A motion-picture tradition in the United States that uses humor through performance, narrative, or visual form. Sennett helped shape the visual conventions of American screen comedy.
Keystone Cops: A troupe of inept policemen featured in slapstick comedies produced by Keystone Studios. The troupe became the most recognizable recurring creation of Sennett’s studio.
Film editing: The selection and arrangement of shots to shape a motion picture’s time, space, and meaning. Fast cutting helped Sennett turn chases and collisions into escalating comic sequences.
Biograph Company: An American motion-picture company that produced films during cinema’s early decades. Sennett worked at Biograph before founding Keystone Studios.
Ben Turpin: An American silent-film comedian recognized for his crossed eyes and physical comic performances. Turpin’s screen persona was developed in the slapstick world Sennett cultivated.
Buster Keaton: An American silent-film comedian and filmmaker known for physical precision and an impassive screen persona. Keaton’s comic filmmaking developed within the broader silent-comedy culture Sennett helped establish.