Over the last two weeks, we have been looking at the work of Buster Keaton and Charlie Chaplin, two major film comedians (both directors and actors) from the early years of film. For this essay, you are to write an interpretive essay on a film by Chaplin or Keaton—one that we have not seen in class. That is, you must develop an idea of what you think that film is about, and show us the evidence from the film that supports your interpretation. You will need, as such, a clear thesis that has depth and precision. Every scene you select from the film to support your thesis should show something that is both consistent across scenes (and in support of the general thesis) and also different from the others in crucial respects. That is to say, you should assume that each scene in the film contributes a different piece to a larger idea, and that the filmmaker is not repeating himself identically from scene to scene.
As major comedians of early cinema, there has been a lot of scholarship devoted to Keaton and Chaplin. In addition to developing an idea about the film—one that can be stated in the form of a thesis—you must distinguish your claim about the film from at least three other key pieces of scholarship on the film you are dealing with. What this means is that you will have to identify the claim that the writer is making and show how your own reading shows us something different, even if it is relatable in some way to what has already been shown. Your sources must come from peer-reviewed scholarly sources. No exceptions. You can draw on any of the reading from class, but only as an addition to the three sources that you turned up in the course of your research. The paper must have a title, and be formatted according to the Chicago Manual of Style, with endnotes.