LAUGH WITH MAX LINDER

Details

• Release Year: 1921
• Genre: Classic, Comedy
• Plot: 'Max Linder was the first film comedian of world stature,' wrote Walter Kerr in The Silent Clowns. Charlie Chaplin dedicated a picture of himself with the inscription 'To the one and only Max - The Professor - from his Disciple.' 'Max Linder is one of the funniest men I have ever seen,' said Richard Donner, director of the Omen, Superman and Lethal Weapon 1, 2, 3 and 4. 'He's astonishing.'; ; In Hollywood, Max Linder wrote, produced and starred in SEVEN YEARS BAD LUCK seen on this DVD complete for the first time since its 1921 release and digitally mastered from an original 35mm tinted print. The hilarious misadventured begin with Max's butler, chasing a maid, breaks an expensive full-length mirror. The buttler persuades the cook, who somewhat resembles Max, to stand behind the frame and be Max's reflection. This gag, developed by Max, has become a classic of film and even television - borrowed by everyone from the Marx Brothers to Abbott and Costello to Red Skelton. In another brilliant sequence, Max flees from the police into a lion's cage, where he proceeds to make friends with the hungry beast. It's the clear inspiration for Charlie Chaplin's very similar scene in The Circus. SEVEN YEARS BAD LUCK is accompanied by a new small-orchestra score compiled by Robert Israel using authentic period arrangements of silent film music.; ; This DVD also includes four of Max's early short sketches made in France: TROUBLES OF A GRASSWIDOWER, LOVE'S SURPRISES, MAX TAKES A PICTURE and MAX SETS THE STYLE. All are digitally mastered from excellent film elements - one of them a hand-colored vintage print - and three are accompanied by Robert Israel at the Fotoplayer, a combination organ/player-piano/sound-effects instrument developed for nickelodeons when these films were new.; ; An excerpt from BE MY WIFE, Max's second American feature, is another pleasure, and finally, a bonus sequence of 'candid' footage showing Max (in costume for SEVEN YEARS BAD LUCK) clowning around Maurice Tourneur, another transplanted Frenchman and a premierdirector of the era.; ; Here indeed is a wonderful treasure of Max Linder, 'the man of a million laughs!'; ; Produced for DVD by David Shepard;
• Cast: Max Linder
• Director: Max Linder
• Runtime: 1:57
• Company: Film Preservation Associates
• Media Format: movie