FASCINATION ABOUT THE SILENT COMEDY GENIUS AND LAVISH LIFE

Charlie Chaplin manufactured audiences chortle, but he also produced us experience. His movies normally balanced delicately, as poet Lawrence Ferlinghetti observes, on “a fine line involving sentiment and sentimentality.”  Buster Keaton might not have elicited as much laughter or emotion as Chaplin, but his comedy was at the least as creative