With The Kid, debut director Charlie Chaplin finally tested his theory that audiences would embrace a combination of "slapstick and sentiment." Although people advised Chaplin against this mix of humor and melodrama, the film was well-received and Chaplin included sentimentality in his subsequent slapstick films.
A style of comedic film popular in the early 1900s before sound accompanied moving images, slapstick derives its name from a device clowns use in pantomime performances to make a slapping noise. The physical slapstick, a simple combination of two pieces of wood joined at one end, has its origins in commedia dell'arte, an early Italian form of professional theater. Considered one of the earliest special effects, the slapstick let performers strike each other in a way that would transfer the impact of a blow to creating a loud smacking noise rather than harming the performer being struck.
The physical device became synonymous with a brand of physical performance in which comedic violence and faked accidents produce laughs. Early examples of slapstick comedy include Shakespeare plays that feature scenes in which characters chase each other with slapsticks, and Punch and Judy puppet shows, in which Punch routinely hits other characters with a slapstick. The slapstick became an integral component of British music hall, a type of public theater that involved a variety of performance styles.
As a child in the late 1800s, Charlie Chaplin performed in British music hall performances under Fred Karno, a slapstick pioneer who developed a style of sketch comedy that eschewed dialogue in favor of physical gags. During the silent era of the early 1900s, Chaplin became famous for his signature slapstick character, The Tramp, who engages in humiliating pratfalls and bouts of comedic violence without the need of a slapstick. Ironically, the silent medium meant the slapstick from which the genre got its name could not be heard. However, the absurd and exaggerated violence of the genre survived, becoming a key motif in Marx Brothers films and iconic cartoons produced by Disney and Warner Brothers. Contemporary examples of slapstick include the Home Alone films and Rowan Atkinson's Mr. Bean.
