ABSTRACT

Exploring the interaction between comedy and colour, this essay studies three comedy series produced at pivotal moments in Mack Sennett's studio history: late silent films, Depression-era talking films, and small-gauge film prints for non-theatrical viewing released in 1935. In the uncertain days of late silent film, Sennett's reenactments of well-known art pieces combine refined culture with vernacular taste and transgressive parody, while his reports on nature's colourful subjects with naturalistic sounds and expert voices reinforce the orientation towards educational naturalism in Depression-era comedies. Colour film thus emerges as a technology that glosses earlier slapstick tropes with multilayered connotations and new visual appeal, bracing slapstick comedy in challenging times and ultimately ensuring its afterlife.

KEYWORDS

Mack Sennett, slapstick comedy, two-colour Technicolor, Sennett-color, Dunningcolor, Kodascope Film Library

ART AND NATURE

In the mid 1920s, despite the availability of Technicolor's two-colour system, very few Hollywood studios were willing to take the plunge into colour. One of the notable exceptions was Mack Sennett's comedy studio. This chapter explores the various ways colour was used in Mack Sennett comedies at three pivotal moments in studio history: in late silent films, in Depression-era talking films, and, finally, considering colour as an element of Sennett's legacy after the closure of the studio at the end of 1933. Each of these moments saw the release of a series of short comedies in which colour played a prominent role. Each comedy series used a different approach to colour with a specific set of subjects, a distinct film style, and a particular comedic tone. Furthermore, each release of such a colour comedy series came on a moment of transition for the comedy studio, inviting an exploration of the functions of colour in comedies in times of change.

To structure the study, I propose to employ the terminology that dominated the debate over the implementation of colour and divided the professional film world: the ‘art’ versus ‘nature’ dichotomy, sketched in a brief overview of the arguments. As contemporary resistance to colour film was based on aesthetic and production arguments, colour faced criticism from across the industry. Under the watchful eye of the American Society of Cinematographers, camerapeople fiercely campaigned against colour, feeling that the presence of a colour-camera operator and a colour consultant on the set imposed on their artistic reign.