#keystone comedy

The Masquerader (1914) Charlie Chaplin

The Masquerader  is a 1914 film directed by and starring Charlie Chaplin. The film was produced by Mack Sennett and set at Keystone Studios; Fatty Arbuckle, Chester Conklin, Charles Murray, Minta Durfee and the other Keystone stars play themselves. 

These kinds of self-referential films, where a new actor was compared with his more experienced and established colleagues, were typical of Keystone as of other productions, think, for example of Chaplin's earlier film A Film Johnnie or the future His New Job, Behind the Screen, whose plots are very similar to each other.

The Masquerader is the second of three films in which Charlie Chaplin plays a female role; the first had been A Busy Day and the third will be A Woman.

More often it will be Jess Dandy who will play the comic female roles in Chaplin's films, for example that of the cook in Dough and Dynamite, here we will see him instead in men's clothes as the villain.

Themes such as homosexuality were considered scabrous and therefore unprintable by cinema, and only the comedy genre could be alluded to through the play of transvestism and the filter of laughter. 

Top 3 photos - Keystone film "Mabel at the Wheel", publicity photos for documentary "Funniest Man in the World". 

"Caught in a Cabaret (1914)

Interesting and clever poster with scenes from the film.

A beautiful poster by Maco Comedies for a 1920’s reissue and retitle of Keystone’s “Mabel’s Married Life”.