The comedy and aesthetics of the Chaplin films make a significant contribution to raising the cinema from a free act to an art form.
By taming the slapstick and giving the film comedy deep, Chaplin makes it a serious genre. With a new film-scientific approach, the author challenges the mystery about the comedy of the Chaplin films.
She discusses her aesthetics in selected comic theories, such as Henri Bergson and Arthur Koestler, as a master of film theory, such as Walter Benjamin and Siegfried Kracauer, and illuminates the latest state of Chaplin research.
Above all, she lets Charles Chaplin himself speak. Numerous detailed scenes from a large number of films illustrate the development of the chaplinesken comedy, which to this day characterizes our humor and our view of the world.