Реферат: Max Linder

Fernandei. Linder spent the early part of his life in America, where

his father had gone to plant vineyards. When the business failed the

family returned to France and Max completed his education there. He

was a natural athlete (once pole-vault champion of South West

France), an ability that was to stand him in good stead in the more

energetic of his comedy capers on screen. Leaving high school in

1901, he studied drama for two years before beginning a stage career

under his real name. But by 1905 he was playing minor film roles as

Max Linder, progressing to comic leads by 1907 and international fame

by 1910. His style of comedy somewhat foreshadowed that of Chaplin

(one of his greatest fans) and his dapper, disaster-prone dandy would

later prove a useful prototype for Charley Chase. These were the

golden years for Linder, who directed all his own work from 1911 to

1917. But the war changed everything. Linder not only received severe

shrapnel wounds but was the victim of serious gassing, which left him

with moods of black melancholia in between patches of inspiration.

With his work output and his popularity in France diminishing, a

partially recovered Linder accepted an offer to work in America in

1916. After three of a projected run of 12 two-reelers, however, his

health broke down again. Returning to the continent after a dire

battle with double pneumonia, the ailing Max entered a convalescent

home in Switzerland for a year. Refusing to retire despite continued

fragile health, Linder returned to America, formed his own production

company there and made three feature films which contain much of his

best work. The first, Seven Years Bad Luck, contains an extended

sequence involving a mirror with no glass which predates several such

scenes with other prominent American comedians, notably The Marx

Brothers in Duck Soup. The last of the three, The Three

Must-Get-Theres, a triumphant parody of Dumas’s famous