Page "Comedy film" Paragraph 40

Comic films began to appear in significant numbers during the era of silent films, roughly 1895 to 1930.

The visual humour of many of these silent films relied on slapstick and burlesque.

A very early comedy short was Watering the Gardener ( 1895 ) by the Lumière brothers.

In American film, the most prominent comic actors of the silent era were Charlie Chaplin ( although born in England, his success was principally in the U. S .), Buster Keaton and Harold Lloyd.

In his native France and throughout the world, Max Linder was a major comic feature and might qualify as the first true film star.