Watch the Only Time Charlie Chaplin & Buster Keaton Performed Together On-Screen (1952)

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Char­lie Chap­lin and Buster Keaton were the two biggest com­e­dy stars of the silent era, but as it hap­pened, they nev­er shared the screen until well into the reign of sound. In fact, their col­lab­o­ra­tion did­n’t come about until 1952, the same year that Sin­gin’ in the Rain dra­ma­tized the already dis­tant-feel­ing advent…

When Salvador Dalí Created a Chilling Anti-Venereal Disease Poster During World War II

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As a New York City sub­way rid­er, I am con­stant­ly exposed to pub­lic health posters. More often than not these fea­ture a pho­to of a whole­some-look­ing teen whose sober expres­sion is meant to con­vey hind­sight regret at hav­ing tak­en up drugs, dropped out of school, or for­gone con­doms. They’re well-intend­ed, but bor­ing. I…

Bob Dylan Explains Why Music Has Been Getting Worse

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One often hears that there’s no mon­ey to be made in music any­more. But then, there was no mon­ey to be made in music when Bob Dylan start­ed his career either—at least accord­ing to Bob Dylan. “If you could just sup­port your­self, you were doin’ good,” he says in an inter­view clip includ­ed in

How the Moving Image Has Become the Medium of Record: Part 2

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East­man giv­ing Edi­son the first roll of movie film, via Wiki­me­dia Com­mons

This piece picks up where Part 1 of Peter Kauf­man’s arti­cle left off yes­ter­day…

The epis­te­mo­log­i­cal night­mare we seem to be in, bom­bard­ed over our screens and speak­ers with so many mov­ing-image mes­sages per day, false and true,…

When Charlie Chaplin First Spoke Onscreen: How His Famous Great Dictator Speech Came About

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Char­lie Chap­lin came up in vaude­ville, but it was silent film that made him the most famous man in the world. His mas­tery of that form primed him to feel a degree of skep­ti­cism about sound when it came along: in 1931, he called the silent pic­ture “a uni­ver­sal means of expres­sion,” where­as the talkies,…