The Extraordinary World of Charley Bowers

Charley Bowers was one of the most ingenious talents of the silent film and early sound film eras, but is one of the least remembered by modern audiences. This collection of 17 restored short films spanning 1917-40 provides a long-overdue appreciation of this creative artist’s distinctive approach to filmmaking. Originally a cartoonist and animator, Bowers moved into live-action productions that mixed stop-motion animation with complex mechanically-inspired humor. In shorts including Egged On (1926) and Many a Slip (1927), Bowers tries to improve on the food chain by creating an unbreakable egg and a no-slip banana peel, respectively. As a performer, Bowers’s diminutive stature and mostly deadpan approach to outlandish physical situations recalls Buster Keaton’s screen persona, but also predated Ernie Kovacs in creating surreal sight gags that boggled the imagination: a basket of eggs in Egged On hatch to reveal a swarm of miniature automobiles, while a pussy willow in Now You Tell One (1926) grows full-sized cats. Bowers’s sound work—including It’s a Bird (1930), featuring a metal-eating avian—shows his ability to incorporate clever audio elements into his cinematic trickery. Extras include the documentary short Looking for Charley Bowers (which details how French film archivist Raymond Borde rediscovered Bowers’s long-lost films in the 1960s and championed his cause), an image gallery, and a booklet with an essay by Video Librarian contributor Sean Axmaker. Highly recommended. (P. Hall)