University of Virginia Library

Tempered Style

In a style tempered by a deep
and moving affection for the silent
comics, Agee carefully delineated
some of the factors which contributed
to their unequaled success.
More important, Agee gave to those
of us who never saw them firsthand
a series of masterly portraits of the
great comics themselves. It is the
descriptions of Charlie Chaplin,
Harold Lloyd, Buster Keaton, and
Harry Langdon that render more
understandable - and recognizable
- the dilemmas of Benjamin
Braddock and the beauty of Dustin
Hoffman's portrayal.

For while many critics and
many more young people pointed
to the "alienation complex" or the
"generation gap" or the "plastic
society" as reasons for the success
of the film, a more traditional
explanation can be offered on the
basis of Agee's archetypes. Agee's
thesis is that comedy is the creation
of the comic character and that the
character's relation to his environment
creates both the real amusement
and the audience identification.
The exceptional comic
character is the one whose universality
is most easily accepted by the
audience, the one who reflects
man's dilemma, but who does so in
an extreme - and thereby laughable
- fashion. Such were Chaplin,
Lloyd, Keaton, and Langdon. And
such, I add here, was Dustin
Hoffman in The Graduate.