Max Linder

Known for ActingBorn 1883-12-16Died 1925-11-01Cavernes, Saint-Loubès, Gironde, France

Although all too frequently neglected by fans of silent comedy, Max Linder is in many ways as important a figure as Charles Chaplin, Buster Keaton, or Harold Lloyd, not least because he predated (and influenced) them all by several years, and was largely responsible for the creation of the classic style of silent slapstick comedy. He started out as an actor in the French theatre, but after making his screen debut in 1905 he quickly became an enormously famous and successful film comedian on both sides of the Atlantic, thanks to his character "Max", a top-hatted dandy. By 1912, he was the highest-paid film star in the world, with an unprecedented salary of one million francs. He began to direct films in 1911 and showed equal facility behind the camera, but his career suffered an almost terminal blow when he was called up to fight in World War I. He was gassed, and the illness that resulted would blight his career. Although offered a contract in America, recurring ill-health meant that his US films had little of the sparkle of his early French work, and a brief attempt to revive his career by making films for the recently-formed United Artists (one of whose founders, of course, was Chaplin) in the early 1920s came to little, although these later films are now regarded as classics. He returned to France and killed himself in a suicide pact with his wife in 1925.Read more

Movies & web series

Le Petit Café

Le duel de Max

Max a un duel

Comment Max fait le tour du monde

Max est distrait

The Puzzle

Phial of Poison

A Drama in Seaville

The Man in the Silk Hat

Encyclopédie audiovisuelle du cinéma

Maxim's Porter

Charlie Chaplin, The Genius of Liberty

Max asthmatique

Max émule de Tartarin

Une ruse de mari

Max se marie

Birth of the Tramp

Max, médecin malgré lui

Max devrait porter des bretelles

Max Wishes He Hadn't

Le billet doux

Un pari original

The Adventures of Tartarin the Younger

The Gentleman Thief

Laugh with Max Linder

Attempted Suicide

Easter Parade

Par habitude

Max Linder Visits Charlie Chaplin

Max's Latest Hobby

Max: Jockey for Love

Max Linder Does All the Sports

Max amoureux de la teinturière

The Effects of Pills

A Conquest

Noisy Neighbors

First Night Out

Unforeseen Meeting

Be My Wife

Seven Years Bad Luck

Max: Boxer By Love

Au secours !

Max in Monaco

Max in the Convent

Max Hates Cats

Max Linder's Appointment

The Three Must-Get-Theres

Max Juggles for Love