Max Linder - Legacy

Legacy

After Max Linder's death, Chaplin dedicated one of his films: "For the unique Max, the great master - his disciple Charles Chaplin". In the ensuing years, Linder was relegated to little more than a footnote in film history until 1963 when a Max Linder compilation film titled Laugh with Max Linder premiered at the Venice Film Festival and was theatrically released. The film was a compilation of Linder's last three films made in Hollywood and its release was supervised by his daughter, Maud Linder. In 1983 Maud Linder made a documentary film titled The Man in the Silk Hat, about Linder's life and career. It was screened out of competition at the 1983 Cannes Film Festival. In 1992, Maud Linder published a book about Linder in France, Max Linder was my father and in 2008 she received the Prix Henri Langlois for her work to promote her father's legacy. In his honor, Lycée Max Linder, a public school in the city of Libourne in the Gironde département near his birthplace was given his name.

Linder's influence on film comedy and particularly on slapstick films is that the genre shifted from the "knockabout" comedies made by such people as Mack Sennett and André Deed to a more subtle, refined and character driven medium that would later be dominated by Chaplin, Buster Keaton, Harold Lloyd and others. Linder's influence on Chaplin is apparent both from Chaplin sometimes borrowing gags or entire plot-lines from Linder's films, as well as from a famous signed photo that Chaplin sent Linder which read: "To Max, the Professor, from his disciple, Charlie Chaplin." Mack Sennett and King Vidor also signaled out Linder as a great influence on their directing careers. His high society characterizations as "Max" also influenced such actors as Adolphe Menjou and Raymond Griffith.

In his heyday, Linder had two major rivals in France: Léonce Perret and Charles Prince. Perrett later became a successful director, but his early career included a series of "Léonce" slapstick shorts that were popular but nowhere near the stature of Linder's films. Charles Prince, on the other hand, was gaining popularity during his career and was nearly equal to Linder by the beginning of World War I. Prince's screen persona was "Rigadin", who like "Max" was a bumbling bourgeois socialite who always got into trouble. Both Linder and Prince were employed by Pathé in the early 1910s and they often used the same story lines, sets and directors. Years after both comedians' careers were long over, Linder has received several revivals in interest while Charles Prince remains mostly forgotten.