MOVIES AT EPPING - 20 January 2024 - Christie Theatre Organ

with live Christie Theatre Organ accompaniment (Graeme Costin), 80 minutes.
Tickets: $25/$20
(T 0419 267 318)


Kid’s Auto Race (1914)
7 minutes

Charlie Chaplin entered the movies in 1914. In his 110th Anniversary year, we present one of his earliest appearances. Here he teases and interferes with a cameraman trying to film a race with children in billy carts. It is this second film in which Charlie appears dressed in his familiar garb: pants too big and baggy, the coat too tight, the hat too small, and the boots too small. This first outing for the Tramp to the public is described in Charlie’s autobiography: “….I had no idea of the character. But the moment I was dressed, the clothes and the make-up made me feel the person he was. I began to know him, and by the time I walked on to the stage he was fully born.”


Steamboat Bill, Jr. (1928)
69 minutes

“No doubt the most recognized name and face of silent comedy next to Charlie Chaplin is Buster Keaton, whose films are still cherished and admired by fans and film critics alike down to this day. Affectionately nicknamed ‘The Great Stone Face’ because of his world-famous trademark deadpan expression, many modern-day scholars of film history believe Keaton was the greatest comedy master of them all.

Raised in a family of vaudeville performers, Buster quickly rose to fame when he entered the world of moving pictures in 1917 doing slapstick comedies with other established stars like Roscoe ‘Fatty’ Arbuckle.

Steamboat Bill, Jr., a classic included in “1001 Movies You Must See Before You Die”, ranks as one of his most outstanding and successful films and rates as one of the best loved and respected comic masterpieces overall.

One of the many reasons why Steamboat Bill, Jr. is so highly acclaimed today is that it features one of the most famous and breathtaking stunts in film history. Keaton always carefully calculated and choreographed his stunts and physical gags, and a shining example of his skills is a moment during the astounding scenes of the windstorm tearing through the town, blowing cars, furniture and houses around. When the side of a house is blown over, Buster is standing at the exact spot where an open window of the falling façade passes over him, leaving him untouched, with his usual deadpan expression.

Besides astonishing action and stunts, Steamboat Bill, Jr. also has great charm in its setting along the Mississippi River, and colourful characters such as the father and son who are complete opposites of each other. Buster, who plays the sensitive college boy son, Bill Jr, reluctantly learns the river boating trade from his tough and grouchy father, but is more interested in the daughter of his father’s riverboat rival, which leads to escalating antics, culminating in the amazing windstorm scenes.”

Barbara Underwood