The Strong Man

Frank Capra's feature directorial debut is a silent comedy built around the gentle, elfin persona of Harry Langdon. A meek Belgian soldier carries a letter and photograph from an American girl named Mary Brown through the trenches of World War I. After the war he travels to America to find her, falling in with a strongman act along the way. Langdon's comedy is the opposite of Keaton's athleticism or Chaplin's sentiment: he plays a bewildered innocent who survives by accident, and Capra's staging lets the slow burns land. The film was selected for the National Film Registry in 2007. It is now regarded as one of the finest silent comedies of the late 1920s. The film entered the public domain in the United States in 2022.