Seven Years Bad Luck

A silent comedy directed by and starring Max Linder, the French comedian whom Charlie Chaplin called "my professor." Linder plays a wealthy young man who breaks a mirror and becomes convinced he is cursed with seven years of bad luck. His attempts to avoid catastrophe only create more chaos, culminating in a famous sequence where his servant, believing Max has been murdered, tries to dispose of a "body" that is actually Max himself. The film's most celebrated scene—a split-body gag where Max appears to be severed in half by a closing door—was later echoed in Keaton's Sherlock Jr. Linder's elegant, understated comic style was a major influence on Chaplin and the entire silent comedy tradition. The film is in the public domain.