The Silent Clowns

Download or read book The Silent Clowns written by Walter Kerr and published by Alfred A. Knopf. This book was released on 1975 with total page 392 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: 'A lavishly illustrated, affectionate treatment by one of the finest critics of our time...Kerr is more than a brilliant master of verbal description; he is a penetrating, lucid theorist. This book is as much about comedy as about movies, about eyes and ears and how and why we laugh.'-Thomas Wills, Chicago Tribune Book World

Download or read book Silent Comedy written by Paul Merton and published by Random House. This book was released on 2010-01-26 with total page 370 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: On the surface it may seem slightly surprising that a master of verbal humour should also be a devotee of silent comedy, but Paul Merton is completely passionate about the early days of Hollywood comedy and the comic geniuses who dominated it. His knowledge is awesome - as anyone who watched his BBC 4 series Silent Clowns or attended the events he has staged nationwide will agree - his enthusiasm is infectious, and these qualities are to be found in abundance in his book. Starting with the very earliest pioneering short films, he traces the evolution of silent comedy through the 1900s and considers the works of the genre's greatest exponents - Buster Keaton, Charlie Chaplin, Laurel and Hardy and Harold Lloyd - showing not only how each developed in the course of their career but also the extent to which they influenced each other. At the same time, Paul brings a comedian's insight to bear on the art of making people laugh, and explores just how the great comic ideas, routines, gags and pratfalls worked and evolved. His first book for ten years, this is destined to be a classic.

Download or read book Silent Echoes written by John Bengtson and published by . This book was released on 2000 with total page 244 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Silent Echoes: Discovering Early Hollywood Through the Films of Buster Keaton is an epic look at a genius at work and at a Hollywood that no longer exists. Painstakingly researching the locations used in Buster Keaton's classic silent films, author John Bengtson combines images from Keaton's movies with archival photographs, historic maps, and scores of dramatic "then" and "now" photos. In the process, Bengtson reveals dozens of locations that lay undiscovered for nearly 80 years. Part time machine, part detective story, Silent Echoes presents a fresh look at the matchless Keaton at work, as well as a captivating glimpse of Hollywood's most romantic era. More than a book for film, comedy, or history buffs, Silent Echoes appeals to anyone fascinated with solving puzzles or witnessing the awesome passage of time.

Download or read book The Silent Comedians written by Richard Dyer MacCann and published by American Movies: The First Thi. This book was released on 1993 with total page 256 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: MacCann features Mack Sennett, Charlie Chaplin, Buster Keaton, Harold Lloyd, and Harry Langdon in this guide to the lives and works of the most important silent comedy movie-makers in America--the fourth in his acclaimed series, American Movies: The First Thirty Years. In twenty-eight articles reprinted from various sources, twenty-five contributors show how these five artists struggled in early years to find themselves, rise above limited circumstances, and make their entries into production at a time when Hollywood was the new frontier of the twentieth century. For each artist, MacCann includes some kind of statement by the artist himself about comic goals and methods. Contributors include James Agee, Samuel Gill, Penelope Houston, Theodore Huff, Janet E. Lorenz, Donald McCaffrey, Charles J. Maland, Daniel Moews, Graham Petrie, David Robinson, Michael Roemer, Robert E. Sherwood, Anthony Slide, William Schelly, and others. MacCann's introduction eloquently discusses the value of comedy and laments the critical tendency to prefer tragedy: ..".the jolly fat clowns of comedy must more than ever be critically stretched to conform with lanky and lugubrious Hamlets in order to be worthy of praise. The celebration of the sad clown is a triumph of philosophy over art."

Download or read book Comic Venus written by Kristen Anderson Wagner and published by Wayne State University Press. This book was released on 2018-03-05 with total page 424 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Examines the social and historical significance of women’s contributions to American silent film comedy. For many people the term "silent comedy" conjures up images of Charlie Chaplin's Little Tramp, Buster Keaton's Stoneface, or Harold Lloyd hanging precariously from the side of a skyscraper. Even people who have never seen a silent film can recognize these comedians at a glance. But what about the female comedians? Gale Henry, Louise Fazenda, Colleen Moore, Constance Talmadge—these and numerous others were wildly popular during the silent film era, appearing in countless motion pictures and earning top salaries, and yet their names have been almost entirely forgotten. As a consequence, recovering their history is all the more compelling given that they laid the foundation for generations of funny women, from Lucille Ball to Carol Burnett to Tina Fey. These women constitute an essential and neglected sector of film history, reflecting a turning point in women's social and political history. Their talent and brave spirit continues to be felt today, and Comic Venus: Women and Comedy in American Silent Film seeks to provide a better understanding of women's experiences in the early twentieth century and to better understand and appreciate the unruly and boundary-breaking women who have followed. The diversity and breadth of archival materials explored in Comic Venus illuminate the social and historical period of comediennes and silent film. In four sections, Kristen Anderson Wagner enumerates the relationship between women and comedy, beginning with the question of why historically women weren't seen as funny or couldn't possibly be funny in the public and male eye, a question that persists even today. Wagner delves into the idea of women's "delicate sensibilities," which presumably prevented them from being funny, and in chapter two traces ideas about feminine beauty and what a woman should express versus what these comedic women did express, as Wagner notes, "comediennes challenged the assumption that beauty was a fundamental component of ideal femininity." In chapter three, Wagner discusses how comediennes such as Clara Bow, Marie Dressler, and Colleen Moore used humor to gain recognition and power through performances of sexuality and desire. Women comedians presented "sexuality as fun and playful, suggesting that personal relationships could be fluid rather than stable." Chapter four examines silent comediennes' relationships to the modern world and argues that these women exemplified modernity and new womanhood. The final chapter of Comic Venus brings readers to understand comediennes and their impact on silent-era cinema, as well as their lasting influence on later generations of funny women. Comic Venus is the first book to explore the overlooked contributions made by comediennes in American silent film. Those with an interest in film and representations of femininity in comedy will be fascinated by the analytical connections and thoroughly researched histories of these women and their groundbreaking movements in comedy and stage.

Download or read book Specters of Slapstick and Silent Film Comediennes written by Maggie Hennefeld and published by Columbia University Press. This book was released on 2018-03-27 with total page 359 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Women explode out of chimneys and melt when sprayed with soda water. Feminist activists play practical jokes to lobby for voting rights, while overworked kitchen maids dismember their limbs to finish their chores on time. In early slapstick films with titles such as Saucy Sue, Mary Jane’s Mishap, Jane on Strike, and The Consequences of Feminism, comediennes exhibit the tensions between joyful laughter and gendered violence. Slapstick comedy often celebrates the exaggeration of make-believe injury. Unlike male clowns, however, these comic actresses use slapstick antics as forms of feminist protest. They spontaneously combust while doing housework, disappear and reappear when sexually assaulted, or transform into men by eating magic seeds—and their absurd metamorphoses evoke the real-life predicaments of female identity in a changing modern world. Specters of Slapstick and Silent Film Comediennes reveals the gender politics of comedy and the comedic potentials of feminism through close consideration of hundreds of silent films. As Maggie Hennefeld argues, comedienne catastrophes provide disturbing but suggestive images for comprehending gendered social upheavals in the early twentieth century. At the same time, slapstick comediennes were crucial to the emergence of film language. Women’s flexible physicality offered filmmakers blank slates for experimenting with the visual and social potentials of cinema. Specters of Slapstick and Silent Film Comediennes poses major challenges to the foundations of our ideas about slapstick comedy and film history, showing how this combustible genre blows open age-old debates about laughter, society, and gender politics.

Download or read book The Silent Clowns written by Walter Kerr and published by Alfred A. Knopf. This book was released on 1975 with total page 394 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: 'A lavishly illustrated, affectionate treatment by one of the finest critics of our time...Kerr is more than a brilliant master of verbal description; he is a penetrating, lucid theorist. This book is as much about comedy as about movies, about eyes and ears and how and why we laugh.'-Thomas Wills, Chicago Tribune Book World