The Theater and Cinema of Buster Keaton

By Robert Knopf

Book Overview

Famous for their stunts, gags, and images, Buster Keaton's silent films have enticed everyone from Hollywood movie fans to the surrealists, such as Dal? and Bu?uel. Here Robert Knopf offers an unprecedented look at the wide-ranging appeal of Keaton's genius, considering his vaudeville roots and his ability to integrate this aesthetic into the techniques of classical Hollywood cinema in the 1920s. When young Buster was being hurled about the stage by his comically irate father in the family's vaudeville act, The Three Keatons, he was perfecting his acrobatic skills, timing, visual humor, and trademark "stone face." As Knopf demonstrates, such theatrics would serve Keaton well as a film director and star. By isolating elements of vaudeville within works that have previously been considered "classical," Knopf reevaluates Keaton's films and how they function.

The book combines vivid visual descriptions and illustrations that enable us to see Keaton at work staging his memorable images and gags, such as a three-story wall collapsing on him (Steamboat Bill, Jr., 1928) and an avalanche of boulders chasing him down a mountainside (Seven Chances, 1925). Knopf explains how Keaton's stunts and gags served as fanciful departures from his films' storylines and how they nonetheless reinforced a strange sense of reality, that of a machine-like world with a mind of its own. In comparison to Chaplin and Lloyd, Keaton made more elaborate use of natural locations. The scene in The Navigator, for example, where Buster brandishes a swordfish to fend off another swordfish derives much of its power from actually being shot under water. Such "hyper-literalism" was but one element of Keaton's films that inspired the surrealists.

Exploring Keaton's influence on Salvador Dal?, Luis Bu?uel, Federico Garc?a Lorca, and Robert Desnos, Knopf suggests that Keaton's achievement extends beyond Hollywood into the avant-garde. The book concludes with an examination of Keaton's late-career performances in Gerald Potterton's The Railrodder and Samuel Beckett's Film, and locates his legacy in the work of Jackie Chan, Blue Man Group, and Bill Irwin.

• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0691004420
• ISBN13: 9780691004426
• Release Date: August 1999
• Publisher: Princeton University Press
• Length: 232 Pages
• Weight: 0.78 lbs.
• Dimensions: 0.6" x 6.2" x 9.2"

Customer Reviews

For intelligent readers only

Professional theatre and film people and scholars tend to like this book. It's taught in university courses around the country. It's a scholarly book by a scholarly press. Those who reject it for its depth and detail probably felt misled into believing it would be a fun fan book. It's a serious scholarly book and one for theatre professionals. For some reason, kids seem to like it, too. Know what you're buying, and you won't be disappointed. It remains the only serious scholarly book with something new to say about Keaton since the 1960s.

Just buy it!

If your a Keaton fan or a fan of the silent era -buy this book!

this wasn't a great book

buster keaton rocks my socks! the book was very complicated to read. but the pictures rocked1 THAT'S WHY I Give it a 5 out of 5. i have all his silents. but i don't have anytime to watch them anymore. oh well, but hey jesus is coming back soon!. amen. i will be better in heaven then here.

Fun Book, Great Pictures

(...), so this book was tough to understand at times, but the stuff on Buster Keaton's childhood was great. The photos are really cool and reading about how the old movies were made got me to go through my dad's collection of videos (he has the box set) and watch my favorites again. It's a beautiful looking book, too, so I know I'll keep it and read it again.

Blows away the competition

This book is super smart and cool. It took me a while to get through it, but I learned a ton about filmmaking and theater and clowning. And the pictures are awesome! My dad raised me on Keaton, and this was like a dream with memories.