Keaton Flashcards
One Week - mise en scene
. Symmetry: action in the middle - ordered shots make action more absurd
. Lack of symmetry: the house exterior is asymmetrical, surrealist nightmare of a construction - dreamlike
. The living house: conspiring against Buster
. Breaking fourth wall: Keaton’s bride in the bath
. Huge props + visual spectacle: verisimilitude
. Little Buster vs massive co stars
One Week - Editing
. Crossfade: between church bell and wedding scene
. Iris shots: draw attention to detail in films
. Cross cutting: between Big Hank + Buster - builds up anticipation during piano moving sequence
. Editing pace picks up as action intensifies
. Time + space manipulated for comic affect - a night passes and Buster + wife are still sat outside
One Week - Performance
. Buster’s bride (Sybil Seely): stereotypical domestic role, attractive supporting character
. Buster: stone faced, under performs in contrast to typical performers of period - unemotional
. Supporting cast: tend to be unsubtle, can tell who antagonists are
The High Sign - Cinematography
. Extreme close ups to read newspaper ad
. Deep focus: see gag unfold - long shot of character running away from Buster
. Stationary cam
. Mostly long shots
The High Sign - mise en scene
. Objects with lives of their own: endlessly unfolding newspaper, trap doors, gun that won’t shoot straight
. Little Buster: dwarfed by objects and co stars - little man constantly up against the odds
. Surrealism: punctuates the plot - Buster + newspaper
. Symmetry + spectacular plot: ‘doll’s house’ set - visual excitement
The High Sign - Editing
. Iris shot: see what characters are looking at
. Vignette effect when introducing girl used to establish love interest
. Cross cutting: sequence in shooting gallery when training the dog
. Double exposure gag: footage of donkey kicking is overlaid onto close up of poisoned coffee to say it has a ‘kick’
The High Sign - Performance
. Stone face: regardless of obstacles, doesn’t mug for camera - expects audience to get jokes, subtly
. Less subtle co-stars: the “blinking buzzards”
. Buster’s love interest generic beauty: demure, in need of saving
. The drunk: wanders into shooting gallery - regularly appeared in vaudeville + music hall shows of the day
The High Sign - Sound
. Visual word gags - intertitles: no synchronised sounds but word gags are used
. Visual sound gags: we can ‘hear’ dog bark and gun shot when we see them
The Scarecrow - Cinematography
. Symmetry: scene in house during breakfast - mixing order + disorder/surreal, dog chasing Buster on wall
. Deep focus: action moves from cam - Buster escaping dog, action moves towards cam - motorbike in water
The Scarecrow - Rube Goldberg Influence
. Goldberg was a comic illustrator, his inventions were published in US newspapers in early 20th century as a comment on increasing no. of devices over complicating people’s lives.
. The breakfast sequence with all its gadgets
The Scarecrow - Mise en scene
. Multi purpose gadgets: almost every item in breakfasts sequence has a dual purpose
. Man and machine: nod to rapid mechanisation of early 20th century - threshing machine
. Dogs: terrorise Buster as in the High Sign
. Inanimate objects: surreal, dreamlike - the scarecrow
. Modes of transport: fascinated Keaton, cars new
The Scarecrow - Editing
. Special effect: sunrise: film opens w visual joke
. Cross cutting: builds jokes - waste from breakfast
. White vignette effect: connotes love in romantic sequence between Buster and girl
. Panning: horse
. Iris shots
The Scarecrow - Performance
. Stone face - hapless, always reacting to obstacles: breaks fourth wall
. Even expressionless when he gets married
. Things happen to him, he doesn’t seek them out
. Stereotypes: demure love interest, fat fool, angry dad
The Scarecrow - Sound
. Comic intertitles: the sun gag at the start
Cops - Cinematography
. Deep focus: scale of gags and real world setting - police chasing Buster
. Comic framing/cutting: looks like Buster is in prison - the reveal breaks 180 degree rule, cuts to behind him
. Bars between Buster + girl are social/economic not bc he’s incarcerated
. Framing - symmetry
Cops - Mise en scene
. Ends w intertitle of headstone inferring Buster’s death
. Cars: obsession w motor vehicles
. Animals: reliable source of frustration: dog and horse
. Surreal: Buster lighting cigarette with bomb
. Gadgets: Buster’s contraption to indicate in traffic
Cops - topical gag
. US John Romulus Brinkley fraudulently claimed to be a medical doctor who became known as the “goat gland doctor” after he achived international notoriety + great wealth through the xenotransplantation of goat testicles into humans
. Promoted it as a treatment for male impotence
. Scene with horse at doctors
Cops - Editing
. Stock footage: real police parades cut into film to create illusion of even bigger scale
. Same extras shot twice from slightly diff angles to suggest larger numbers of police
. Fade to black: visual gag as Buster sits down allowing fam to load his cart
. Frenetic editing, fast paced
Cops - Performance
. Extraordinary athleticism: real stunts
. Broad performances
. Buster maintains understated style
. “The birth of stunt work”
Gender: femininity
. Women as love interests or to promote conflict
. One Week: Sybil Seely is very much a co star, 2 person team building the house
. Seely predominantly domestic - cooks while he builds
. Arguably there to titillate (be looked at) - the bath sequence
Women as plot devices
. The Scarecrow: Seely plays love interest + provokes confrontation between Buster + rival - coy and graceful
. Buster’s intertitle: “i don’t care how she votes, I’m going to marry her” - women’s suffrage new in US
. In Cops, Virginia Fox is love interest - plot device
. The High Sign: Bartine Burkett as Miss Nicklenurser
Gender: masculinity
. Buster is childish, naive, frequently intimidated by other men + events outside of control like other male silent comedy stars
. Usually smallest male on screen
. Physically athletic - strength shown through stunts instead of traditional displays of masculinity
. Deconstruction of masculinity
American Masculinities: A historical encyclopedia
. Brett Carroll
. “Through exaggerated physical movements that created dramatic and comic narratives, these males stars offered viewers compelling, albeit fictional, versions of reality.”
. Carroll argues that the definitions of masculinity were “body centred”.
Social, artistic, and political contexts
. Start of age of modernity: growth in consumerism
. Keaton grew up without motor vehicles - fascination
. One Week inspired by Ford Motor Company’s 1919 doc Home Made which showed how Ford workers could build a pre-fabricated home in a week - Buster’s inability to build satirises this modern fad
. Keatons’s obsession w symmetry: art deco - shapes + inspo found in modern icons: ships, planes, trains
Cubism
. Major art movement of period - artists broke down traditional images into distinct areas or forms, creating abstract, fragmented images
. Keaton draws on this with the House in One Week
Realist vs Expressionist
. First films fell into these two broad groups
. Realist documented the ‘real’
. Expressionism expressed inner world of emotion rather than external reality - anti realist
. 1915-1930: Imagists and Expressionism dominates film industry
One Week (1920) : Realist
. 'Real' stunts . The calendar . Keaton: everyday man . The sets: real train, solid house - sense of scale . Transportation at time - cars, train . The wedding . The domestic life - eating, cooking, building . Long takes and long shots
One Week: Expressionist
. The house: moving, spinning . Breaking fourth wall . Carrying chimney, lying under piano . Car falling apart and making breakfast w car . Passage of time post storm . Sinking ceiling . Hank's head in the roof . Iris on 'directions'/close up
The High Sign (1921): Realist
. Thrown off the train, poverty . Sets + props: carousel, 'real' weapons, $, transport . Refs to organised crime - on the rise in the 1920s . Natural stunts . Buster is normal . Long shots and deep focus . The extras: normal people . Technology: the phone
The High Sign: Expressionist
. Newspaper getting bigger . Gang's make up + performance (over dramatic) . Donkey in the drink . Drunk caricature . Intertitles - alliteration . Shooting wrong/erratic . Doll's house set . Catching thrown bottle, hat landing on hat stand
The Scarecrow: Realist
. Transportation/machinery: threshing machine
. Stunts
. Animals - dog climbing ladder
. Toothache + solution: common issue of era
. Baking/domesticity + household items
. Prohibition ref: “empty as a saloon”
. Shots held for a long time, long shots, deep focus
The Scarecrow: Expressionist
. Rapid sun rise . The dual purpose of room and devices . Bending fence . Fired out of cannon . Dressing as scarecrow . Breaking fourth wall/exaggerated reactions . Priest officiating on bike/in the water . Speeding up in chase scene
Cops: Realist
. Wealth disparity . Contextual ref: goat gland doctor . Terrorism ref: wall street bombing in 1920 . Police parade - real footage . Animals: horse + cart (transport) . Stunts, extras
Cops: Expressionist
. Visual gag: Buster behind gate (breaking 180 rule)
. Passage of time: family packing up furniture
. Trying to flatten vase
. Indicate with boxing glove
. Absurd number of policemen chasing Buster
. Lighting cigarette with bomb
. Ladder as catapult/seesaw
Expressionist Films
. The first ones made up for lack of lavish budget by using set designs with wildly surreal, geometrically absurd angles, along with designs painted on walls and floors to represent lights, shadows and objects
Expressionist Film Plots
. Often dealt with madness, betrayal, and other ‘intellectual’ topics triggered by experiences of WWI (vs standard action: adventure + romantic films)
. This trend was a direct reaction against realism
. Its practitioners used extreme distortions in expression to show an inner emotional reality rather than what was on the surface
Andre Bazin and the Expressionist vs Realist debate
. French film critic, began working in 1943
. Thought cinema should reflect reality
. His new take competed w German Expressionism and Soviet Montage
. Advocated use of deep focus, wide shots, long takes
. Preferred ‘true continuity’ through mise en scene instead of experiments with editing + visual effects
Andre Bazin - opposition
. His views placed him in opposition to film theory of 20s and 30s which emphasised how cinema could manipulate reality
. The focus on objective reality, deep focus, + lack of montage are linked to his belief that the interpretation of a film/scene should be left to the spectator
Cinema styles foregrounding Keaton
. German Expressionist movement
. Soviet Montage film
. Both v expressionist
