Silent Comedy

Author : Paul Merton
Publisher : Random House
ISBN 13 : 1409035662
Total Pages : 370 pages
Book Rating : 4.64/5 ( download)

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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.

Author : James Roots
Publisher : Rowman & Littlefield
ISBN 13 : 1442236507
Total Pages : 465 pages
Book Rating : 4.09/5 ( download)

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Download or read book The 100 Greatest Silent Film Comedians written by James Roots and published by Rowman & Littlefield. This book was released on 2014-10-23 with total page 465 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The silent film era featured some of the most revered names of on-screen comic performance, from Charlie Chaplin and Buster Keaton to Harold Lloyd, Douglas Fairbanks, and Laurel & Hardy. Besides these giants of cinema, however, there are other silent era performers—both leading actors and supporting players—who left an enduring legacy of laughter. In The 100 Greatest Silent Film Comedians, James Roots ranks the greatest performers based on a scorecard that measures each comic’s humor, timelessness, originality, and teamwork. Far more than just a listing, this is an idiosyncratic and entertaining review of the men and women who created the golden age of comedy. As a critic and deaf viewer, Roots brings a truly unique perspective to the evaluation of these performers and their work. He has viewed thousands of silent comedies and offers some assessments that run contrary to the standard list of performers. While many obvious names are placed in the top echelon, the author also champions performers who have been neglected, in part because their work has not been as visible. Each entry includes a filmography a scorecard an evaluation of the artist’s overall work an assessment of representative films DVD availability With the increased availability of films on DVD, as well as Internet access, more and more silent performers are being discovered by film fans. Supplemented by an appendix of comedians who missed the cut, as well as an annotated bibliography, The 100 Greatest Silent Film Comedians will be an invaluable resource to anyone wanting to know more about the brilliant entertainers of the silent era.

Author : Maggie Hennefeld
Publisher : Columbia University Press
ISBN 13 : 0231547064
Total Pages : 359 pages
Book Rating : 4.62/5 ( download)

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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.

Author : Steve Massa
Publisher : BearManor Media
ISBN 13 : 9781629331331
Total Pages : 644 pages
Book Rating : 4.33/5 ( download)

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Download or read book SLAPSTICK DIVAS written by Steve Massa and published by BearManor Media. This book was released on 2017-07 with total page 644 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Illustrated with 440 rare movie scene shots, formal portraits, candid behind the scenes photos, film frame enlargements, trade magazine advertisements, lobby cards, stage photographs, artist's renderings and caricatures, and casting guide entries.

Author : James Roots
Publisher : Rowman & Littlefield
ISBN 13 : 1442278250
Total Pages : 298 pages
Book Rating : 4.57/5 ( download)

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Download or read book 100 Essential Silent Film Comedies written by James Roots and published by Rowman & Littlefield. This book was released on 2017-05-11 with total page 298 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book celebrates 100 significant silent film comedies from around the globe, including The Circus, The General, Safety Last, and Steamboat Bill Jr. Each entry contains information about the cast and crew, production details, DVD availability, and an explanation of why the film is essential viewing.

Author : Kristen Anderson Wagner
Publisher : Wayne State University Press
ISBN 13 : 0814341039
Total Pages : 424 pages
Book Rating : 4.32/5 ( download)

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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: 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 a taste for 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.

Author : Walter Kerr
Publisher : Alfred A. Knopf
ISBN 13 :
Total Pages : 392 pages
Book Rating : 4.01/5 ( download)

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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

Author : Claudia Sassen
Publisher : McFarland
ISBN 13 : 147662027X
Total Pages : 264 pages
Book Rating : 4.75/5 ( download)

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Download or read book Larry Semon, Daredevil Comedian of the Silent Screen written by Claudia Sassen and published by McFarland. This book was released on 2015-10-27 with total page 264 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Prior to his premature death from tuberculosis in 1928, Larry Semon was one of the most popular comics on the silent screen. For a time he rivaled comedy legends Charlie Chaplin, Harold Lloyd and Buster Keaton for fame and fortune. The son of magician Professor Zera the Great, Semon participated in many of his father’s early performances. A talented youth, he worked as an illustrator and cartoonist before going into motion pictures with the Vitagraph Company. He soon became a Hollywood legend, responsible for his own stories, gags, acting and direction. The result of 30 years of research, this long overdue biography recognizes one of Hollywood’s most overlooked auteurs. The author draws on numerous articles and contacts with Semon’s family and friends, and screens many films previously believed to be lost.

Author : Alan Bilton
Publisher : Palgrave Macmillan
ISBN 13 : 9781137020246
Total Pages : 0 pages
Book Rating : 4.45/5 ( download)

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Download or read book Silent Film Comedy and American Culture written by Alan Bilton and published by Palgrave Macmillan. This book was released on 2013-05-14 with total page 0 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This absorbing study of early 20th Century American Culture interprets the anarchic absurdity of slapstick movies as a form of collective anxiety dream, their fantastical images and illogical gags expressing the unconscious wishes and fears of the modern age, in a way that foreshadows the concerns of our own celebrity-obsessed consumer culture.

Author : David Kalat
Publisher : McFarland
ISBN 13 : 1476678561
Total Pages : 261 pages
Book Rating : 4.66/5 ( download)

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Download or read book Too Funny for Words written by David Kalat and published by McFarland. This book was released on 2019-04-12 with total page 261 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: American silent film comedies were dominated by sight gags, stunts and comic violence. With the advent of sound, comedies in the 1930s were a riot of runaway heiresses and fast-talking screwballs. It was more than a technological pivot--the first feature-length sound film, The Jazz Singer (1927), changed Hollywood. Lost in the discussion of that transition is the overlap between the two genres. Charlie Chaplin, Buster Keaton and Harold Lloyd kept slapstick alive well into the sound era. Screwball directors like Leo McCarey, Frank Capra and Ernst Lubitsch got their starts in silent comedy. From Chaplin's tramp to the witty repartee of His Girl Friday (1940), this book chronicles the rise of silent comedy and its evolution into screwball--two flavors of the same genre--through the works of Mack Sennett, Roscoe Arbuckle, Harry Langdon and others.