Buster Keaton

Keaton, Buster - (Joseph Francis Keaton), 1895–1966, American movie actor, b. Piqua, Kans. Considered one of the greatest comic actors in film history, Keaton used his considerable acrobatic skills, which he had developed as a child in vaudeville, in many silent comedies in which he portrayed a deadpan hero who survived against incredible odds. Among these movies are The Navigator (1924) Read More...

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Buster Keaton

1 .

Keaton's Silent Shorts: Beyond the Laughter
by Gabriella Oldham. 396 pgs.

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Title Page

Keaton's Silent Shorts: Beyond the Laughter

Contents

Illustrations

Chapter 1: Introduction

Chapter 2: One Week (september 1920)

Chapter 3: Convict 13 (october 1920)

Chapter 4: The Scarecrow (december 1920)

Chapter 5: Neighbors (january 1921)

Chapter 6: The Haunted House (february 1921)

Chapter 7: Hard Luck (march 1921)

Chapter 8: The High Sign (april 1921)

Chapter 9: The Goat (may 1921)

Chapter 10: The Playhouse (january 1922)

Chapter 11: The Boat (november 1921)

Chapter 12: The Paleface (january 1922)

Chapter 13: Cops (march 1922)

Chapter 14: My Wife's Relations (may 1922)

Chapter 15: The Blacksmith (july 1922)

Chapter 16: The Frozen North (august 1922)

Chapter 17: Daydreams (september 1922)

Chapter 18: The Electric House (october 1922)

Chapter 19: The Balloonatic (january 1923)

Chapter 20: The Love Nest (march 1923)

Chapter 21: Conclusion

Notes

Selected Bibliography

Index
2 .

Fools and Jesters in Literature, Art, and History: A Bio-bibliographical Sourcebook ("Buster Keaton" begins on p. 265)
by Vicki K. Janik, Emmanuel S. Nelson. 577 pgs.

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Jesters and fools have existed as important and consistent figures in nearly all cultures. Sometimes referred to as clowns, they are typological characters who have conventional roles in the arts, often using nonsense to subvert existing order. But fools are also a part of social and religious history, and they frequently play key roles in the rituals that support and shape a society's system of beliefs. This reference book includes alphabetically arranged entries for approximately 60 fools and jesters from a wide range of cultures. Included are entries for performers from American popular culture, such as Woody Allen, Charlie Chaplin, and the Marx Brothers; literary characters, such as Shakespeare's Falstaff, Rabelais' Gargantua and Pantagruel, and Singer's Gimpel; and cultural and mythological figures, such as Birbal, the American circus clown, the Native American Coyote, Taishu Engeki of Japan, Hephaestus, Loki the Norse fool, schlemiels and schlimazels, and the drag queen.

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Title Page

Contents

Preface

Acknowledgments

Introduction

Notes

Woody Allen: The Clown as Tragic Hero

The Anthropology of Fools

Notes

Robert Armin

Notes

Archy Armstrong

The Badin

Lucille Ball

Jean-Louls Barrault

Critical Reception

Beckett's Postmodern Clowns: Vladimir (Didi), Estragon (Gogo), Pozzo, and Lucky

Jack Benny

Birbal

Selected Bibliographv

The Bishop of Fools

Note

George Burns and Gracie Allen the Jewish Vaudeville Tradition

The Camp

Canio-Pagliacco and Petrouchka: Two Contrasting Images of Pierrot

Charlie Chaplin

The American Circus Clown

Commedia Dell'Arte

Selected Bibliograph

Native American Coyote Trickster Tales and Cycles

Notes

The Drag Queen

Sir John Falstaff

Feste

W. C. Fields

Folly in the Enduring Tradition

The Fop: Apes and Echoes of Men": Gentlemanly Ideals and the Restoration

Notes

Gimpel

Joseph Grimaldi

Notes

Forrest Gump: Innocent Fool

Hamlet

Hephaestus, Hermes, and Prometheus: Jesters to the Gods

Note

The Heyoka of the Sioux

Clowns of the Hopi

Selected Bibiliography

Knaves and Fools in Ben Jonson

Buster Keaton

William Kemp

Stan Laurel and Oliver Hardy Yin and Yang

Lear's Fool: (England: in William Shakespeare's King Lear: 1605

Loki, the Norse Fool

The Marx Brothers

Selecteid Bibliograpy

Notes

Merry Report

Paul the Apostle

Notes

Penasar of Bali: Sacred Clowns

Note

Pierrot: Dramatic and Literary Mask

Plautus's Clowns

Puck/Robin Goodfellow

Punch and Judy

FrançOis Rabelais

Martha Raye

Rigoletto

Schlemiels and Schlimazels

The Sleary Circus

Socrates as Fool in Aristophanes and Plato

Note

Will Sommers

The Sottie, the Sots, and the Fols

South African Political Clowning Laughter and Resistance to Apartheid

Ciritical Reception

Country Squires and Bumpkins

Selected Bibliographv

The Three Stooges

Taishu Engeki: Subverting the Patterns of Japanese Culture

Note

The Tarot Fool

The Tarot Fool in English and American Novels

Touchstone

The Vice Figure in Middle English Morality Plays

The Vice in Henry Medwall's Nature

Mae West

The Yankee

Zanni

Critical Reception

Selected General Bibliography

Index

About the Editor and Contributors
3 .

A History of Narrative Film ("Buster Keaton" begins on p. 205)
by David A. Cook. 1087 pgs.

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Title Page

A History of Narrative Film

Contents

Preface

Preface to the Third Edition

Acknowledgments

A Note on Method

A Note on Supplementary Material

A Note on Dates, Titles, and Stills

1: Origins

2: International Expansion, 1907-1918

3: D. W. Griffith and the Development of Narrative Form

4: German Cinema of the Weimar Period, 1919-1929

5: Soviet Silent Cinema and the Theory of Montage, 1917-1931

6: Hollywood in the Twenties

7: The Coming of Sound and Color, 1926-1935

8: The Sound Film and the American Studio System

9: Europe in the Thirties

10: Orson Welles and the Modern Sound Film

11: Wartime and Postwar Cinema: Italy and the United States, 1940-1951

12: Hollywood, 1952-1965

13: The French New Wave and Its Native Context

14: New Cinemas in Britain and the English-Speaking Commonwealth

15: European Renaissance: West

16: European Renaissance: East

17: The Former Soviet Union, 1945-Present

18: Wind from the East: Japan, India, and China

19: Third World Cinema

20: Hollywood, 1965—present

Glossary

Selective Bibliography for the Third Edition

Index
4 .

You Ain't Heard Nothin' Yet: The American Talking Film: History & Memory, 1927-1949 ("Buster Keaton (1895-1966)" begins on p. 151)
by Andrew Sarris. 588 pgs.

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Andrew Sarris has long been one of America's most celebrated writers on film, author of the seminal work The American Cinema, and for decades a highly regarded critic, first for The Village Voice and more recently for The New York Observer. Now comes Sarris's definitive statement on film, in a masterwork that has taken 25 years to complete. Here is a sweeping--and highly personal--history of American film, from the birth of the talkies (beginning with The Jazz Singer and Al Jolson's memorable line "You ain't heard nothin' yet") to the decline of the studio system. By far the largest section of the book celebrates the work of the great American film directors, with giants such as John Ford, Alfred Hitchcock, Charlie Chaplin, Orson Welles, and Howard Hawks examined film by film. Sarris also offers glowing portraits of major stars, from Garbo and Bogart to Ingrid Bergman, Margaret Sullavan, Spencer Tracy, Katharine Hepburn, Clark Gable, and Carole Lombard. There is a tour of the studios--Metro, Paramount, RKO, Warner Brothers, 20th Century Fox, Universal--revealing how each left its own particular stamp on film. And in perhaps the most interesting and original section, we are treated to an informative look at film genres--the musical, the screwball comedy, the horror picture, the gangster film, and the western. A lifetime of watching and thinking about cinema has gone into this book. It is the history that film buffs have been waiting for.

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Title Page

Acknowledgement

Contents

Introduction

1: The Hollywood Studios

2: Genres

3: The Directors

4: Actors and Actresses

5: Guilty Pleasures

Appendix I: Academy Awards: Nominations and Winners, 1927-1949

Appendix II: New York Film Critics Circle Awards, 1935-1949

Appendix III: Best Directors, 1927-1949

Appendix IV: Best Performances, 1929-1949

Index of Films

Index of Names
5 .

The Counterfeiters: An Historical Comedy (Chap. II "The Man of Sense as Buster Keaton")
by Hugh Kenner. 180 pgs.

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Title Page

Dedication

Acknowledgments

Contents

Foreword

I: Counterfeitable Man

II: The Man of Sense As Buster Keaton

III: The Counterfeiters

IV: The Gulliver Game

V: Countermeasures
6 .

Intimate and Authentic Economies: The American Self-Made Man from Douglass to Chaplin (Discussion of Buster Keaton begins on p. 152)
by Tom Nissley. 202 pgs.

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The story of the American self-made man carries a perennial interest in American literature and cultural studies. This book expands the study of such stories to include the writings of Frederick Douglass, Horatio Alger and James Weldon Johnson, and the work of silent comedians like Charlie Chaplin, Harold Lloyd and Buster Keaton. Thomas Nissley examines the number of texts, from Reconstruction-era autobiographies to the films of the 30s, to show the sustained market value of status and personal authenticity in the era of contract and free labour.

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Title Page

Contents

List of Illustrations

Acknowledgments

Introduction: Alienable, Intimate, Authentic

Chapter 1: Free Labor and Intimate Capital

Chapter 2: The Nature Theater of Americana

Chapter 3: Racial Credit, White Money, and the Novel of Assimilative Lament

Chapter 4: The Reality Effect in the Film Machine

Notes

Bibliography

Index
7 .

Comedy Is a Man in Trouble: Slapstick in American Movies (Chap. 3 "Junior: Harold Lloyd and Buster Keaton")
by Alan Dale. 274 pgs.

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Title Page

Contents

Preface

1: Comedy Is a Man in Trouble

2: Chaplin as Proteus, Low-Down and High Up

3: Junior: Harold Lloyd and Buster Keaton

4: Girl Heroes

5: The Marx Brothers: The Buoyant Refuse of Our Teeming Shore

6: Preston Sturges: Girl in a Jam, Boy in a Jam

7: Jerry Lewis: The Once and Future King of Comedy

Coda

Notes

Works Cited

Index
8 .

The Oxford History of World Cinema ("Buster Keaton (1895-1966)" begins on p. 80)
by Geoffrey Nowell-Smith. 824 pgs.

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From its humble beginnings as a novelty in a handful of cities, cinema has risen to become a billion-dollar industry and the most spectacular and original contemporary art form. In The Oxford History of World Cinema, an international team of film historians traces the history of this enduringly popular entertainment medium. Covering all aspects of its development, stars, studios, and cultural impact, the book celebrates and chronicles over one hundred years of diverse achievement from westerns to the New Wave, from animation to the avant-garde, and from Hollywood to Hong Kong. The Oxford History of World Cinema tells the story of the major inventions and developments in the cinema business, its institutions, genres, and personnel, and they outline the evolution of national cinemas round the world--the varied and distinctive film traditions that have developed alongside Hollywood. A unique aspect of the book are the special inset features on the film-makers and personalities--Garbo and Godard, Keaton and Kurosawa, Bugs Bunny and Bergman--who have had an enduring impact in popular memory and cinematic lore. With over 280 illustrations, a full bibliography, and an extensive index, this is the buff's ultimate guide to cinema worldwide.

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Title Page

Acknowledgements

Contributors

Contents

Special Features

List of Colour Illustrations

General Introduction

1: Silent Cinema 1895-1930

Introduction

Origins and Survival

Bibliography

Early Cinema

Bibliography

Transitional Cinema

Bibliography

The Hollywood Studio System

Bibliography

The World-Wide Spread of Cinema

The First World War and the Crisis in Europe

Bibliography

Bibliography

Tricks and Animation

Bibliography

Comedy

Bibliography

Documentary

Bibliography

Cinema and the Avant-Garde

Serials

Bibliography

Bibliography

French Silent Cinema

Bibliography

Italy: Spectacle and Melodrama

Bibliography

British Cinema from Hepworth to Hitchcock

Germany: the Weimar Years

Bibliography

The Scandinavian Style

Bibliography

Bibliography

Pre-Revolutionary Russia

Bibliography

The Soviet Union and the Russian émigrés

Yiddish Cinema in Europe

Bibliography

Bibliography

Japan: Before the Great Kanto Earthquake

Bibliography

Music and the Silent Film

Bibliography

The Heyday of the Silents

Bibliography

2: Sound Cinema 1930-1960

Introduction

The Introduction of Sound

Bibliography

Hollywood: the Triumph of the Studio System

Bibliography

Censorship and Self-Regulation

Bibliography

The Sound of Music

Bibliography

Technology and Innovation

Bibliography

Animation

Bibliography

Cinema and Genre

Bibliography

The Western

Bibliography

The Musical

Bibliography

Crime Movies

The Fantastic

Bibliography

Bibliography

Documentary

Socialism, Fascism, and Democracy

Bibliography

Bibliography

The Popular Art of French Cinema

Italy from Fascism to Neo-Realism

Bibliography

Bibliography

Britain at the End of Empire

Germany: Nazism and After

Bibliography

Bibliography

East Central Europe Before the Second World War

Bibliography

Soviet Film Under Stalin

Bibliography

Indian Cinema: Origins to Independence

China Before 1949

Bibliography

Bibliography

The Classical Cinema in Japan

Bibliography

The Emergence of Australian Film

Cinema in Latin America

Bibliography

Bibliography

After the War

Bibliography

Transformation of the Hollywood System

Independents and Mavericks

Bibliography

Bibliography

3: The Modern Cinema 1960-1995

Introduction

Television and the Film Industry

The New Hollywood

Bibliography

Bibliography

New Technologies

Bibliography

Sex and Sensation

Bibliography

The Black Presence in American Cinema

Bibliography

Exploitation and the Mainstream

Bibliography

Dreams and Nightmares in the Hollywood Blockbuster

Bibliography

CinÉma-VÉritÉ and the New Documentary

Avant-Garde Film: the Second Wave

Bibliography

Bibliography

Animation in the Post-Industrial Era

Bibliography

Modern Film Music

Bibliography

Art Cinema

Bibliography

New Directions in French Cinema

Italy: Auteurs and After

Bibliography

Bibliography

Spain After Franco

Bibliography

British Cinema: the Search for Identity

Bibliography

The New German Cinema

Bibliography

East Germany: the Defa Story

Changing States in East Central Europe

Bibliography

Bibliography

Russia After the Thaw

Bibliography

Cinema in the Soviet Republics

Bibliography

Turkish Cinema

Bibliography

The Arab World

The Cinemas of Sub-Saharan Africa

Bibliography

Bibliography

Iranian Cinema

Bibliography

India: Filming the Nation

Bibliography

Indonesian Cinema

China After the Revolution

Bibliography

Bibliography

Popular Cinema in Hong Kong

Taiwanese New Cinema

Bibliography

Bibliography

The Modernization of Japanese Film

Bibliography

New Australian Cinema

Bibliography

Bibliography

New Zealand Cinema

Canadian Cinema/Cinéma Canadien

Bibliography

New Cinemas in Latin America

Bibliography

New Concepts of Cinema

Bibliography

The Resurgence of Cinema

Bibliography

Index

List of Picture Sources
9 .

Becoming Film Literate: The Art and Craft of Motion Pictures (Chap. 23 "Period Comedy : The General")
by Vincent LoBrutto. 386 pgs.

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Title Page

Contents

Foreword

Acknowledgments

Introduction

1: Nonlinear Storytelling ♦ Amores Perros

2: Transformation of the American Comedy ♦ Annie Hall

3: Tableau Narrative Structure and Sound Design ♦ Apocalypse Now

4: The Body as Cinematic Landscape ♦ L'Avventura

5: Editing-russian Montage ♦ The Battleship Potemkin

6: Italian Neorealism ♦ The Bicycle Thief

7: Production Design ♦ Blade Runner

8: Dream State ♦ Blue Velvet

9: The Period Film as Mirror for the Present ♦ Bonnie and Clyde

10: Expressionism in Cinema ♦ The Cabinet of Dr Caligari

11: Classical Hollywood Film Style ♦ Casablanca

12: Surrealism in Cinema ♦ UN Chien Andalou

13: The Authorial Voice ♦ Citizen Kane

14: Shot Structure ♦ The Crowd

15: Thematic Unity ♦ The Decalogue

16: Mythopoetic Film ♦ Dog Star Man

17: Political Objectives through Cinematic Storytelling ♦ Do the Right Thing

18: Film Noir ♦ Double Indemnity

19: The Personal Film ♦ 8½

20: Animation and Music ♦ Fantasia

21: An American Musical ♦ 42nd Street

22: New York Filmmaking ♦ The French Connection

23: Period Comedy ♦ The General

24: Parallel Storytelling ♦ Intolerance

25: French New Wave ♦ Jules and Jim

26: The Epic ♦ Lawrence of Arabia

27: The Political Thriller ♦ The Manchurian Candidate

28: Self-Referential Cinema ♦ Man with a Movie Camera

29: Architecture in Production Design ♦ Metropolis

30: Roots of Documentary Film ♦ Nanook of the North

31: Multiplot, Multicharacter Narrative ♦ Nashville

32: Method Acting ♦ on the Waterfront

33: The Close-Up ♦ The Passion of Joan of Arc

34: Dark Side of American Cinema ♦ Psycho

35: Subtext in Personal Expression ♦ Raging Bull

36: Multiple Point-Of-View Narrative ♦ Rashomon

37: Widescreen Filmmaking ♦ Rebel without a Cause

38: Camera Movement as Metaphor ♦ la Ronde

39: Mise-En-Scene ♦ Rules of the Game

40: Direct Cinema ♦ Salesman

41: The Freudian Western ♦ The Searchers

42: Defining Theme, Metaphor, and Character through Color, Texture, and Environmental Design ♦ Se7en

43: Symbolism in the Cinema ♦ The Seventh Seal

44: Art of the B Movie ♦ Shock Corridor

45: Digital Filmmaking ♦ Star Wars

46: Birth of a Nonfiction Film Style ♦ The Thin Blue Line

47: Experimental Narrative ♦ 2001

48: The Essay Film ♦ Weekend

49: Screen Violence as Metaphor ♦ The Wild Bunch

50: Independent Filmmaking ♦ a Woman under the Influence

Glossary

Bibliography

Index
10 .

Reel Food: Essays on Food and Film (Chap. 19 "Supper, Slapstick, and Social Class: Dinner as Machine in the Silent Films of Buster Keaton")
by Anne L. Bower. 353 pgs.

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'Reel Food' is devoted to food as a key element of film, featuring original essays by major food studies scholars, including Carole Counihan and Michael Ashkenazi. The contributors draw attention to the various ways in which food is employed to make meaning in film.

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Title Page

Acknowledgments

Contents

1: Watching Food: the Production of Food, Film, and Values

1: Cooking Up Cultural Values

2: Feel Good Reel Food: a Taste of the Cultural Kedgeree in Gurinder Chadha's What's Cooking?

3: Food, Play, Business, and the Image of Japan in Itami Juzo's Tampopo

4: Il Timpano-“to Eat Good Food is to Be Close to God”: the Italian-American Reconciliation of Stanley Tucci and Campbell Scott's Big Night

5: Cooking Mexicanness: Shaping National Identity in Alfonso Arau's Como Agua Para Chocolate

6: Chickens, Cakes, and Kitchens: Food and Modernity in Malay Films of the 1950s and 1960s

7: “i'Ll Have Whatever She's Having”: Jews, Food, and Film

8: Food as Representative of Ethnicity and Culture in George Tillman Jr.'s Soul Food, María Ripoll's Tortilla Soup, and Tim Reid's Once Upon a Time When We Were Colored

2: Focus on Gender-The Body, the Spirit

9: Gendering the Feast: Women, Spirituality, and Grace in Three Food Films

10: Food, Sex, and Power at the Dining Room Table in Zhang Yimou's Raise the Red Lantern

11: Anorexia Envisioned: Mike Leigh's Life is Sweet, Chul-Soo Park's 301/302, and Todd Haynes's Superstar

12: Production, Reproduction, Food, and Women in Herbert Biberman's Salt of the Earth and Lourdes Portillo and Nina Serrano's After the Earthquake

13: Images of Consumption in Jutta Brückner's Years of Hunger

3: Making Movies, Making Meals

14: Appetite for Destruction: Gangster Food and Genre Convention in Quentin Tarantino's Pulp Fiction

15: “leave the Gun; Take the Cannoli”: Food and Family in the Modern American Mafia Film

16: All-Consuming Passions: Peter Greenaway's the Cook, the Thief, His Wife and Her Lover

17: Jean-Pierre Jeunet and Marc Caro's Delicatessen: an Ambiguous Memory, an Ambivalent Meal

18: Futuristic Foodways: the Metaphoricalmeaning of Food in Science Fiction Film

19: Supper, Slapstick, and Social Class: Dinner as Machine in the Silent Films of Buster Keaton

20: Banquet and the Beast: the Civilizing Role of Food in 1930s Horror Films

21: Engorged with Desire: the Films of Alfred Hitchcock and the Gendered Politics of Eating

22: What About the Popcorn? Food and the Film-Watching Experience

Notes on Contributors

Index

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