Product Description

This book is both a scholarly study of silent comedy movies, and an illustrated guide to the major comedians for the general reader. It covers such characters as Buster Keaton, Charlie Chaplin, Harold Lloyd and Laurel and Hardy. The author is one of America's foremost film and theatre critics. He treats the subject of film comedians with much affection, and includes many anecdotes and stories. He is also a lucid theorist, attempting to explain how and why we laugh.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #477860 in Books
• Published on: 1990-04
• Original language: English
• Number of items: 1
• Binding: Paperback
• 384 pages

Customer Reviews

Timeless
What Kerr has essentially revealed in this book is the very pulse by which the silent comedic form remaines timeless. He manages to write his book with such a love, yet such an intellectual understanding, that much like the art form he analyzes, it is a book devoid of snootiness or cynicsm. The book has many stengths, but carries such weight because it isn't only pre-occupied with Keaton and Chaplin. The chapters on Harold Lloyd -- who remains understudied -- are very insightful, yet objective. And while other silent comedians aren't given quite space that the major four American comedians are (Chaplin, Keaton, Lloyd, Langdon), a respectable analysis of Arbuckle, Sennett, Linder, Laurel and Hardy, and many more are presented. Valuable perspectives on "non-comedic" actors like Fairbanks, Pickford, and Gish are also hearty reading.

Kerr also give great insight into aesthetic issues, such as music composition and presentation, varying artists' cutting techniques, the roles of women in selected films, the alternate use of frame rates, and much, much, more. What makes the book so refreshing to read is how very much Kerr loves his subject, not necassarilly his subjects. Most books about the silent comedians -- Keaton and Chaplin in particular -- cannot help but devote numerous pages and even chapters to the filmmaker's vices (i.e. Chaplin's womanizing, Keaton's alcoholism). Kerr mentions such subjects when pertinent, but they do not become the book's thrust, nor are such issues presented to undercut the artist or his work in any way. Flawed men these clowns were, but their work remains relatively perfect.

Timeless
What Kerr has essentially revealed in this book is the very pulse by which the silent comedic form remaines timeless. He manages to write his book with such a love, yet such an intellectual understanding, that much like the art form he analyzes, it is a book devoid of snootiness or cynicsm. The book has many stengths, but carries such weight because it isn't only pre-occupied with Keaton and Chaplin. The chapters on Harold Lloyd -- who remains understudied -- are very insightful, yet objective. And while other silent comedians aren't given quite space that the major four American comedians are (Chaplin, Keaton, Lloyd, Langdon), a respectable analysis of Arbuckle, Sennett, Linder, Laurel and Hardy, and many more are presented. Valuable perspectives on "non-comedic" actors like Fairbanks, Pickford, and Gish are also hearty reading.

Kerr also give great insight into aesthetic issues, such as music composition and presentation, varying artists' cutting techniques, the roles of women in selected films, the alternate use of frame rates, and much, much, more. What makes the book so refreshing to read is how very much Kerr loves his subject, not necassarilly his subjects. Most books about the silent comedians -- Keaton and Chaplin in particular -- cannot help but devote numerous pages and even chapters to the filmmaker's vices (i.e. Chaplin's womanizing, Keaton's alcoholism). Kerr mentions such subjects when pertinent, but they do not become the book's thrust, nor are such issues presented to undercut the artist or his work in any way. Flawed men these clowns were, but their work remains relatively perfect.

A fascinating look at a sadly lost art form.
This book is absolutely fascinating, enriching, absorbing, and rewarding on any number of levels. Nobody I have read has ever explained any art form with more clarity and intelligence than Mr. Kerr in THE SILENT CLOWNS. It combines a heartfelt love of the form with meticulous research and a tough minded analysis of what exactly made people laugh at silent comedy then and what in those films could translate to modern audiences. The book is accessible, written in plain language but so astute on what makes people laugh AND what makes some laughs better than others that it sometimes seems it should be required reading for all writers, filmmakers, storytellers, et al.

I was not a silent film fan before reading Walter Kerr's masterful dissection of silent comedy, but, as a blurb on the back of the book stated, it had me laughing at routines I had never seen and made me want to track down every single Buster Keaton film I could get my hands on.