Buster Keaton and Modern European Drama. An American Filmmaker Anticipating Aesthetic Multiplicity

This title is printed to order. This book may have been self-published. If so, we cannot guarantee the quality of the content. In the main most books will have gone through the editing process however some may not. We therefore suggest that you be aware of this before ordering this book. If in doubt check either the author or publisher’s details as we are unable to accept any returns unless they are faulty. Please contact us if you have any questions.

As one of the most ingenious artists of the silent film era, Buster Keaton stands out for his legendary comedies. While drawing on vaudeville traditions, he also knew how to exploit techniques the new medium film offered to create - visually surprising - comic situations, many of which became an unforgettable part of film history. Transferring and adapting his theatrical skills to the screen, he invented a whole new repertoire of aesthetic devices. Numerous elements of his approach to the art of mise-en-scene would turn up again, albeit in modified and more radical forms, in dramatic theories and plays of playwrights such as Bertolt Brecht, Luigi Pirandello, Eugene Ionesco, Samuel Beckett, and Antonin Artaud. This study looks at how Buster Keaton anticipated an aesthetic multiplicity that would come to shape dramatic concepts, the art of representation, and the language of performance in modern European theatre.