The Slapstick Camera: Hollywood and the Comedy of Self-Reference - Couverture rigide

Hilsabeck, Burke

Couverture rigide

ISBN 10 : 1438477317 ISBN 13 : 9781438477312

Editeur : State University of New York Press, 2020

Synopsis

Demonstrates that slapstick film comedies display a canny and sometimes profound understanding of their medium.

Slapstick film comedy may be grounded in idiocy and failure, but the genre is far more sophisticated than it initially appears. In this book, Burke Hilsabeck suggests that slapstick is often animated by a philosophical impulse to understand the cinema. He looks closely at movies and gags that represent the conditions and conventions of cinema production and demonstrates that film comedians display a canny and sometimes profound understanding of their medium-from Buster Keaton's encounter with the film screen in Sherlock Jr. (1924) to Harpo Marx's lip-sync turn with a phonograph in Monkey Business (1931) to Jerry Lewis's film-on-film performance in The Errand Boy (1961). The Slapstick Camera follows the observation of philosopher Stanley Cavell that self-reference is one way in which "film exists in a state of philosophy." By moving historically across the studio era, the book looks at a series of comedies that play with the changing technologies and economic practices behind film production and describes how comedians offered their own understanding of the nature of film and filmmaking. Hilsabeck locates the hidden intricacies of Hollywood cinema in a place where one might least expect them-the clowns, idiots, and scoundrels of slapstick comedy.

A propos du livre

À propos de l'auteur

Burke Hilsabeck is Assistant Professor of English at the University of Northern Colorado.

Détails de l'édition

• Éditeur: State University of New York Press
• Date d'édition: 2020
• Langue: anglais
• ISBN 10: 1438477317
• ISBN 13: 9781438477312
• Reliure: Relié
• Nombre de pages: 218
• Coordonnées du fabricant: Buchpark GmbH; https://www.buchpark.de; ; Krügerweg 1; Trebbin; Brandenburg; 14959; Allemagne