When cinema first came into existence in the late 1890s, films were mostly short clips of real life events, or small shorts involving a couple of characters on a sound stage. This changed with Buster Keaton, Laurel and Hardy, and Charlie Chaplin in the early 1920s as they began creating ‘two reeler’ comedy films that would shape the direction that cinema would eventually go in. Keaton was particularly influential. His methodology can be summed up as ‘anything for the gag’. While he did want commercial success, his main goal was to make people laugh.
Many years after this, in the 1940s, André Bazin began writing about french cinema. He bemoaned the cinema of the time, believing that it aimed to appeal to the most educated in society who could successfully understand it. With the hindsight of the last 50 years of cinema, Bazin theorised that there were 2 types of cinema: Realist, and Expressive. Realism he loved, and expressionism he despised.
Realist filmmaking employs ‘truth through verisimilitude’. It involves wide angles, naturalist performances, minimal editing, and what Bazin referred to as ‘cutting with their eyes’ (allowing the audience to subjectively interpret the film and focus on what they deem to be important. Expressive filmmaking, on the other hand, employs ‘truth through metaphor’ and was heavily related to German expressionism and Russian montage. This mode of filmmaking is characterised by its unique ability to manipulate the audience into thinking or feeling a certain way. It’s this lack of agency of the viewer that made Bazin dislike the style so much. Buster Keaton, however, had no idea about either of these things. He didn’t strive for some pure form of cinema. He would do whatever needed to be done in order to be funny.
In One Week, for example, Buster Keaton cuts to short clips of someone turning the page of a calendar as a framing device upon which he can build the structure of the narrative. André Bazin, when writing about cinema 2 decades later, would have recognised this as an example of expressionistic filmmaking, as it draws the attention of the viewer away from the plot and directly prevents them from making their own choices about what is important. Keaton, however, aimed only to make the funniest film he possibly could. Coming from vaudeville, his idea of a ‘gag’ would involve short segments that are stitched together to create a show. Cutting to these shots of calendar pages being turned allowed Keaton to do exactly this withing the context of a film. He could break it up into small segments in which he could create individual scenarios for short jokes. He wasn’t interested in making an expressive film, he was interested in making a funny film.
Right at the start of The High Sign, Keaton cuts between a series of wide establishing shots which show the town in which the film will take place. These establishing shots allow the viewers to take in the place and make decisions for themselves about what to look at and how to feel about it. Unlike many of his other film that are filmed on sets, the openness of this one gives a sense of what Bazin would describe as realism. Keaton on the other hand, was doing this because it would mean that he could establish a plot line relatively quickly, and get to the jokes. He doesn’t care if the audience can take in the ‘feeling’ of the town, he just needs to establish a setting in which a shooting gallery would likely be.
Later on in One Week, Keaton chooses to show the wife character in the bath, where she drops her bar of soap over the edge. The character then looks directly at the camera, not long before two hands reach around the lens and cover it while she leans over to grab the soap. Direct acknowledgement of the audience would have been seen by Bazin as highly expressive, as it is just about the most direct way in which the filmmaker can manipulate what the audience is seeing. It goes completely against the concept of realist filmmaking, but not for artistic reasons. Keaton simply did something that he thought would capture the viewers opinion and make them laugh, with no regard for abstract filmmaking concepts like those of André Bazin.
In The Scarecrow, as the two men run towards the farmer’s daughter after leaving the house, Keaton cuts to a wide shot. The use of this wide shot allows the audience to ‘cut with their eyes’ as Bazin would have said, as the audience can look at any of the three characters on screen. It’s up to them to decide what is the funniest. Buster Keaton would not have used the wide shot for this reason though. Instead, he would have used it because it means he could make the audience laugh as they watch the men push and shove each other as they frantically approach the woman.
Towards the end of Cops, Keaton shows a series wide shot of a large number of policemen running towards and into a police precinct. When paying attention, it becomes clear that there are, in reality, nowhere near as many policemen as it appears there are. Instead of hiring hundreds of extras and trying to pile them all into a building, Keaton simply cuts to different shots of groups of police running towards the camera. The use of editing to heighten reality is another example of how Keaton uses expressive filmmaking to make his jokes better. He wants it to look like there are a ridiculous number of policemen, so he edits the scene in a way that makes it look like this. It’s, once again, about Keatons commitment to the bit, rather than making a particular type of film.
- Band 5
- This is about as close to a full mark response as I could hope for. Nailed it!
- You might want to find a slightly tamer word than "despised", though, and I'm not sure what "bit" Buster was committed to...
- Really superb!