The silent clowns

If you have any interest in the three most famous silent film comedians, you will want to buy this book. I wasn't expecting the giant, coffee table book format and I don't love that about it but I guess it must have been deemed necessary to include the amount of pictures and information that they did. Worth it!

Very well written and easy to follow even if you have no real education on the subject when starting the book. If you're interested in Chaplin, Keaton or Lloyd, then this book will have something for you. It's not in-depth to the point of biography on any of the characters within, but it will whet your appetite for more knowledge and give you a firm grasp on the silent comedy.

Walter Kerr starts his book about the silent-comedy era with a quote from Mary Pickford, a silent star who suggested: "It would have been more logical if silent pictures had grown out of the talkie instead of the other way round." It's a strange line that reads a good deal less stranger after you have the chance of reading Walter Kerr's 1975 overview, "The Silent Clowns," which takes on the legacies of Charlie Chaplin, Buster Keaton, Harold Lloyd, and many others whose best moments on film were captured before the era of sound. As Kerr explains it, there was something about the way silent comedy functioned that made it both funnier and a purer art form than what came after. People may agree with him already: How many times do you hear the phrase, in regard to Jerry Lewis, say, or Peter Sellers, "best screen comedian of the sound era"? Reading "The Silent Clowns" makes a convincing case for this perspective. Kerr takes on the greats and near-greats in a manner that both engages and (slightly) repels. It engages because he's in love with the material, with the stars, and with the comedy as comedy. Like others note here, you find yourself laughing at Kerr's descriptions of such scenes unseen as, say Raymond Griffith distracting a firing squad by throwing up a plate every time they try to shoot him and then angering the soldiers because the plates keep getting smaller. It repels because Kerr's academic focus feels at times too ladled on, as he talks about reading Chaplin's "City Lights" as "a structural exercise" reflecting on the duality of identity or Keaton's films as existential metaphors. Kerr also brushes off some good comics (Fatty Arbuckle and Charley Chase, especially) for being merely funny, while celebrating Harry Langdon's brief time in the sun more than it deserves. Yet for the most part I was with him, at least after getting past a long and windy introductory section dealing with silent film as a whole from which only Pickford's opening quote seems worthwhile. Kerr is a stickler for something he calls "the realm of factual fantasy that was silent film comedy's distinctive vein." Silent film allowed jokes sound didn't, like a wheel rolling up and knocking over someone who was looking the other way. You'd hear the wheel in a sound film, Kerr notes, and expect the victim to do the same. Beyond this, silent film created a vaccuum for developing ideas, no matter how random or abstract. Keaton was best at this, Kerr notes, and he goes on to explore Keaton's comedic handling of such things as disaster (flying over houses in a hurricane "Steamboat Bill Jr." was something Keaton had actually done as a child) and film itself (as a projectionist, Keaton steps into a movie screen in "Sherlock Jr.") Even when Kerr goes overboard about Keaton, which happens often, he's engaging and full of ideas. Most importantly, he puts the spotlight on the humor above all else. If you don't run out and borrow a Keaton comedy from the library after reading this book, you may need a doctor's appointment. Kerr still defers to Chaplin as the greatest silent comedy, even as he points out the defects and even a weak movie ("Sunnyside") along the way. It's hard not to agree, as the descriptions he offers of Chaplin's films are the funniest. I wish he had given Lloyd a bit more attention. If he's a third wheel, he's a good deal more interesting than Kerr presents him, though his point about how Lloyd's popularity (the greatest of the three in terms of pure box office, Kerr points out) defined what it was to be American in a way his audience liked seems rattling good judgment to me. I enjoy this book a lot, and while I can't recommend it as someone's first exposure to silent comedy (that should be the films themselves), it's fine criticism that offers some deep analysis about what makes these movies work and why we are still made happy watching them all these decades on.

A fantastic book in very good condition, and delivered early. I can't wait to read this important part of film history.

I don't know what I can add to what has been said before. The section on Buster Keaton is worth the price of the book. Walter Kerr was the premier theater critic in America. His wife, Jean Kerr, wrote funny books,too (Please Don't Eat The Daisy's.)He brought a lifetime of theatrical knowledge and critical insight to the subject of Silent Comedy with a clarity of thought and brilliance of expression that is still unequalled. If I have any quibble, it is that the book is large and difficult to hold while nestled in a recliner chair. But it's well worth the effort.

I read this book years ago and almost forgot about it. I found this and rememebered, it is awsome , you find many backround information about the movies, if you are interested in silent movies it is just a must.

where’s the dust jacket? i also ordered a good condition, but i recieved an acceptable condition version. not sure what to think.

This is a beautifully-written survey of the great silent comics with brilliant observations and insights.

This book was advertised as 'very good'. When it was received the cover was not in a very good condition- torn in a lot of places and battered!

Seminal work, must-read, for serious or just curious silent comedy buffs.