{"id":702,"date":"2022-02-21T21:37:35","date_gmt":"2022-02-21T21:37:35","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/accumulationofthings.com\/100\/?p=702"},"modified":"2022-02-22T18:56:04","modified_gmt":"2022-02-22T18:56:04","slug":"the-playhouse-1921","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/accumulationofthings.com\/100\/2022\/02\/21\/the-playhouse-1921\/","title":{"rendered":"The Playhouse (1921)"},"content":{"rendered":"

In The Playhouse<\/em>, Buster Keaton is trapped in a theatre and must perform for us all, forever (until the end, where he gets married for some reason).<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/p>\n

Apparently Buster Keaton made this one with a broken ankle, so relies more on his vaudeville background than any particularly elaborate stunts, with the majority of the film having the feel of an episode of The Muppets<\/em>, with Buster’s various acts going increasingly wrong to the consternation of the cast and crew and the amusement of the audience.<\/p>\n

A lot of this is very similar to the previous Buster Keaton\/Fatty Arbuckle film, Back Stage<\/a>, which is also set in a theatre and has an incredibly similar back stage set. But Fatty Arbuckle never sets his fake beard on fire, so I think this one’s probably better overall.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/p>\n

___________<\/p>\n

Notes<\/p>\n

1.<\/strong> I watched this on blu-ray again. The screenshots come from this youtube version<\/a>.<\/em><\/p>\n

2.<\/strong> The bit at the end of this, where an obvious mannequin comes flying out of the shattered mermaid tank, is strangely reminiscent, in a sort fo reversed way, of the bit at the end of A Nightmare On Elm Street, where an obvious mannequin gets pulled backwards though a window.<\/em><\/p>\n

\"\"<\/p>\n

3.<\/strong> The first section of this, in which Buster Keaton plays ever actor on stage, every musician in the orchestra, and every single person in the audience, is pretty astonishing. <\/em><\/p>\n

4.<\/strong> The multiple exposure stuff is flawless, and technically amazing considering that they still used manually hand-cranked film cameras at the time. <\/em><\/p>\n

5.<\/strong> It sort of makes my head hurt thinking about how painstakingly accurate they must have been to make it work this well.<\/em><\/p>\n

6.<\/strong> But also there’s some black face in this bit, I’m afraid. <\/em><\/p>\n

7.<\/strong> But it’s not too egregiously monstrous, fortunately.<\/em><\/p>\n

8.<\/strong> Weirdly though the entire section where he’s playing a monkey (orangutan) playing a human genuinely horrified me in ways beyond even the misidentification of the orangutan (an orangutan) as a monkey (not an orangutan).<\/em><\/p>\n

9.<\/strong> Possibly the mild illness delirium I watched this through is to blame.<\/em><\/p>\n

10.<\/strong> I do not know.<\/em><\/p>\n

___________<\/p>\n

Film Information<\/p>\n

Title:<\/strong> The Playhouse<\/em>
\nDirectors:<\/strong> Buster Keaton and Edward F. Cline<\/em>
\nYear:<\/strong> 1921<\/em>
\nDuration:<\/strong> 22 minutes<\/em>
\nWatch:<\/strong> youtube<\/a><\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

In The Playhouse, Buster Keaton is trapped in a theatre and must perform for us all, forever (until the end, where he gets married for some reason). Apparently Buster Keaton made this one with a broken ankle, so relies more on his vaudeville background than any particularly elaborate stunts, with the majority of the film […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[257,325,108,109,307,348,347],"class_list":["post-702","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-this-film-is-100-years-old","tag-257","tag-back-stage","tag-buster-keaton","tag-edward-f-cline","tag-fatty-arbuckle","tag-the-muppets","tag-the-playhouse"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/accumulationofthings.com\/100\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/702","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/accumulationofthings.com\/100\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/accumulationofthings.com\/100\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/accumulationofthings.com\/100\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/accumulationofthings.com\/100\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=702"}],"version-history":[{"count":5,"href":"https:\/\/accumulationofthings.com\/100\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/702\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":711,"href":"https:\/\/accumulationofthings.com\/100\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/702\/revisions\/711"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/accumulationofthings.com\/100\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=702"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/accumulationofthings.com\/100\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=702"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/accumulationofthings.com\/100\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=702"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}