Word: sennett
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There are other kinds of humor-such as giving the actors makeup and music from the Mack Sennett era-and the whole conceit might have made a delightful short. Much too hour an is it of minutes...
...gauze-covered lens, invariably associated with the worst of movie schmaltz, finds a new use as a device of alienation. The classic Mack Sennett chase here horrifies as well as amuses. And the typical Hollywood good looks of the two stars reinforce the sense of physical destruction as they are suddenly maimed...
...film, each member of the audience functions as a separate Caesar, deciding electronically which way the Tongue-in-Czech story should progress (TIME, May 5). The film itself is little more than an oddball triangle carried to a screwball extreme, but Director Josef Svoboda demonstrates his flair for Sennett-style comedy in a rousing custard-pie and fire-engine finale...
...defeat about Casino Royale, as if the money ($12 million) and the time (134 minutes) had run out. The final footage shows the U.S. cavalry riding to Bond's rescue, joined shortly by American Indians parachuting from planes and shouting "Geronimo!", the French Foreign Legion, and a Mack Sennett-style squadron of period policemen. This kind of keystone cop-out was done faster and funnier 34 years ago when the Marx Brothers made Duck Soup. But in those days comedies consisted of scenes and not herds...
...mechanics works successfully. In silent comedy, one of the primary goals was to break down the defensive barriers between the audience and the film-maker by manipulating audience emotions to involve them in the action. Having discovered that audiences laughed at the misfortunes and embarrassments of other people, Mack Sennett, and later Chaplin, revelled in low comedy. Cahiers du Cinema theorizes that Countess breaks the barrier between audience and film-maker through use of two extended bits of low comedy: a brilliantly executed seasickness sequence, and a running gag where Ogden, unable to send Natascha out of the bedroom, heightens...