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IMDbPro

The Play House

  • 19211921
  • 23m
IMDb RATING
7.5/10
4.2K
YOUR RATING
Buster Keaton and Virginia Fox in The Play House (1921)
  • Short
  • Comedy
  • Fantasy
After waking up from his wacky dream, a theater stage hand inadvertently causes havoc everywhere he works.After waking up from his wacky dream, a theater stage hand inadvertently causes havoc everywhere he works.After waking up from his wacky dream, a theater stage hand inadvertently causes havoc everywhere he works.
IMDb RATING
7.5/10
4.2K
YOUR RATING
  • Directors
    • Edward F. Cline
    • Buster Keaton
  • Writers
    • Buster Keaton
    • Edward F. Cline
  • Stars
    • Buster Keaton
    • Edward F. Cline(uncredited)
    • Monte Collins(uncredited)
Top credits
  • Directors
    • Edward F. Cline
    • Buster Keaton
  • Writers
    • Buster Keaton
    • Edward F. Cline
  • Stars
    • Buster Keaton
    • Edward F. Cline(uncredited)
    • Monte Collins(uncredited)
  • See production, box office & company info
    • 27User reviews
    • 17Critic reviews
  • See production, box office & company info
  • See more at IMDbPro
    • Awards
      • 1 nomination

    Photos30

    Buster Keaton and Virginia Fox in The Play House (1921)
    Buster Keaton in The Play House (1921)
    Buster Keaton in The Play House (1921)
    Buster Keaton and Edward F. Cline in The Play House (1921)
    The Play House (1921)
    Buster Keaton and Virginia Fox in The Play House (1921)
    Buster Keaton in The Play House (1921)
    Buster Keaton and Joe Roberts in The Play House (1921)
    Buster Keaton in The Play House (1921)
    Buster Keaton in The Play House (1921)
    Buster Keaton in The Play House (1921)
    Buster Keaton in The Play House (1921)

    Top cast

    Edit
    Buster Keaton
    Buster Keaton
    • Audience
    • (as 'Buster' Keaton)
    • …
    Edward F. Cline
    Edward F. Cline
    • Orangutan Trainer
    • (uncredited)
    Monte Collins
    Monte Collins
    • Civil War Veteran
    • (uncredited)
    Virginia Fox
    Virginia Fox
    • Twin
    • (uncredited)
    Joe Murphy
    Joe Murphy
    • One of the Zouaves
    • (uncredited)
    Joe Roberts
    Joe Roberts
    • Actor-Stage Manager
    • (uncredited)
    Jess Weldon
    • One of the Zouaves
    • (uncredited)
    Ford West
    • Stage Hand
    • (uncredited)
    • Directors
      • Edward F. Cline
      • Buster Keaton
    • Writers
      • Buster Keaton
      • Edward F. Cline
    • All cast & crew
    • See more cast details at IMDbPro

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    Storyline

    Edit

    Did you know

    Edit
    • Trivia
      The multiple Busters on screen together were created in the camera, using a special lens with shutters to film only a portion of the scene at a time. Buster would perform one part, then the cameraman would crank the film back and open another shutter to film another part. A banjo player with a metronome helped Buster Keaton to perform precisely at the right time for each take.
    • Goofs
      Sometimes the background is visible through the elbow of Male Audience Member Buster, revealing the double-exposure technique used to film two Buster Keatons sitting side by side.
    • Quotes

      Man in Audience: This fellow Keaton seems to be the whole show.

    • Alternate versions
      The 35mm print currently (2006) available for theatrical exhibition is slightly different from the DVD version:
      • - There is a British Board of Film Censors approval title and an extra title mentioning the Raymond Rohauer collection.
      • - The inter-titles are in a different font but contain the same text as the DVD version.
      • - The "Written and Directed by" title credits Buster Keaton solely.
      • - There is an out-of-sequence edit in the print. The scene where the Zouave guards walk out and Buster replaces them with street workers comes immediately after the sequence where Buster meets the twins. It begins right as the Zouave chief comes under the stage backdrop and confront Joe Roberts. The scene plays to the fadeout and then immediately cuts to the beginning of the monkey scene. At the end of the monkey scene, the backdrop confrontation begins and abruptly cuts right where it left off earlier in the film.
    • Connections
      Edited into The Golden Age of Buster Keaton (1975)

    User reviews27

    Review
    Top review
    Masterpiece of the Absurd.
    This has to be one of the strangest, most daring films ever made by a major Hollywood studio, and surely the funniest and most perceptive study of madness in all cinema. The first ten minutes are a breathtaking display of bewildering surrealist magic. Buster Keaton buys a ticket for a variety show. Buster Keaton conducts an orchestra of Buster Keatons, defeated by their hostile instruments. An art-deco line of Buster Keaton minstrels have a calm discussion, while pairs of male and female Buster Keatons make up the audience, restless, spiteful and belligerant.

    This is stunning cinema in any language (arf), and a supreme visualisation of mental breakdown, distorted personality, megalomania, and the most terrifying anxieties. It is also an hilarious pre-empting of the auteur theory - the elaborate playbill reveals Buster Keaton to be responsible for EVERYTHING, from scenario to lighting - this monopoly of creativity leads to chaos, madness, fragmentation and estrangement.

    As in so many of Keaton's films, this remarkable fantasy is shown to be the dream of a lowly, bullied man, this time a theatrical hand. Far from diminishing the film's dreamlike structure, this revelation intensifies it. An astonishing series of variations on the line between art and life, dream and reality ensues, an argument which descends into ever-increasing spirals of confusion and disintegration.

    Some of Keaton's best comic set-pieces follow, all hilarious in themselves, yet underlining the melancholy and fears of Buster himself - be he ordinary man or isolated genius. Life can never remain stable for him, his personality is shot to pieces - whether through existential crises or booze is unclear; like Gulliver in Houyhnhm land, his humanity is stripped to the level of bestiality - a very funny, subversive sequence, which is as despairing as the end of NIGHTMARE ALLEY.

    The supposedly redemptive love interest is a bewildering, tormenting game on Buster, as he repeatedly fails to remember which twin is his fiancee. The continually collapsing sets are a thematically rich, Usher(playhouse, geddit?)-like representation of Buster's fragile mind. To universalise the genius of Buster Keaton is to belittle and emasculate him. He is like us only because his trauma is so particular.
    helpful•15
    4
    • alice liddell
    • Oct 6, 1999

    Details

    Edit
    • Release date
      • September 24, 1921 (United States)
    • Country of origin
      • United States
    • Language
      • None
    • Also known as
      • The Playhouse
    • Production company
      • Joseph M. Schenck Productions
    • See more company credits at IMDbPro

    Technical specs

    Edit
    • Runtime
      23 minutes
    • Color
      • Black and White
    • Sound mix
      • Silent
    • Aspect ratio
      • 1.33 : 1

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