2hotFeature one of my absolute favorites!

GurlyIamBeach Instant Favorite.

Bessie Smyth Great story, amazing characters, superb action, enthralling cinematography. Yes, this is something I am glad I spent money on.

Mehdi Hoffman There's a more than satisfactory amount of boom-boom in the movie's trim running time.

Petri Pelkonen Buster Keaton goes to the theater and sees the stage full of Keatons. In The Playhouse from 1921 Buster plays not only the actors, but also members of the audience (including women and one kid), staff members and even a monkey. And he also has time to fall in love with a girl (Virginia Fox). The only problem is that she has a twin sister, and he has hard time telling which is which. This silent short made me laugh more than once. Buster as the monkey is something hilarious. And when Buster puts off a beard fire with an axe! This movie is a fine proof of Keaton's talents. He was truly a master in physical comedy. And what a fine example of movie magic- the 1920's style- this movie is. In the minstrel show you see nine Keatons on stage. That's really something!

theowinthrop THE PLAY HOUSE is Keaton showing his growth as a film comedian and director. It is in two sections actually, and they are blended together without much difficulty. We see Keaton as an employee going into a vaudeville house. We eventually learn it is the Keaton Vaudeville House, and everyone in the audience, on stage, in the orchestra, and backstage is Keaton in one set of clothing or another, and with different wigs or make-up arrangements. That includes an entire nine man minstrel show (which we even see two jokes about a cyclone being told). All the Keatons act well in their roles: as an elderly snobby couple (the man keeps falling asleep, and the lady complains of a lower class mother and son above them who are emptying soda pop on them). The six piece orchestra (with conductor) are all distinct from each other (the clarinet player treats his "licorice stick" like a licorice stick; the violinist puts resin on his bow like it's chalk on a billiard cue).Then it turns out Keaton is sleeping on a bed, and is awaken by his usual nemesis Joe Roberts. With derby on head and cigar in mouth, Roberts is ordering Keaton off his bed and out of the room. To mournful music Keaton gets up, and picks up his hat from beneath the bed. Some of Roberts staff have come in, and have started taking other furniture out. Keaton goes out the door, and then we see the walls being taken down. Keaton has been sleeping on a set for the theater that he actually works in.The rest of the film deals with Keaton's involvement as a gopher/backstage hand/ and occasional performer. He has to take over for a performing chimpanzee that is part of one of the acts (needless to say Buster does very nicely as the "trained chimp"). He also has a moment that needs a bit of explanation for the 2008 audience: Roberts is the head of an act of performing zouaves (French soldiers from North Africa who were known for prodigious acts of physical durance and speed). He is understaffed for the performance, and turns to Keaton, asking for more zouaves. "Zouaves" were also a name for a 1920s style of cigarettes, so Buster offers Joe his pack, before he's straightened out. Buster finds the "zouaves" at a nearby work site, where their foreman is dozing off, and they follow him to the theater and perform.A running thread in the film is that Keaton is romancing one of a pair of twin sisters, and keeps kissing the wrong one (and getting slapped as a result). It is only at the tale end of the film that Keaton finds a way of telling them apart.Keaton does not miss a single point about 1920s Vaudeville. The Zouave act is being applauded by two one armed old war veterans (the Northern Army in the Civil War had a Zouave corps for awhile). When they like what is going on they clap their two surviving hands together. But they disagree about the further antics of the performers, and one switches to another gentleman sitting next to him to clap his personal applause with.It is a marvelous short, showing Keaton stretching himself for his jump (also in 1921) to feature films.

Snow Leopard This is an unusual and extremely creative short comedy that shows off both Keaton's technical and comic skills, and it's loaded with clever visual details. Keaton's main character in this one is a stage hand, but he plays 20 or more different roles, most of them in the fascinating and bizarre opening sequence. The craftsmanship is perfect - even when several images of Keaton appear in one shot - and when you realize what the sequence represents, it's very suggestive as well. The main part of the film moves a little more slowly, but has some good laughs in it. There is a nice recurring joke about Keaton's girl - she is one of a pair of twins, and Keaton can never keep them straight. While Keaton made other films that are more uproariously funny, "The Playhouse" is a gem of inventiveness, and is highly recommended for anyone who enjoys silent films.

alice liddell 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.