Mack Sennett's Fun Factory - Review

[Paul E. Gierucki]

James L. Neibaur has penned a review of Brent Walker's marvelous Mack Sennett book:

http://www.examiner.com/review/massive- ... -softcover


Massive book on Mack Sennett films now in affordable softcover
Classic Movies
May 9, 2013
By: James L. Neibaur

Brent Walker's mammoth study "Mack Sennett's Fun Factory" was released in a thick, oversized hardcover volume in 2010. The information in contained was encyclopedic, with detailed information on the films, the performers, and the technical craftsmen who worked with Mack Sennett from his beginnings at the Biograph studios until his final sound movies prior to his retirement. The book takes us up to Sennett's death in 1960, serving as biographical as well as a deep and revealing assessment of his pioneering work in screen comedy. Mack Sennett's importance to American cinema's development cannot be overstated. In the earliest days of the moving picture, Sennett understood how the rapid, rhythmic movement within the frame, the sheer frenetic energy exhibited by an acrobatic performer, could produce a level of comedic thrills and excitement in the same manner as cross-cut editing could enhance an action drama. A brilliant spotter of talent, Sennett honed the likes of Ford Sterling, Mabel Normand, Charlie Chaplin, Harold Lloyd, Roscoe Arbuckle, Al St John, Ben Turpin, Charley Chase, Edgar Kennedy, and Harry Langdon, giving each a training ground for their own ideas and creative visions. Comedians would write. They would direct. Sennett would himself perform in some of the films. Mabel Normand became the first female comedy director. Sennett's production "Tillie's Punctured Romance" (1914) became the first feature-length comedy movie. Parody and satire, outrageous slapstick, garish makeup, and blatant gestures were all ingredients in the Sennett silent comedies, while his Keystone Cops became legendary examples of authority taking it on the chin in the name of humor. Perhaps appearing a bit crude and unfinished in the wake of all that has happened since, the Sennett-produced silents are the foundation for virtually any physical comedy that has been produced for the screen. Walker's heavily illustrated study gives us a visual appreciation as well as a literary understanding of how Sennett's crude approach helped invent the language of cinema. His slapstick trappings were a bit too limiting to contain the talents of such heavyweights as Chaplin, Lloyd, Arbuckle, and Langdon, all of whom went on to produce their best work after leaving the fold. But each benefited enormously from the rugged training they'd enjoyed while working for the acknowleged King of Comedy. Decades of careful research, the gathering of hundreds of images, complete statistics in a complete filmography, and an expert look at each phase of Sennett's career from its beginnings to its conclusion are what this book has to offer. For students of film, it is indispensible, one of the most perfect film history books ever to be published. Now in affordable softcover at less than half the price of the hardcover original, there is no excuse to not own "Mack Sennett's Fun Factory."