Sunday, March 31, 2013

"Silent Echoes: Discovering Early Hollywood Through The Films of Buster Keaton



Probably one of the most obsessive books ever. John Bengtson located every location Buster Keaton shot his films on, and re-photographed it, usually at the same angle or shot of the original film. So what we have is a book that is about Keaton and how he used real locations for his classic films, plus a visual history of Los Angeles, and what that location looks like now.

It's a stunning way of looking at space and what happens to that space. Strange enough a lot of the locations haven't changed, and some of course one would never recognize it in the film. This book is an extreme tour of a region via the eyes of Keaton and much later Mr. Bengston. The amount of work he did for this book is pretty much jaw-dropping 'wow.'

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