Most days I feel like an acrobat high above a crowd out of which my own parents, my in-laws, potential employers, phantoms of "oth...er women who do it" and a thousand faceless eyes stare up.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
Constantly risking absurdity and death... whenever he performs above the heads of his audience the poet like an acrobat climbs on rime to a high wire of his own making.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
As he walks away on his own two feet--the toddler's body-mind has reached its moment of perfection. The world is his and he the mi...ghty conqueror of all he beholds.... As long as mother sticks around in the wings, the mighty acrobat confidently performs his trick of twirling in circles, walking on tiptoe, jumping, climbing, staring, naming. He is joyous, filled with his grandeur and wondrous omnipotence.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
Much has already been written of the uncanny ways in which Chaplin and Keaton seem to divide so much of the world, so precisely, b...etween them. Charlie the sentimentalist and Buster the ironist, the dancer and the acrobat, the critic of capitalist society and the deviser of happy-ending Edens outside of society--all these distinctions are well-known and important. But the most richly creative difference between these geniuses is in their language--not the language in their films (how wonderful it is that they are forever silent) but the language that their films make real. For Chaplin the space of the world is always and insidiously dangerous, perhaps even murderous. For Keaton, that same space is, breathtakingly, his toy.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
Lock in! Be alert, my acrobat and I will be soft wood and you the nail... and we will make fiery ovens for Jack Sprat and you will hurl yourself into my tiny jail and we will take a supper together and that will be that.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »