The Playhouse is a shining example of the adage “necessity is the mother of invention”. During the filming of The Electric House, Keaton suffered a show-stopping accident, breaking his ankle. Even after he recovered it was thought unwise for him to make another short that relied heavily on his athletic abilities. Keaton’s solution was as inventive as it was elegant. He would rely on the dexterity of the camera and the possibilities of the film medium itself to do the work for him. For the most famous sequence, Keaton devised an elaborate shutter system that allowed for the frame to be exposed in nine separate vertical sections, creating nine multiple exposures of Keaton performing on the same strip of film. A remarkable feat of engineering and choreography, it required Keaton to perfectly time his movements and camera operator Elgin Lessley, whom he called “the human metronome” to exactly match his camera speed each time. According to Keaton, the gag of crediting himself with multiple roles within the film was a friendly dig at people such as Thomas Ince, who he felt were overly generous when giving themselves credit.

Tim Lanza

There is a sense that The Love Nest, one of Keaton’s lightest and most carefree films, contains a seam of melancholy. Perhaps it is the awareness that with this last short, the glorious era of two-reelers – the sparkling and undisputed leading force of every double-bill up to the early 1920s – came to an end. Or perhaps it’s because we know it to be one of the last pairings of Buster Keaton and his old antagonist ‘Big’ Joe Roberts. The same goes for Virginia Fox, only caught in a glimpse. The Love Nest can be drunk in one sip, and even if the set is a small whaling ship, the conflict is simple and the main plot rather fragile, so the gags and the action flow generously. We owe some of that to Elgin Lessley, who under Keaton’s direction created some very graceful and open compositions. “The white and empty space is so much”, writes Walter Biggins, “that depending on the frame, we perceive the presence of an entire unexplored world or an unlimited void”.

Cecilia Cenciarelli