Sendo o curta com uma das gags impossíveis mais famosas de Buster Keaton, The Playhouse (1921) trabalha com a relação existente entre o mundo onírico e a realidade, iniciando com um sonho da personagem de Keaton em que ele interpreta todos os papéis de um espetáculo, de atores e membros da orquestra aos espectadores da apresentação. Em seguida, acompanhamos Keaton em seu dia de trabalho após ser despertado pelo chefe, e vemos que diversos elementos de seu sonho ainda estão presentes na realidade desse faz-tudo do teatro. Lançado no segundo ano de trabalho de Keaton como diretor de suas próprias obras, o curta coloca como tema central a questão do trabalho no teatro e no cinema, apresentando diferentes possibilidades e experimentações no campo social e cinematográfico. Deste modo, esta dissertação propõe uma análise acerca da construção dessa temática no curta, refletindo sobre os escritos de Walter Benjamin e Michael Löwy sobre a relação entre o cinema, a comédia muda norte-americana em especial o trabalho de Keaton e uma crítica feita à sociedade capitalista industrial; e a teoria de Bertolt Brecht sobre o teatro épico. / As the short movie that holds one of the most famous impossible gags made by Buster Keaton, The Playhouse (1921) works with the relation between the oneiric world and reality, beginning with a sequence dreamed by Keaton\'s character in which he plays all the roles in the spectacle, from actors and musicians in an orchestra to the spectators of the show. After this dream, we follow Keaton during his day at work since the moment he was woken up by his boss and we notice that various elements of his dream are still present in the reality of this handyman from the theater. Released in the second year of Keaton\'s work as a director of his own films, this short movie presents as its main theme the working world in the theater and the cinema, putting forward different possibilities and experimentations in the social and cinematographic fields. Therefore, the following master\'s dissertation brings an analysis of the way this theme is presented in the short movie, considering the writings of Walter Benjamin and Michael Löwy about the relation between cinema, American silent comedy - especially Buster Keaton\'s work - and the criticism of capitalistic industrial society; and Bertolt Brecht\'s theory about epic theater.

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The study of widescreen cinema historically has been under analyzed with regard to aesthetics. This project examines the visual poetics of the wide frame from the silent films of Griffith and Gance to the CinemaScope grandeur of Preminger and Tashlin. Additionally, the roles of auteur and genre are explored as well as the new media possibilities such as letterboxing online content. If cinema’s history can be compared to painting, then prior to 1953, cinema existed as a portrait-only operation with a premium placed on vertical compositions. This is not to say that landscape shots were not possible or that lateral mise-en-scene did not exist. Cinematic texts, with very few exceptions, were composed in only one shape: the almost square Academy Ratio. Before 1953, cinema’s shape is that of portraiture; after 1953 cinema’s shape is landscape. Widescreen filmmaking is not simply an alternative to previous visual representation in cinema because no equivalent exists. Widescreen is quite simply a break from previous stylistic norms because the shape of the frame itself has been drastically reconfigured. With the proliferation of HDTV and widescreen computer monitors, certain aspect ratios that were once regarded as specifically “cinematic” are now commonplace both in the home and in the workplace. This project outlines a project that traces the innovations and aesthetic developments of widescreen aspect ratios from the silent era of D.W Griffith, Buster Keaton and Abel Gance all the way through to current widescreen digital manifestations of web-based media and digital “blanks” such as those created by Pixar. Other chapters include close textual analyses of “experimental” widescreen films of 1930, the development of “norms” for widescreen filmmaking in the early CinemaScope era of the 1950s and examinations of the experimental multi-screen mosaics of 1968 and beyond.

Winsor McCay drew delightful drawings about the dreams of a Welsh rarebit fiend, 'rare bits' inspired by an overindulgence in cheese. Dreams of the Rarebit Fiend was a Saturday cartoon that appeared in the New York Evening Telegram from 1904 to 1911, psychic twin to Little Nemo in Slumberland that appeared concurrently in the Sunday Funnies of the New York Herald from 1905-1911. 'Slumberland' was a Neo-classical fantasy that closely resembled the idealized White City of the Chicago World's Fair (1893), that inspired the architecture of Coney Island's Dreamland (1905-1911), which beckoned to McCay as he drew from his house just across Sheepshead Bay in Brooklyn. The capricious side of this Architecture emerged in McCay's cartoons. A self-taught illustrator, McCay began his career in Detroit working in dime museums, worlds of wonder—filled with monsters—dioramas and sideshow performers whose livelihood depended on their ability to amaze an audience. Just this sort of rare and gifted fellow, McCay parlayed his entertaining lampoonery of Slumberland into some of the world's first animations on vaudeville. As with the Rarebit Fiend, Little Nemo's dreams were brought on by overindulgence, in his case of too many donuts or Huckleberry Pie. But, this was merely a pretense for McCay's fantastical 'dream' mode of thinking, a potentially useful body of knowledge that was simultaneously explored by Sigmund Freud, Henri Bergson and Marcel Proust, who linked the mechanisms employed by the unconscious in dreaming to those at play in wit. Architectural drawing—seen through McCay's cartoons and early animations—has a kind of 'gastronomical' alchemy that inadvertently became a treatise on the architectural imagination. Fiend and Little Nemo affected the psychic mood of early modern Architecture—its 'childhood' in the milieu of White Cities—that was both added to and commented on by Winsor McCay's pen. His cartoons portray the hidden 'flavors' of the buildings springing up a century ago. This 'other'—surreal—aspect of the White Cities, seasoned with whirling iron Ferris wheels and Flip-Flop rides, newly invented elevators and electric lights—and even fun house mirrors that made buildings suddenly seem very tall—were the ingredients that caused the fiend and Nemo to wake up, which ultimately became the culinary school of modern Architecture. McCay's 'fiendish' depictions show us that the right blend of humor and awe is a recipe for happiness. / Doctor of Philosophy / Winsor McCay made cartoons of the 'nightmares' of a Rarebit Fiend with a witty, unflinching eye for detail. Those illustrations became a psychic twin to the architectural fantasies of a little boy in the 'funnies' section of the New York newspapers from 1905-1911. Dreams of the Rarebit Fiend and Little Nemo in Slumberland continue to entertain and edify us, while inadvertently acting as a guide to how the imagination works. McCay's celebrity as a cartoonist also led him to become one of the world's first animators, amazing vaudeville audiences with depictions of Little Nemo that were suddenly larger than life, illuminated, and mobile. Dreams were rediscovered in the early twentieth century as useful bodies of knowledge for understanding the self, seen through the writings of Sigmund Freud, Henri Bergson and Marcel Proust, who linked the mechanisms employed by the unconscious 'dreamer' to those at play in wit. That thinking was surrounded by the atmosphere in McCay's comedic sequential images, which in turn inspired the iconic dreamlike silent movies of Buster Keaton. A look at the birth of these art forms a hundred years ago provides insight into the psychic mood of early modern Architecture, but also to the imagining of today's world (both material and virtual) using the digital tools that are just being invented. Although McCay's cartoons are fiendish, they sustain the balance between dreaming and humor that is essential to imagining a happy modern life.