Body In Space:A Study Of Space In Buster Keaton’s Films From The Perspective Of Cinematic Architecture

Buster Keaton is the leading representative of silent comedy.Silent comedy mainly refers to silent comedy films which originated in the late 19th century,flourished in the early 20th century and declined with the appearance of sound film in the late 1920s.It is also known as spatial comedy because of its concern with the relationship of the human body to things,or the surrounding world.Compared with other actors of the same period,Keaton,as a silent film director and actor who was explicitly mentioned by Le Corbusier,has the most exquisite setting and the most flexible body movement.The film contains the most diverse interaction modes between body and space,which constitutes a rich source material for studying the ways of body participation in space.At the moment when the visual image of the building is over-concerned due to the influence of the social media platform,it provides the possibility of designing from the body in more dimensions.However,Keaton’s film practice has rarely been discussed and analyzed in the field of architecture.Based on the field of cinematic architecture,this thesis analyzes the spatial characteristics of Keaton’s golden age moving images and their relationship with the body.Before analyzing Keaton,this thesis first delimits the area for the research of cinematic architecture,classifies the existing research results,and clarifies the position of this research content in the field of cinematic architecture.Then,according to the different spatial scales involved in Keaton’s films,the relationship between the spatial elements,spatial combinations,urban space and the body are analyzed in turn:In the analysis of spatial elements,body movement is explained from four aspects:behavioral purpose,movement trajectory,body action and body gesture.Then,how spatial elements support and even drive body movement,as well as how body movement triggers spatial changes are presented;In the analysis of the space combination,it focuses on how the spatial characteristics support the motion relationship of multiple subjects.Here,the motion of the subject is marked from two aspects of motion trajectory and motion velocity,as the material for studying the motion relationship;In the analysis of the urban space,based on Keaton’s way of narration,this thesis introduced the concept of "space crisis" to describe the way Keaton used to organize the bodies in city,to analyze Keaton’s ways of making,falling into,avoiding,escaping and solving spatial crises in the city through his body,as well as the characteristics of relevant spatial nodes.In addition,in the process of research,this thesis tries to make some innovations in the analytical framework and cartographic methods,which are embodied in the establishment of the framework of body movement in the chapter of spatial elements and the pictorial translation of films in the chapter of spatial organization.Through the above research on Keaton’s films,this thesis attempts to expand the possibility of the use existing in real buildings,and to supplement the nodes that can be designed in space,hoping to provide richer design directions for current architectural practice.The whole thesis contains about 61000 words,101 pictures and charts.