The Art of Pantomime

Valuable for some Matt The first publication of this was in French in the 1920s so a modern post-Chaplain American artist looking for a silent theatre resource may be a bit dissapointed. The book is unofficially broken up into two parts: a detail description of facial, hand, and body gestures which can be used as templates for communicating and the author's advice on how to approach the creation of new Pantomimes. The book is a good study in Pantomime, a particular type of wordless narrative derived from commedia dell'arte, but not about wordless / silent theater in general.

"This book should interest film actors, directors, and scenario writers … besides several chapters on the possibilities of silent drama it contains what is probably our largest and most accurate collection of drawings illustrating emotional attitudes as portrayed by facial expressions and bodily postures." — New York Herald Tribune.Among the oldest theater arts, pantomime figured prominently in Greek and Elizabethan drama, appeared in French and Italian commedia dell'arte theatricals, and surfaced more recently in burlesque, vaudeville, and musical comedy reviews. The author of this book, a veteran French acting instructor, asserts that "The best way to perfect dramatic work is to play pantomimes." In this volume, he presents a well-illustrated analysis of pantomime's extensive variety of emotional expressions, attainable

"This book should interest films actors, directors, and scenario writers besides several chapters on the possibilities of silent drama it contains what is probably our largest and most accurate collection of drawings illustrating emotional attitudes as portrayed by facial expressions and bodily postures."