Weimar Slapstick and Hollywood Comedy Transformed

Paul Flaig is Lecturer in Film Studies at the University of St. Andrews, UK. He is the co-editor of New Silent Cinema (2015) and his writing has appeared in Journal of Cinema and Media Studies, Camera Obscura, Cinema Journal, Animation and Screen. He is co-director of the German Screen Studies Network.

• List of FiguresAcknowledgmentsIntroductionChapter 1- The Tramp Re-functioned: On Brecht and ChaplinChapter 2- A German (Jewish and Queer) Harold Lloyd: Curt Bois and the White-Collar WorkerChapter 3- “Dada Buster”: Laughter, Technology and Androgyny from the Great Stone Face to the Weimar Avant-GardeChapter 4- From Caligari to Mickey: Animation Aesthetics, the Comic Uncanny and American Cartoon Humor AbroadChapter 5- Felix the Psychotechnical CatChapter 6- Walter Benjamin versus CapracornCoda

A masterful study of Weimar culture’s engagement with American slapstick, Paul Flaig’s book uncovers forgotten histories—Berthold Brecht on Charlie Chaplin, Walter Benjamin on Frank Capra, Germany’s lost Laurel and Hardy—restoring the intellectual and historical contexts that shaped this transatlantic comic dialogue. A genuinely revelatory work.