One Week: Sybil in the bath.

• Beginning with a MS showing Sybil in the bath, allowed before the invention of the 'Hays Code' in the 1930s prohibiting nudity, a level freedom in film at the time was symbolic of the new found freedom gained by white female Americans in the 1920s.
• What freedoms did women gain in the 1920s?

  White women gained the ability to vote

  Joined the workforce

  Social freedoms
• This sequence cross cuts between Keaton and Sybil, an ELS of the cubistic house ('what you see is what the director made happen'), the anarchy of the house framework representing Keaton's radical deviation from the norm.
• In a potentially scandalous MLS revealing a bathing bride, Sybil drops the soap out of the bath, breaking the fourth wall as she reaches over the bath.

  Acknowledging the voyeurism of watching a film, as well as acknowledging the presence of camera work.

  An expressionistic challenge to the audience, the spectatorship becoming active.
• As she breaks the fourth wall, a hand appears from outside of the frame and politely covers the lens, saving her modesty, and after she retrieves the soap the hand uncovers the lens, and her performance is a flirty look of thankyou to the camera before resuming her bath.
• This scene hints at the brilliance to come from BK, as well as providing evidence of his innate talents.
• Seeing a woman alone in a scene stands as good representation for women: they exist beyond their male counterparts.

  However, it could be read as sexualisation since there are no scenes of men in an equally vulnerable state, Keaton uses the male gaze on the naked body to attract attention.
• Or it could be argued Sybil takes on a very active role and has the most groundbreaking role through breaking the fourth wall – she defies the stupidity of the male characters.

  And as the 'bathing beauty' she has the power and the audience know it.
• Cross cutting to BK in an LS on the roof, seamlessly falling through the roof as he attaches the chimney (realism stunt), before cutting inside the bathroom in wide LS as he falls directly into the bath.

  Using audience expectations to shock them.
• Sybil then appears out of the shower, subverting audience expectations and using an expressionistic iris to focus on her scolding of BK.