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Buster Keaton: Comedies
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Actor and filmmaker Buster Keaton (1895-1966) was one of the greatest comic figures of the silent film era. Born Joseph Frank Keaton, VI to vaudevillian parents, he was on stage and part of the physical comedy act by the time he was 4 years old.
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At the request of his star Buster Keaton, producer Joseph M. Schenck purchased an obsolete ocean liner for $20,000. Keaton wanted to use the boat as a "prop" in his upcoming feature comedy, but went into production with nary a plot idea in his head. Eventually, Buster and his chief gagman Clyde Bruckman came up with a story involving two wealthy, pampered young people (played by Keaton and Kathryn McGuire), who through a series of fantastic but logical plot convolutions end up stranded together on a drifting, deserted ocean liner. At first, the young couple is helpless because they've never had to lift a finger in their lives. As the weeks pass, Keaton and McGuire become quite adept at fending for themselves, utilizing the huge facilities of the liner (its steam room, its enormous kitchen) for the simplest and most basic of necessities. An attack by a cannibal tribe requires Keaton to be more resourceful than ever; the build-up to the climactic contretemps between Keaton and the cannibals is almost as side-splitting as the climax itself.
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At the request of his star Buster Keaton, producer Joseph M. Schenck purchased an obsolete ocean liner for $20,000. Keaton wanted to use the boat as a "prop" in his upcoming feature comedy, but went into production with nary a plot idea in his head.
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Buster Keaton began his performing life as The Human Mop in his parents' vaudeville act. Being thrown around the stage by his father gave him a crash course in how to fall, and stood him in good stead for his early film appearances, as an increasingly important supporting player in the short comedies of his friend, Roscoe (Fatty) Arbuckle.
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The silent comedy feature College stars Buster Keaton as a scholarly young man who doesn't know beans about sports. When he arrives in college, Buster finds that all the Big Men on Campus are jocks. To impress pretty coed Anne Cornwall, Buster tries and fails to join all the school teams. Even when he attempts to take a job at the campus soda fountain, Buster is a washout. Through the kindness of dean Snitz Edwards, Keaton is placed on the varsity rowing team where, despite several clumsy moments, he manages to win the big race. This infuriates his athletic rival Harold Goodwin, who seizes Cornwall and runs off with her.
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From July 12 to 30 La Cinémathèque Québécoise, in conjunction with le Festival Juste pour rire (Just For Laughs), will be featuring a major retrospective of cinema's comedic giant Buster Keaton. The retrospective includes 13 shorts, 11 features, and a French film by Pierre Étaix that is a homage to American silent comedy, Le Soupirant. Although all of the Keaton films being shown are now available in exemplary home viewing formats (DVD, LD), La Cinémathèque has scored a major coup by procuring 35mm prints of all the films. Nothing beats viewing Keaton's comic brilliance in splendid 35mm with live piano accompaniment.
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