We're accustomed to seeing Buster Keaton's early short films piecemeal, as a
special treat on a screening schedule or as an extra for a silent comedy feature.
Kino's
Buster Keaton The Short Films Collection collects all nineteen of
the independent two-reelers Keaton made between 1920 and 1923. Assembled in one
group, the films show the screen comedian refining his solo persona and developing
a style more dependent on realism than cartoonish gags.
Coming directly from a productive apprenticeship with Fatty Arbuckle, Keaton was
already adept with standard comedy material -- his pratfalls were the wildest on
screen and no physical gag seemed too impossible for him. The Arbuckle-Keaton
silent comedies are some of the funniest ever; we only wish that more of them
existed in better-quality prints. Backer Joseph Schenck helped Buster move into
Charles Chaplin's old Hollywood studio near the corner of Santa Monica Blvd. and
Vine Street, where he began filming almost immediately.
Keaton's nineteen shorts include oft-screened favorites and others not nearly as
well known.
The High Sign was filmed first but held up for a year because
Keaton thought it was too much like an Arbuckle production. An extortion gang
hires Buster to assassinate a businessman, who immediately hires Buster as a
bodyguard. A bravura chase threads through a house rigged with a number of trap
doors and secret passageways, the kind of technical challenge that appealed to
Keaton and his head engineer- gag-builder, Fred Gabourie.
Now recognized as his first solo masterpiece, Keaton's
One Week takes
silent comedy in a new direction. Its dry wit and physical logic immediately
distinguish it from the frantic two-reelers by other comedians of 1920. Calendar
pages count off the days as newlyweds cheerfully build a prefabricated house, not
realizing that the assembly instructions have been sabotaged. The proud homeowners
remain calm as the uninhabitable structure turns into a surreal nightmare. Keaton
"tops" each crazy gag with one even more absurd, until the house meets its fate on
some railroad tracks.
One Week is core Keaton in that none of its jokes are blatantly impossible.
When things go "crazy" in his filmic universe, the physicality of what occurs
remains stubbornly logical: Buster is never hammered into the ground or chopped
into pieces. Keaton disliked cartoonish gags, such as a bit in
The High
Sign where he hangs his jacket on a hook that he's drawn on the wall with
chalk. His is a more honest struggle with the modern world. When Laurel & Hardy
are mangled by shop tools or crushed by runaway pianos, we sometimes want the
torture to stop. Keaton's energetic hero understands little of the forces that are
ruining his plans, but he never howls or complains.
The endless pursuit of Buster by an army of
Cops therefore takes on an
abstract quality. We laugh at individual stunts and marvel at the masses of
uniforms that Buster seemingly cannot escape. Surrealists loved Keaton's innocent
clashes with authority, and taken as a whole his films do make a whimsical
artistic statement about the Human Condition. Many a Keaton hero ends up jailed or
destitute, his boat sunk or his house destroyed, without ever really understanding
what has happened.
Some of Keaton's humor is downright sadistic.
Convict 13 has plenty of
black comedy, with guards and inmates shot and clubbed by the score; Buster stages
several gags on a grim execution scaffold. Other short subjects are organized
around interesting design ideas. Symmetrical backyards separated by a fence keep
young lovers apart in
Neighbors, but Buster visits his girl by climbing
across second-story clotheslines. Buster's gags often involve visual illusions. In
one film the bars of an iron gate fool us into thinking that he's in prison. In
another, a spare tire that Buster hops on to hitch a ride turns out to be a
display sitting on the ground, and not attached to the automobile. Keaton sets up
his story with silent inter-titles but normally avoids verbal jokes. A telling
exception is a gag in which a man wanders into a party covered in bandages.
Another guest asks, "What happened to you?" He answers: "I bought a Ford."
Keaton and his team loved elaborate mechanical gags. Functioning inventions adorn
The Electric House, including a device that racks billiard balls.
The
Boat is practically a dry run for the director's later feature classic
The
Navigator. The voyage of the good ship Damfino is one disaster after another,
even when Keaton's little dinghy remains tied up to the dock.
The Playhouse
is Keaton at his most surreal. Multiple exposures populate an entire musical
theater -- actors, audience, musicians -- with duplicates of Buster Keaton.
Several Keatons playing musical instruments interact perfectly; no mattes are
visible. Technically, Keaton is forty years ahead of his time.
In 1923 Schenck and the backers insisted that Keaton abandon short subjects and
move up to the more profitable arena of feature film production. As we've already
seen, his first feature effort
Three Ages was
organized to be easily split into three separate short subjects, should he prove
unpopular in the longer format.
Kino International's Blu-ray of
Buster Keaton The Short Films Collection
1920-1923 is an archival-quality assembly. Only a couple of these 90 year-old
gems are in perfect condition but all are presented at the best level of
restoration so far attained. Once thought to be lost, the final short
The Love
Nest appears here in a reasonably good print.
Day Dreams is missing
several flashbacks, perhaps because they were printed on tinted film stock that
deteriorated while the rest of the film remained intact. A couple of the shorts
exist only in quality much poorer than the norm, and are included for the sake of
completeness. The set comes on three separate Blu-ray discs, in order of filming.
Each comedy has a newly recorded musical accompaniment.
As is their policy, Kino has not used digital enhancement, as that process
invariably softens the image as it minimizes visual flaws. But as an extra
feature, five of the shorts (
The High Sign, The Balloonatic, The Boat and
Cops) have been run through digital processing. Curious viewers can compare
the results for themselves.
The ample extras provide a wealth of background information about this formative
chapter in Keaton's career. Visual essays analyze fifteen titles, and are authored
by experts including Bruce Lawton, David Kalat and Bret Wood. Keaton biographer
Jeffrey Vance contributes an essay to the disc set's insert booklet. Locations
expert John Bengtson details local sites where Keaton filmed. Vintage photos
reveal most of Los Angeles in 1922 as empty acreage crisscrossed by dirt roads. A
three-block strip of Cahuenga Blvd. saw a lot of Keaton production activity, as
did a warren of downtown alleyways later wiped out by the Hollywood Freeway. Other
menu choices lead viewers to alternate and deleted scenes, with a generous helping
of related films by other silent comedians.
For more information about
Buster Keaton The Short Films Collection
1920-1923, visit
Kino Lorber. To order
Buster Keaton The Short
Films Collection 1920-1923, go to
TCM Shopping.
by Glenn Erickson
