Buster Keaton

Movies to See Right Now (at home)

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Olivia Colman and Anthony Hopkins in THE FATHER, coming up at the Mill Valley Film Festival

This week: Not one, but TWO Watch At Home film festivals.

The Mill Valley Film Festival is always the best opportunity for Bay Area film goers to catch an early look at the Big Movies – the prestige films that will be released during Award Season. This year is the same – except we don’t even have to visit Marin County in person. Watch at home.

Cinejoy is Cinequest’s October virtual fest. More watch at home choices, especially focused on indie gems that you can’t see anywhere else.

ON VIDEO

Stuntwomen: The Untold Hollywood Story: “Actresses play characters, but stuntwoman play actresses playing characters, while driving fast and kicking ass.” Streaming on iTunes and Google Play.

The most eclectic watch-at-home recommendations you’ll find ANYWHERE:

ON TV

On October 4, Turner Classic Movies presents an afternoon and evening of Buster Keaton that is one of the best programs that TCM has ever curated. First, there’s Peter Bogdanovich’s fine 2018 biodoc of Keaton, The Great Buster: A Celebration. I had thought that I had a good handle on Keaton’s body of work, but The Great Buster is essential to understanding it.

TCM follows with four movies from Keaton’s masterpiece period: Sherlock, Jr. (1924), The General (1926), Steamboat Bill, Jr. (1928) and Seven Chances (1925). After 1928, Keaton’s new studio took away his creative control, and his career (and personal life) crashed.

This is a chance to appreciate Keaton’s greatest work. I just wrote about Steamboat Bill, Jr. for last year’s Cinequest. I’ve also recommended Seven Chances for its phenomenal chase scene, one that still (ninety-five years later!) rates with the very best in cinema history.

Buster Keaton in SEVEN CHANCES

Movies to See Right Now

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Buster Keaton (right) in STEAMBOAT BILL, JR.

OUT NOW

ON VIDEO

My Stream of the Week is the Danish director Susanne Bier’s 2006 After the Wedding (Efter brylluppet) with the charismatic Mads Mikkelsen. There’s also a remake – a big Hollywood remake to be released this Friday also called After the Wedding. See this Danish original. After the Wedding was nominated for Best Foreign Language Oscar. After the Wedding, which I had listed as the second-best movie of 2007, can be streamed from Criterion and Amazon.

ON TV

On August 19, Turner Classic Movies presents an evening of Buster Keaton that is one of the best programs that TCM has ever curated. First, there’s Peter Bogdanovich’s fine 2018 biodoc of Keaton, The Great Buster: A Celebration. I had thought that I had a good handle on Keaton’s body of work, but The Great Buster is essential to understanding it.

TCM follows with five movies from Keaton’s masterpiece period:
Sherlock, Jr. (1924), The Navigator (1924), Seven Chances (1925), The General (1926) andSteamboat Bill, Jr. (1928). After 1928, Keaton’s new studio took away his creative control, and his career (and personal life) crashed.

This is a chance to appreciate Keaton’s greatest work. I just wrote about Steamboat Bill, Jr. for this year’s Cinequest. I’ve also recommended Seven Chances for its phenomenal chase scene, one that still rates with the very best in cinema history.

Buster Keaton in SEVEN CHANCES

THE “HIGH SIGN”: Buster on the verge

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THE HIGH SIGN: Buster Keaton and the Blinking Buzzards flashing the gang sign

The High Sign is 20-minutes of Buster Keaton’s rapid-fire comedy from 1921. Buster plays a young man who cons his way into a job managing an amusement park shooting gallery and inadvertently becomes entangled with a murderous gang of thugs. The plot exists to set up two exquisite comic set pieces. In the first, Keaton sets up an elaborate Rube Goldberg device to trick the boss into believing that Keaton is a master marksman. And the second is a triumph of Keaton’s ingenuity, as the gang members chase him through a cutaway two-story house, complete with trap doors and secret passageways.

Of course the gang itself, the Blinking Buzzards, is ridiculous, especially when they flash their secret gang sign. There’s also humor in the contrast between the towering gang leader (6′ 3″ Joe Roberts) and the diminutive (5′ 5″) Keaton.

The High Sign is a two-reeler, a 20-minute short film.  The conventional wisdom among early movie studio heads was that a comedy could only be sustain audience interest for 20 minutes. Keaton, Charlie Chaplin and Harold Lloyd would soon dispel that myth.

In fact, The High Sign came just before Keaton unleashed his string of comic masterpiece features:  Sherlock, Jr. (1924), The Navigator (1924), Seven Chances (1925), The General (1926), Steamboat Bill, Jr. (1928) and The Cameraman (1928).  After The Cameraman, Keaton’s new studio took away his creative control, and his career (and personal life) crashed.

I saw The High Sign at Cinequest, accompanied by world-renowned Dennis James on the Mighty Wurlitzer organ, before Steamboat Bill Jr.  I recommend Sal Pizarro’s excellent profile of Dennis James in the Mercury News.

Also known as The “High Sign”, the film plays occasionally on Turner Classic Movies and possibly bootleg versions can be streamed on YouTube and Vimeo.

Buster Keaton in THE HIGH SIGN

STEAMBOAT BILL, JR.: silent comedy, still at its best

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STEAMBOAT BILL, JR.

Every year, through the sponsorship of the Stanford Theatre Foundation, Cinequest presents a silent film. This year’s choice is Buster Keaton’s Steamboat Bill, Jr.

Keaton plays a wimpy young man returning home from college to help his father, who operates an old-fashioned and weathered paddle steamer. The father is burly and testosterone-fueled – and immediately aghast at his effete and callow son. The business is threatened by competition from a magnate’s newer, more well-equipped riverboat. Comic situations ensue from the business rivalry, a Romeo-and-Juliet subplot and the odd couple pairing of father and son.

But it’s all just the launching pad for Keaton’s comic genius, with its irresistible combination of deadpan slapstick and daring physical stunts. Steamboat Bill, Jr. contains one of the greatest movie stunts EVER – and one of the most dangerous – the entire front of a house blows over but fails to crush Buster because he emerges from a window opening.

Steamboat Bill, Jr. came in 1928 near the end of Keaton’s greatest work: Sherlock, Jr. (1924), The Navigator (1924), Seven Chances (1925), The General (1926) and The Cameraman (1928). After The Cameraman, Keaton’s new studio took away his creative control, and his career (and personal life) crashed.

I also recommend Peter Bogdanovich’s fine 2018 biodoc of Keaton, The Great Buster: A Celebration. It’s not yet streamable, but I expect it to be available soon.

Cinequest presents its silent films on the big screen of a period movie palace, the California Theatre, accompanied by world-renowned Dennis James on the Mighty Wurlitzer organ. James traveled with Lillian Gish as accompanist when she would present movies. I recommend Sal Pizarro’s excellent profile of Dennis James in the Mercury News.

Cinequest will present Steamboat Bill, Jr. along with the 20 minute Keaton short The High Sign (which I haven’t yet seen).

THE GREAT BUSTER: A CELEBRATION: comic genius unleashed and then squandered

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Buster Keaton’s THE GENERAL in THE GREAT BUSTER: A CELEBRATION. Courtesy of Cohen Media Group.

The documentary The Great Buster: A Celebration traces the life and career of the filmmaking genius Buster Keaton.  Every chance I get, I recommend Keaton’s silent masterpieces Seven Chances and The General. But The Great Buster puts Keaton’s work in helpful context.

First, director/film historian Peter Bogdanovich introduces us to Keaton’s upbringing as the child star in his parent’s vaudeville act. This is a CRAZY story, about Keaton working one-night performances from the age of FOUR in an act where he was essentially a guided missile in a fake leprechaun beard.

Next we learn about the young adult Keaton being introduced to the movie business by San Jose’s own, Fatty Arbuckle, and then moving on to creating his own two-reelers. Then The Great Buster focuses on the ten great features on which Buster had complete creative control. And then Bogdanovich takes us through MGM’s mishandling of Keaton’s career and the resultant decline. I thought that I had a good handle on Keaton’s body of work, but The Great Buster is essential to understanding it.

The Great Buster gives us many cool tidbits from his work in TV commercials through his final happy marriage. And 100-year-old actor Norman Lloyd relates an anecdote about performing a scene in Limelight with Keaton and Charlie Chaplin.

Peter Bogdanovich in THE GREAT BUSTER: A CELEBRATION. Courtesy of Cohen Media Group.

The Great Buster: A Celebration opens this weekend in the Bay Area.

DVD/Stream of the Week: SEVEN CHANCES – Buster Keaton’s genius on the run

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SEVEN CHANCES
SEVEN CHANCES

I thought that I knew the work of Buster Keaton, but somehow I had never seen Seven Chances.  It features a phenomenal chase scene that rates with the very best in cinema history – What’s Up Doc?, The French Connection, Bullitt!, Raiders of the Lost Ark and Keaton’s own The General.

Keaton’s character publishes a public offer of marriage and gets way more takers than he can handle. There’s a very funny scene where he sits in a church to reflect on his situation and woman after woman seats herself next to and around him; he is oblivious to the fact that each of them is there to marry HIM.  The church fills up with prospective wives, and, 30 minutes into the movie, he flees, with a horde of veiled would-be brides in pursuit. The chase is on.

Keaton is off and running and running and running, in a ridiculously long sprint though the city’s downtown and rail yards and into the hills.  Amazingly, he did all of his own stunts, including leaping over an abyss and being swung around by a railroad crane.  His race with a cascade of falling boulders is pure genius.  You keep asking yourself, “How did they perform that stunt with 1925 technology?”

Keaton understood the comedic power of excess, and the sheer magnitude of the frustrated brides is hilarious   I think I can see the inspiration for the hundreds of crashing cars at the end of The Blues Brothers.

SEVEN CHANCES
Buster Keaton jumps the abyss in SEVEN CHANCES

When he made Seven Chances in 1925, Keaton was only 30 years old and had just directed his first feature two years before.  He had just made the classics Sherlock, Jr. and The Navigator in 1924.  He was about to make his masterpiece The General in 1926 and Steamboat Bill, Jr. in 1928.  Talking pictures changed the industry in 1929, and Keaton signed a disastrous contract with MGM in 1930.  Keaton was to direct only three more features in his career (all unaccredited).  MGM took away his artistic freedom, and no studio kingpin knew what to do with him in the talking era.  Keaton took to drink and went dark for decades.

I watched all 56 minutes of Seven Chances once by myself and the final 26-minute chase scene again with my wife and nephew.  I viewed Seven Chances on Turner Classic Movies. It’s also available to rent on DVD from Netflix and to stream on Amazon Instant.  You can also find the entire film, probably as an illegal bootleg, on YouTube.

SEVEN CHANCES
The race with the boulders in SEVEN CHANCES