Saturday, February 27, 2010

The Great Stone Face.

I haven't posted in about two weeks and meant to catch up on things this weekend but I've been feeling under the weather lately. So to make up for lost time I was going to do a number of posts involving a couple movies each and without wasting much time lets get right to tonight's Buster Keaton double feature.

Buster Keaton, after Charles Chaplin, is possibly the most recognized name in silent film. Since both were well known as comedic filmmakers of their time the two draw a lot of comparisons. If pressed I'd lean more towards Chaplin personally just because the nature of his films always displayed their emotional elements somewhat stronger than Keaton's. However, Buster Keaton was still a visual marvel, a daring and superb stuntman, and of course quite funny. Recently I watched two of his films Our Hospitality (1923) and Sherlock Jr. (1924).

In Our Hospitality Keaton plays a young man unwittingly trapped in the center of an age old family feud while simultaneously falling for a young girl from the family attempting to send him six feet underground. The story is simple and charming, and is really just there to set up a number of visual gags and an unbelievable chase sequence towards the end that even involves a tumble off a waterfall. I found at times that some of the stunts towards the end of the film looked so dangerous that half the time I was more concerned with Keaton's well being than finding humor in the situation.

Our Hospitality may be one of my least favorite of the few Keaton films I've seen but it's still a great picture. Keaton plays his usual dope character as solidly as ever and it's hard not to love the fool. It really says a lot about Keaton himself, his outlook, and his brand of humor. The way the movie, for the most part, revolves around making him look like a fool, but how his hero is always able to persevere and overcome the obstacles. How foolish we all must look, bumbling through our lives, but there is a heart to it, and a smile, and an optimism to overcome and that is what makes me think of Buster Keaton and why I love him and his work.

Also, how low Our Hospitality ranks for me must say a lot for some of Keaton's other work, particulary The General (1926) and Sherlock Jr. While Our Hospitality is hilarious and charming, Sherlock Jr. is just outright brilliant. There are even a sequence or two where I'm still puzzled just how Keaton pulled things off especially considering the thing was made around 90 years ago.

Sherlock Jr. opens with Keaton working at a movie theater, running the projector and cleaning the place up. His character is shown to be smitten with a young lady who also has another suitor who frames him for the theft of a watch from the household. The story again is nothing to really dwell on, later is where the real magic of the film begins.

Keaton's character is also obsessed with learning to be a detective and falls asleep during the showing of film about a young detective and imagines himself projected into the movie. The film shows this quite literally with one of the movie's most memorable moments in which it shows Keaton standing up and walking right into the frame of the picture. The movie within the movie then begins to change locations with seamless editing as Keaton falls around from set to set.

This movie is Keaton at his very best and closes things off with an exciting motorcycle sequence with Keaton riding on the handlebars oblivious to the fact that no one is apparently steering the thing any longer. About every action sequence looks amazing even by today's standards. Plus, it is well known that this is the movie in which Keaton fractured his neck and didn't learn about the injury until a considerable time later. Also, the way the movie explores the film within a film fascinates me because of what it says about the way we as an audience can enjoy movies as a much needed form of escape. The way his character desires to be this other character is something we've all probably done at one point or another.

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