Director: Charles Reisner and Buster Keaton
Year: 1928
Runtime: 1 hr 7 min
Source: Youtube
I've been talking up Steamboat Bill, Jr. for a while on this blog as a slightly underrated Keaton classic, so it's something of a relief that this film is as good as I remember.
I can see now that it wasn't Keaton at his most innovative - the film contains several large scale callbacks to his earlier works. We have the collapsing carpentry of One Week, the meta cinema symbolism of Sherlock, Jr., and the relationship between a man and his machine that underlies The General. Keaton's general persona of a misunderstood weakling was well-established by this point, and he doesn't bring much new to this character.
I would hesitate to say that it's his funniest film either, after having seen The Cameraman (actually made after this film).
Nevertheless, it's the first Keaton film I would recommend anyone to watch, since it just epitomizes what made him so great. Every joke hits just the right notes, and every stunt is wonderfully understated. So many scenes stand out to me: the trying-on-hats scene, where the only humor is in just how no hat will ever quite fit his strangely-shaped head and deadpan expression. The simple shot of Keaton standing 45 degrees against the wind, failing to make any progress forward. And, of course, one of the most dangerous stunts ever filmed, a two-story facade falling on Keaton, with just a tiny window frame's worth of space to keep him from getting killed. There's no build up to this shot - it happens with no fanfare, and like so many of Keaton's Looney-tunes like stunts, there's no real sense of the incredible rish he undertook to make it. Keaton wasn't self-serving in that way - the film was always the end goal.
At 67 minutes, it's the perfect silent film for our stress-filled lives, one that deserves to be a part of our cultural lexicon once again.
Year: 1928
Runtime: 1 hr 7 min
Source: Youtube
I've been talking up Steamboat Bill, Jr. for a while on this blog as a slightly underrated Keaton classic, so it's something of a relief that this film is as good as I remember.
I can see now that it wasn't Keaton at his most innovative - the film contains several large scale callbacks to his earlier works. We have the collapsing carpentry of One Week, the meta cinema symbolism of Sherlock, Jr., and the relationship between a man and his machine that underlies The General. Keaton's general persona of a misunderstood weakling was well-established by this point, and he doesn't bring much new to this character.
I would hesitate to say that it's his funniest film either, after having seen The Cameraman (actually made after this film).
Nevertheless, it's the first Keaton film I would recommend anyone to watch, since it just epitomizes what made him so great. Every joke hits just the right notes, and every stunt is wonderfully understated. So many scenes stand out to me: the trying-on-hats scene, where the only humor is in just how no hat will ever quite fit his strangely-shaped head and deadpan expression. The simple shot of Keaton standing 45 degrees against the wind, failing to make any progress forward. And, of course, one of the most dangerous stunts ever filmed, a two-story facade falling on Keaton, with just a tiny window frame's worth of space to keep him from getting killed. There's no build up to this shot - it happens with no fanfare, and like so many of Keaton's Looney-tunes like stunts, there's no real sense of the incredible rish he undertook to make it. Keaton wasn't self-serving in that way - the film was always the end goal.
At 67 minutes, it's the perfect silent film for our stress-filled lives, one that deserves to be a part of our cultural lexicon once again.
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