By David Raether
“Yeah, yeah, yeah,” you’re saying. And I get it; Buster Keaton is a genius, right up there with Charlie Chaplin and Harold Lloyd as the three kings of the silent film era. I should watch his movies. It seems like the kind of thing you just have to do, like wearing dress shoes once a year to some event you didn’t want to go to in the first place.
Why? Because:
They're silent.
They’re in black and white.
They're about 100 years old.
Well, I am here to tell you that you are making a big mistake by not watching Buster Keaton movies. His movies are astonishing, hilarious, and unlike any you have ever seen before. As a filmmaker, he was unconcerned with carefully plotted stories. He often started shooting without an actual script or even a fully fleshed-out storyline. It is said of Mozart that he would have an idea for a symphony, and when he sat down to compose, he was just writing down what he had already heard in his head. Keaton had said that most times when he started shooting a movie, he only had 50 percent of it all planned out. For him, movie-making was an evolving process of discovering what works and made sense at that moment.
Orson Welles once said of Keaton: “He was, as we are now beginning to realize, the greatest of all the clowns in the history of cinema.”
I’ll see Welles and go one step further. Keaton was one of the greatest geniuses of the 20th century.
When you watch a Buster Keaton movie, you’ll surprise yourself at how many times you’ll be laughing. And I mean a full-hearted, big old belly laugh. But as each movie goes on, one thing that always begins to dawn on me is how much they demonstrate the human capacity for survival and triumph.
Keaton’s movies never move you the way Chaplin’s did. There is no comparable scene in the entire length of Keaton’s filmography that comes close to matching the deep emotional power of the final scene in City Lights (1931). In that scene, the Little Tramp is really down on his luck, his clothes are in tatters, and he is the subject of mockery. Suddenly, he notices the Blind Flower Girl whose sight has been restored by his efforts. She is amused by him until she takes pity and gives him a flower. She touches his hand, then begins to caress it, and suddenly recognizes him because touch was her way of identifying people prior to her sight-restoring surgery. She looks at him, and then this dialogue card flashes on the screen: “You?”
“Neither Chaplin nor Harold Lloyd nor myself ever had a script before we started shooting a picture,” Keaton told an interviewer in the 1960s. ”We never even thought of writing a script. We didn’t need to. We just came up with what we thought was a good idea for a picture and went from there.”
This seemingly improvisational approach to filmmaking belies Keaton's precision in his films, particularly the short bits of physical comedy that he called “gags.” He would work out a gag, practice it carefully, and then shoot it. Often only once. Chaplin’s approach was to shoot the same thing repeatedly until he felt he had the right footage to work with. Chaplin shot the final scene of City Lights an astonishing 342 times! I cannot imagine that happening under any circumstances these days. However, many of Keaton’s gags were so dangerous that they could only be shot once.
This “we’re making this up as we go” attitude reminds me of the personal computer industry in the 1980s. Who knows what will catch on, so let’s just build something and see what happens.
Though they may look similar, Keaton’s and Chaplin’s films could not be more different. You will find nothing as heart-rending as that City Lights scene in any Buster Keaton movie. What you will find is a relentless series of gags. A classic example is Keaton standing in front of a two-story house as the front of it falls, but he is safe because he happens to be standing where a second-floor window lands. Keaton was not an artist of spoken or written language. He pointed out that in the silent era, movies had, on average, 200+ title cards reporting dialogue. Whenever he could, Keaton removed them, averaging a mere 56 cards per movie. He wanted the action to tell the tale. And it did.
Keaton plays the same character in every movie–the deadpan rascal trying to avoid trouble in the form of bullies, cops, troublemakers, etc. I am a big fan of deadpan humor. The current master of that is Aubrey Plaza, who played April Ludgate, the lazy, actively indifferent employee of the Parks and Recreation Department in Parks and Recreation. Keaton was the preeminent practitioner of the deadpan look, earning the nickname “the Great Stone Face.”
I’ve read several essays on the philosophical implications of his character. Since he doesn’t really tell stories that have traditional meanings, people have found an existential or mythical quality in his movies.
In a long essay on Keaton published in early 2022, the essayist Adam Gopnik wrote: “Keaton also looks surreal because the Surrealists were feeding off the same sources as Keaton was, in circus and vaudeville and the music hall and stage magic. The Cubists, the Dadaists, and the Surrealists all had the sense that, as bourgeois pieties had grown increasingly meaningless, the only grammar from which one could construct a credible art was that of farce. So those clowns and comic artists who held down the tradition of burlesque and nonsense comedy were, willy-nilly, the modernist’s dream brothers.”
Whew! As we used to say in comedy writing rooms, whenever someone had a long and convoluted pitch: “Okay, that. But funny.”
The miracle of Buster Keaton movies is that they bear up under that sort of intellectual scrutiny while simultaneously making a bunch of eight-year-old kids laugh. (Which is an experiment I tried once many years ago. A bunch of my older son’s third-grade friends were over, and I put The General in the DVD player. They loved it. I don’t know how Keaton did it, frankly. I watched the film on a whole other level–the Civil War and its meaning, etc.)
Joseph Frank “Buster” Keaton was born on Oct. 4, 1895, in the small town of Piqua, KS. His parents were vaudevillians who spent most of their years on the road. The basic premise of their show was that Buster was an annoying little kid who would work his father up into such a lather that his father would pick him up and throw him. Sometimes he would land in the orchestra pit, sometimes in the audience, and sometimes against the back of the stage.
His mother even sewed a handle onto the back of his shirts so his father could more easily pick him up and toss him. They were quite practiced at this—he knew how to land to avoid being hurt.
If that sounds horrifying, well, they were arrested a couple of times for it, although no charges were ever pressed. The family was known as “the roughest act in vaudeville.” But they, apparently, were quite popular, and the act drew big laughs. Uh, okay….
The act caught the eye of Roscoe “Fatty” Arbuckle, one of the first great screen comedians and a popular performer on the vaudeville circuit. Arbuckle was impressed with Keaton’s physical abilities. After one particularly amazing pratfall in the act, Arbuckle said, “That kid is a real buster.” I wish I could tell you what “buster” meant in those days, but I can’t. Regardless, the name stuck. Although in another version of the tale by Keaton, it was Harry Houdini who was the source of the nickname.
Keaton spent virtually no time in school, even as a child. The family was always touring, so he had no opportunity to sit in a classroom, learn important lessons in a structured setting, or have friends.
In 1908, Arbuckle cast Keaton in his first short. If you think the idea of lots of short videos is a new idea, you’d be wrong. Short films—ranging from three to 15 minutes—were the most popular form of filmmaking. Feature-length films didn’t really become the dominant form until the 1920s. Even then, if you went to a movie theater, you could expect to see two or three shorts and a newsreel before the feature started. All the great silent-era screen comedians spent their formative years appearing in and making shorts. And most animated films from the era were shorts. The first feature-length animated movie didn’t come until 1937 with Walt Disney’s Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs. Now, it sometimes feels like the only movies you can find in theaters are animated movies.
In 1920, Keaton appeared in his first feature-length film, and it was such a success that producer Joseph Schenck gave him a production deal and total autonomy to make pictures. The company, called Buster Keaton Pictures, over the next decade, produced some of the best American films of all time, including Our Hospitality (1923), Sherlock Jr. (1924), The Navigator (1924), The General (1926), and Steamboat Bill, Jr. (1928).
The last few pictures were not financially successful, and Schenck’s brother Nicholas negotiated a deal to ship Keaton over to Metro Goldwyn Mayer. He hadn’t been involved in the negotiations, and the terms stripped him of his independence. He suddenly had to work with studio-approved scripts, which was not how he had worked in the past on his own. “I would say, ‘I’d like to do something with a drunk, a fat lady, and a kid. Go get ‘em.’”
It was the beginning of a long period of frustration and failed projects for Keaton. He bounced back and forth to MGM and began drinking heavily. His marriage to Natalie Talmage (sister of Norma) was icy cold. After the birth of their second son, she told him she didn’t want any more children and banished him to a separate bedroom. They divorced, and he dated a number of actresses, His alcoholism worsened, and he was hospitalized. After discharge, he went on a bender and married his nurse. That marriage blew up. He married an MGM dancer and director, Eleanor Norris. That marriage stabilized his life and lasted until his death in 1966. Norris is credited with saving his life and career. In one surprising twist, during the 1940s, he became one of President Franklin Roosevelt’s top speechwriters.
Late in his life, he appeared in several terrible pictures—all of which I have, of course, seen several times—including my favorite, Beach Blanket Bingo (1965), a laughably bad romantic comedy that starred Frankie Avalon and Annette Funicello.
Keaton died of lung cancer in 1966. He was, by all accounts, an irrepressibly charming and delightful person to be around, a man who had lived a remarkable life.
The truly enduring work he did in the 1920s remains incredibly fresh. They’re just really, really, really funny. He was one of the greatest filmmakers of all time. “Though there is a hurricane eternally raging about him, and though he is often fully caught up in it, Keaton’s constant drift is toward the quiet at the hurricane’s eye,” the critic Walter Kerr wrote.
The plain, unexpressive, unblinking face amid utter chaos is an indelible part of American culture, and you really need to see his movies. Here are five I suggest—no, urge—you to rent.
This was Keaton’s first starring role in a feature film. He neither wrote nor directed it, so it has a much more complex plot and fewer gags than his ensuing features where he did both. In this one, Keaton plays Bertie, the ne’er do well son of Wall Street tycoon Nicholas Van Alstyne. Bertie is in love with his adopted sister Agnes. Bertie spends his days and nights partying and gambling, having some come up with the misguided notion that this will impress Agnes. It doesn’t. Nicholas is constantly disappointed in Bertie’s apparently cavalier ways and hands over the family trust to his sleazy son-in-law and failed lawyer, Mark Turner. Mark schemes to sell all the family holdings, but Bertie mistakenly buys them at a good price, thereby saving the family fortune. He wins over Agnes and earns his father’s approval as a result. Like I said, it is much more plotted than most Keaton films—and not quite as funny as a result. Still, it is very charming.
Keaton’s stone-faced and uncomfortable participation in the shenanigans of rich playboys reminds me of scenes from Chaplin's City Lights (1931) in which the Little Tramp has a variety of rollicking adventures with a drunken rich guy. The rich are almost invariably portrayed as irresponsible and dangerous idiots who are rich not by hard work but by luck and fortune of birth. Hmm… Keaton and Chaplin may have been onto something there.
Alfred Butler (Keaton) is a pampered son of a wealthy man, waited on hand and foot. His father is disgusted with his son and sends him on a hunting and fishing trip to the mountains. He meets a fairly surly “mountain girl” (Sally O’Neil) and is immediately smitten with her and her no-nonsense ways. In order to impress her family with how manly Alfred is, his valet (Snitz Edwards) tells her family that he is the famous boxer, Alfred “Battling” Butler. Two problems arise immediately. First of all, Alfred doesn’t know how to box. And second, there actually is an Alfred “Battling” Butler (Francis McDonald), a brutish man who is none to pleased to learn that a mollycoddled city man is pawning himself off as Battling Butler. At one point, Alfred has to fight the fearsome “Alabama Murderer.” Fantastic! This is a very funny movie—the fight scenes especially. One of my favorite details is how Alfred and his valet are camping, hunting and fishing in suits, complete with ties. Picnic dinner is served on a linen tablecloth with fine china and silverware. Ha! This movie is just silly from start to finish and a joy to behold. Your kids might especially enjoy it.
One of the funniest movies ever made, if you ask me. And a lot of other people. Everyone I know who has watched this movie goes crazy for it. The premise is that Buster Keaton is Johnny Grey, a person so inept that the Confederate Army refuses to enlist him. Determined to prove his worth—and to impress Anabelle Lee —he takes command of his locomotive, the General. They end up on a daring mission pursuing a Union locomotive. Okay, think about it—a chase sequence between two trains makes no sense at all. They are fixed tracks, they can’t hide, and they both go at the same speed. How can you have a chase sequence between them? It’s part of the ridiculous humor of the movie.
The film also features some beautifully staged scenes of Confederate Army campsites in the mist and smoke of a bivouac in Virginia—although the movie was shot in Oregon. And then there is the famous shot of one train crashing into a river as the bridge collapses. This wasn't a model. This was an actual train going off an actual collapsing bridge. The ruined train sat in that river for decades before it was dismantled and removed. It's an amazing movie. And incredibly funny.
Buster Keaton is a studious young man who has just graduated from high school as “the most brilliant scholar” (which is a funny idea in and of itself, given that Keaton spent perhaps a total of one and a half days in school growing up.) He thinks colleges place too much emphasis on athletics and not enough on academics. That’s a novel idea. He is smitten with Mary, who is more interested in the athletes than the scholars. So, naturally, Buster tries out for the baseball and the track and field teams. Neither of which he is good at. You’re smiling as I write this, aren’t you? He does make the rowing team as the coxswain. And Mary starts to appreciate the efforts he is making. It’s a very sweet movie with lots and lots of crazy sports gags. Kids would really enjoy this movie.
Another romantic comedy. Keaton plays William Canfield, Jr., who has just come home after graduating from college in Boston. He wears a beret, an affectation he picked up, presumably at Harvard. His father owns a rundown steamboat named The Stonewall Jackson and is struggling to compete with The King, a fancy new steamboat owned by J. J. King, a jerk who also owns the bank and the only hotel in town. Keaton’s character becomes smitten by King’s daughter, and he attempts to woo her while trying to help his father run their faltering steamboat business. The movie contains two of Keaton’s most famous sequences. The first is one in which he is stuck on the paddlewheel of the steamboat and ends up running in it like a hamster in a cage. And the second is the famous cyclone sequence in which a cyclone hits town and blows everything over, except for Keaton, who is walking at about a 30-degree angle into the wind. This was the final picture Keaton made as an independent producer before moving to MGM and being frustrated by the constraints of studio moviemaking.
David Raether is a veteran TV writer and essayist. He worked for 12 years as a television sitcom writer/producer, including a 111-episode run on the ground-breaking ABC comedy “Roseanne.” His essays have been published by Salon.com, The Times of London, and Longforms.org, and have been lauded by The Atlantic Magazine and the BBC World Service. His memoir, Homeless: A Picaresque Memoir from Our Times, is awaiting publication.