As a seasoned cinephile with a penchant for silent cinema and a soft spot for Buster Keaton, I must confess that his artistry has left an indelible mark on my cinematic soul. The way he seamlessly blended physical comedy, intricate stunts, and profound storytelling was nothing short of revolutionary. His masterpiece, “Sherlock Jr.”, is a testament to the power of silent films and their ability to captivate audiences even today.
A century has passed, yet that sequence continues to exude an otherworldly charm: a man in a porkpie hat ambles through the cinema hall, ascends onto the stage, and vanishes into the movie screen. The film we had been watching, a common tale of a boy losing his girlfriend due to a silly misunderstanding, seamlessly transitions into another cinematic dimension. In this new realm, our boy transforms into a sharp-witted detective who outsmarts the villains, solves the mystery, and wins back his love. One typical Hollywood fantasy is replaced by a more captivating Hollywood fantasy.
The movie under discussion is undeniably “Sherlock Jr” (1924), masterfully directed and performed by comedy legend Buster Keaton, often regarded as the epitome of silent film auteurs. Although Team Chaplin may have their own opinions, it’s hard to argue against Keaton’s brilliance in this genre. This film is a blend of clever gags, creative camera tricks, and breathtaking stunts, but what sets it apart is its exploration into the impact of screen imagery on our imagination, a thoughtful contemplation ahead of its time about the evolving relationship between us and the screen, as screens have progressively moved from theaters to our homes, to our very hands.
Among the legendary silent comedians, Buster Keaton stands out as timeless. While Charlie Chaplin’s sentimentality can sometimes feel overly sweet, and Harold Lloyd’s enthusiasm was tied to the Roaring Twenties, Keaton’s appeal remains fresh – his stoicism, technical skill, and focus on tasks at hand are still captivating. Among the early Hollywood stars, he holds a unique status, not just in the pantheon but arguably at the pinnacle. At the annual silent film festival in Pordenone, Italy, which is a haven for movie enthusiasts who believe the industry took a wrong turn with “The Jazz Singer” in 1927, an animated montage of stars from that era plays before each screening, and it concludes with a silhouette of Keaton, his porkpie hat floating in the air and landing on his head.
Born in 1895 in Topeka, Kansas, Joseph Frank Keaton began his life in show business at a tender age, due to the frequent touring of his parents who were vaudevillians. As soon as he could walk and perform slapstick stunts like pratfalls, he was thrust into the family business. Their act was controversial by today’s standards, with Keaton’s father physically abusing him on stage, throwing him around recklessly and even into the audience. It is said that Buster Keaton earned his nickname from escape artist Harry Houdini, but this story appears to be untrue. By early adolescence, Keaton was a seasoned performer and the headliner of the act. In 1917, he moved on to the emerging medium, joining forces with his friend and future Hollywood outcast Roscoe “Fatty” Arbuckle.
To begin with, Keaton started refining his filmmaking skills and creating his on-screen character through a sequence of groundbreaking two-reel films. Recognizing that a full-length narrative wasn’t just a barrage of continuous jokes and slapstick, he set his comedy-dramas in authentic historical and geographical settings: the early 19th-century Appalachian hills (Our Hospitality [1923]), the Civil War era (The General [1926]), a Pacific ocean seaport (The Navigator [1924]), or a Mississippi riverboat junction (Steamboat Bill, Jr. [1928]). Part athlete and part dancer, he fought against the elements, the laws of nature, and destiny. He never resorted to overtly expressive acting — an early fan described him as “the embodiment of a mental minus sign in facial expression” — which earned him the nickname “The Great Stone Face.”
Keaton shared why his emotionless style emerged by stating that he was focusing intensely on the intricate stunt sequences he meticulously planned with mathematical accuracy. This was crucial as even slight deviations could have resulted in genuinely life-threatening scenarios. A notable instance can be found in “Steamboat Bill, Jr.”, where a scene occurs that is more terrifying than comical – the front of a house collapsing onto his stationary figure. The joke lies in how his body perfectly fits into an empty window frame upstairs, but it was a narrow escape as he could easily have been squashed.
Sherlock Jr. marked Keaton’s fifth and shortest full-length production, which he painstakingly crafted over a span of five months. He showcased early versions to audiences for feedback, making adjustments and improvements. Eventually, he filmed 60,000 feet of footage, resulting in a 4,065-foot film (approximately 45 minutes long), as silent films were measured in terms of footage and reels rather than seconds due to the inconsistent speeds of cameras and projectors.
As a devoted admirer, I’d rephrase it like this:
It takes time for Buster to get accustomed to the fresh surroundings; he appears disoriented as we witness a rapid sequence of scenes depicting various breathtaking landscapes – such as leaping into a lake and ending up in a snowbank – before the narrative inside the movie shifts into a detective tale, serving as the foundation for an array of thrilling stunts. One of the most impressive is performed with an air of nonchalance: Keaton jumps from a building’s roof, lands on top of a raised railroad track, and slides down the beam to find a safe landing in the backseat of a moving vehicle. As always, Keaton films the stunt using a wide, continuous shot without cuts, ensuring that it is genuine and risky. The nail-biting climax involves Buster riding on the handlebars of a motorcycle speeding through 1920s Los Angeles; while some parts are backscreen projections, not all of it is.
As a die-hard fan, I must say that except for a reviewer from Variety (likely a Chaplin devotee), who found “Sherlock Jr.” as amusing as an operating room, both critics and audiences were spellbound. The monotonous opening act set the stage, but then, the New York Times reviewer exclaimed in delight at “one of the most ingenious screen tricks ever included in a comedy.” Michael J. Simmons from Exhibitor’s Trade Review was spot on when he forecasted that people would shower this innovative theme with applause. Keaton’s own evaluation was characteristic of his understated nature. “It was alright,” he told Kevin Brownlow, the silent film historian. “It made money, but it wasn’t one of the major hits.”
Similar to numerous silent film icons, Keaton faced his downfall during the shift to talkies and the subsequent commercialization of the industry. His scratchy voice didn’t aid the situation, but the supreme mastery of physical comedy and daring stunts was never meant to flourish in the early sound era, which favored witty banter over acrobatics – the Marx Brothers, Mae West, W.C. Fields being prime examples. Struggling with alcoholism and despair, he spent time in sanatoriums and hospitals. The media showed compassion, referring to his breakdowns as “nervous indigestion.” Despite it all, he persisted in his work and refused to quit – this was the sentiment behind Tom Dardis’ biography title, The Man Who Wouldn’t Lie Down. After 1933, Keaton produced nearly 60 films, with two particularly memorable roles: a brief appearance as one of the card-playing “waxworks” in Billy Wilder’s Sunset Blvd. (1950) and a poignant duet with Charles Chaplin in Limelight (1952).
In 1940, following two unsuccessful marriages, Buster Keaton tied the knot with Eleanor Norris, who became his stabilizer and savior. During the post-war period, a fresh generation recognized his talent through television variety shows, commercials (you can find examples on YouTube by searching for Candid Camera), and notably in an episode of The Twilight Zone. The relevant episode for our discussion aired on December 15, 1961, titled “Once Upon a Time.” This episode was primarily written by Richard Matheson as a means to feature Keaton in The Twilight Zone. In this whimsical storyline, Keaton portrayed a janitor from 1890 who was transported via a “time helmet” into 1960. The past was depicted as a silent movie with piano accompaniment and captions, while the present was in sync sound. Although the episode wasn’t particularly humorous, at the age of 66, Keaton still showcased his resilience by running, cycling, leaping, and performing pratfalls. These television roles, along with earnings from The Buster Keaton Story, a biopic starring Donald O’Connor, helped secure Keaton’s financial stability. As Hollywood columnist Bob Thomas noted, “Keaton had trouble holding onto a dollar.”
Back in 1966, I, Buster Keaton, left this world a bit too early to fully bask in the wave of recognition that swept across repertory houses, film festivals, and even the prestigious Academy Awards, where I was honored with an Honorary Oscar in 1960. Orson Welles once praised me as “the greatest of all the clowns in the history of cinema,” a “supreme artist,” and “one of the most beautiful people ever photographed.”
The ongoing debate among silent film enthusiasts about which actor is the more brilliant, the man in a derby hat or the one wearing a porkpie hat, has yet to be settled. Generally, Americans side with Keaton. Film critic James Agree, whose 1949 essay in Life magazine titled “Comedy’s Greatest Era” contributed significantly to the resurgence of appreciation for silent screen comedy, stated that Keaton’s face was “almost on par with Lincoln’s as an early American symbol.” Andrew Sarris likened scenes from The General to Matthew Brady’s portraits. This debate is vividly depicted in Bernardo Bertolucci’s 2003 film, The Dreamers, a tribute to film-lovers set around the Cinémathèque Française in Paris during the late 1960s. Predictably, the Frenchman advocates for the greatness of “Charlot,” while the American favors the homegrown talent.
Hollywood also seems to favor Keaton. His full-screen immersion in Sherlock Jr. has provided a model for whole tributaries of fantasy, SF, and adventure films. Every successive medium seems to have inspired a variation on the Keaton theme of a youngster being vacuumed through a portal into an FX-laden screen realm: television (Pleasantville, 1998), video games (Tron, 1982), computer software (The Matrix, 1999), and too many MCU/DCCU multiverses to count. The most explicit homage is Woody Allen’s The Purple Rose of Cairo (1985), a clever reversal of the Keaton conceit, wherein a character in an escapist 1930s adventure film walks out of the motion picture screen and into the three-dimensional world of Great Depression America.
However, none of the descendants have surpassed the cleverness of the finale in the original, which Keaton and his team would refer to as “the climax.” In the final scene of Sherlock Jr, Buster wakes from his cinematic fantasy and returns to the projection booth. His girlfriend enters the booth, and they reconcile. Buster is unsure of what to do next. Hollywood, being an expert in American dating customs, steps in to help. On another screen, a more experienced suitor is courting his girlfriend. Buster watches through the window of the booth for guidance. The visual layout follows a straight line: from Buster’s viewpoint, directly to the screen. The man on the screen takes his girlfriend’s hand and kisses it, and Buster does the same. He places a ring on her finger, just as Buster does. Then, the man on the screen kisses his girlfriend. Gathering his courage, Buster leans in for a kiss on the lips. As she looks down shyly, Buster watches the screen eagerly for his next cue. The image of the happy couple fades to a scene of them, now married and parents of two babies, with the father holding them both on his lap.
Buster scratches his head in bewilderment — how the heck did that happen???
Read More
Sorry. No data so far.
2024-08-29 18:25