Word: busters
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...Watch Buster Keaton, in the 19 short films and 11 silent features he made between 1920 and 1928. Watch his beautiful, compact body as it pirouettes or pretzels in tortured permutations or, even more elegantly, stands in repose as everything goes crazy around it. Watch his mind as it contemplates a hostile universe whose violent whims Buster understands, withstands and, miraculously, tames. Watch his camera taking his picture (Keaton directed or supervised all his best films); it is as cool as the star it captured in its glass...
...good news is that for the first time since they were new, you can see Keaton's films without having to peer through the accumulated crud of illegal dupings. Among many centennial tributes, including Marion Meade's thorough, poignant new biography, Buster Keaton: Cut to the Chase (HarperCollins), the best present is Kino Video's release of 10 cassettes that include all the great works, spiffily restored. amc, the cable movie network, will show the whole oeuvre on Oct. 4, Keaton's birthday...
Everything, that is, but the girl. His shipmate in The Navigator seems inadvertently bent on drowning Buster every five minutes. And the Southern belle in The General nearly loses the Civil War three years early. Exasperated by her "helpfulness," he impulsively throttles her, then kisses her, then returns to the job at hand. Of all Keaton's females, only one stole his heart: the cow Brown Eyes in Go West...
...Buster seemed so solitary, so oblivious to sentiment, that no one could touch him or catch him. The classic Keaton climax is of Buster walking blithely down a Los Angeles street while a herd of women, cops--cows, even--chases after him. And when he is caught, when Boy and Girl end up married, it's not necessarily a happy ending. In the coda to College we see the couple as newlyweds, then as young parents, then as bickering old folks, then as names on their tombstones. Sometimes...
...collapsing bridges on the handlebars of a driverless motorcycle in Sherlock Jr. Watch, and see how beautifully the impossible can be made both visible and risible. The wonder is that the same person had the sharp mind to conceive these amazements and the supple body to perform them. When Buster Keaton got them all to work together--his mind, his body, his intelligent love for film--anything was possible...