In The Butcher Boy (1917), his film debut, Buster compels the camera immediately with his subtle, very contained movements. Liberation from vaudeville came in the zaftig form of Roscoe “Fatty” Arbuckle, who mentored the young comic. At bottom, he was a cagey, down-to-earth pessimist who could occasionally liberate himself through graceful movement up into pure physical abstraction. Above all, even if things worked out, Buster knew that everything would soon fall apart again, which led to some of the most ruthlessly unsentimental endings in film history. Out of this experience came the creation of his artistic persona: you fall hard, you get right back up the girl doesn’t love you, do what you can and wait until she does. Take your lumps and get the laugh, year in, year out. For Buster, it seems as if life from an early age was all about physical pain and cultivating the endurance to absorb it. Because he refused to complain and would not hear a word against his family, even his abusive father, it is difficult to gauge just how much and what kind of damage was done. The effect of such a childhood cannot be overlooked. At the age of 21, after 16 years of punishing, trouper-like work, Buster didn’t have a penny to call his own. The Three Keatons were a popular act, though some questioned the knockabout humor, especially as Buster got older and his father got drunker. Buster understood quite early that he would get bigger laughs if he retained a serious expression. Buster was billed as “The Little Boy Who Can’t Be Damaged” and Papa Joe Keaton was flinging him roughly around the stage at the age of five.
#Eary buster keaton movies series
Restrained, unpretentious, pure films, they belie his seemingly disorganized working methods, a series of disparate and largely unnecessary co-directors and the apparent self-destructiveness of his own personality.Īs a child, he was part of a vaudeville act with his parents. During the 1920s, he put out a phenomenal array of rarified, perfectly judged features and shorts, a cinematic jewel-box featuring authentic period detail, is-he-really-doing- that? stunts and an enduring persona that qualifies as one of the most poetic reactions to life imaginable. Like so many film artists, he needed the freedom to create spontaneously if he was to function at his highest level. Dismissing claims to greatness, Keaton insisted again and again that what he was most interested in was getting the laugh.
It is this attitude that makes Buster an important artist, patronized by intellectuals who appreciate his profundity and by mainstream audiences who gasp and giggle at his daring. This brief appearance in Billy Wilder’s mordant classic expresses the essential attitude of his life and work. With his customary stoicism, he croaks, “Pass.” Then, facing up to lousy luck, his face only slightly dejected, he again says “Pass” more quietly. February 1 1966, Los Angeles, California USAĪs one of the waxworks playing bridge in Sunset Boulevard (1950), a ravaged Buster Keaton contemplates a dubious hand.
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