THE GREAT BUSTER: A CELEBRATION
Let’s get physical…
This doc by writer, director, producer, actor and all-round Hollywood authority Peter Bogdanovich makes little attempt to chisel beneath the stony surface of silent comedy icon Buster Keaton. But it makes for a strong primer to his life and work, packed with talking heads (Carl Reiner, Johnny Knoxville, Mel Brooks, Bill Hader, Quentin Tarantino) and well-chosen clips supported by Bogdanovich’s contextual voiceover.
For 70 minutes, The Great Buster offers a chronological journey: toddler Joseph Frank Keaton (his nickname Buster was a term for a fall) being hurled about the stage by his vaudevillian parents; appearing in Fatty Arbuckle’s two-reelers; making his own shorts; writing, directing and starring in 10 ace features between 1923-28; losing his independence when he moved to MGM; and the drinking, failed marriages and fitful work (from commercials and Candid Camera to Sunset Boulevard) in the sound era, until his death, aged 70, in 1966.
The final half hour, however, uses Keaton’s honorary Oscar in 1960 and his Venice Film Festival
award in 1965 to rewind to those incredibly fertile years in the ’20s. Bogdanovich focuses on slapstick classics like Our Hospitality, Sherlock Jr. and Steamboat Bill, Jr., while particular attention is rightly awarded to his stuntpacked Civil War masterpiece
The General (1926). “The great stone-face had made a dark comedy before that term existed,” says Bogdanovich, while Tarantino describes it as “one of the great action movies.” Jamie Graham
THE VERDICT
Crazier than Cruise, and funnier than Murray. Watch this and then all of Keaton’s movies.