Buster Keaton Night

Old Fruitmarket, Glasgow

Alison Kerr

THE Fruitmarket may have started its born-again life as the home of the jazz festival, but it is fast becoming the natural home of silent cinema in Glasgow. Well, silent cinema with live musical accompaniment.

After the success of the silent film weekend there in late 2013, pianist Neil Brand returned to the venue on Monday night with comedian and silent cinema enthusiast Paul Merton to present an evening themed around the pioneering genius of silent comedy, Buster Keaton.

The result was very much a game of two halves, however. The first half of the evening was lively and so engaging that you could forget the discomfort of being shoe-horned into very narrow rows of seats, and of the neck-ache associated with having to look up for the duration.

Merton, who clearly revels in sharing with an audience his oncecloseted love for the silent-era clowns, introduced a couple of early Keaton shorts – The High Sign, a brilliant, fastmoving romp which The Great Stone Face refused to release after he was disappointed by a preview audience’s reaction, and One Week, a poignant film with a series of very funny, clever and uniquely Keaton-esque set pieces.

Interspersed with the films, which also included an excerpt of a Chaplin comedy and Laurel & Hardy’s last silent two-reeler, Angora Love, were Merton’s delightful insights and observations.

The pace was quite different after the interval, and Merton and his patter were barely in evidence. The fulllength Keaton film The Cameraman occupied the entire second half – and although it got going eventually, it took a while to get there. But it did inspire a tour-de-force piano performance from Brand along the way.