A Hard Act to Follow
I just watched thee* documentary all about Buster Keaton on you tube (watch Here). Written and directed by film historians Kevin Brownlow and David Gill, it was released onto television as a three parter in 1987. The doco is really superb, it features television and radio interviews by Keaton himself. His widow Eleanor Keaton and alot of people who worked with him feature in interviews and it is narrated by If....s director Lindsay Anderson. It seems to be one of the greatest executed documentaries I have seen and definitely the best on a silent star. Kevin Brownlow (Author of such books as The Parades Gone By and Behind the Mask of Innocence) and David Gill made this as a follow up to their 1980 documentary tv series Hollywood, they also made Unknown Chaplin (1983) and as part of the American Masters series wrote Harold Lloyd: The Third Genius. So it's safe to say that Kevin Brownlow is the most authoritative figure when it comes to silent film. Fellow film historian David Gill died in 1997. What amazing work they did.
I don't want to repeat myself from last year when he won the poll for most talented comic. But Buster Keaton had an incredible life, the documentary covers the hard time he had at MGM as they tried to change his character and his style of film making, naturally as sound came in it was more about the witty dialogue but he sill had chances to do some of his classic acts, but was not allowed to do his most daring ones. He loved doing the risky stunts he just knew how to make people laugh, wasn't really concerned about the injuries that sometimes followed some of his stunts, ever since he was a wee lad on vaudeville he was being chucked about and he loved it. So yeah you should definitely get around to watching the documentary if you haven't, it doesn't get much better.
5 comments:
I've seen two episodes of this one. There's three right? It's a very good documentary.
I find very interesting how they made films actors do the same scenes in different languages...it problably looks completely fake now but it was fun to see a fragment of Buster speaking my language (spanish) in estrellados (free and easy). I've read there's only one copy of it at the Spanish film library and it has problems with copyright so no one does anything to preserve it. I know it can't be compared to his best work but that footage must have some historical value.
yess that was interesting, very cool. I remember one of the directors saying he really wanted to change some of the film because he was concerned that some people probably wouldn't find it funny but NO cigar.
Hopefully the film will get preserved someday, also considering the hard work that went into filming the same film 3 times in 3 languages, people just don't do that anymore. definitely historically significant.
I've seen the "Unknown Chaplin" documentary but have not seen this one on Buster. Too bad it is not on DVD in the US. I think Buster is one of the greatest and most underappreciated silent comedians and would love to own a copy of this documentary on hilm. If you visit this Turner Classic Movies page you can vote for this film to be released on dvd: http://www.tcm.com/tcmdb/title.jsp?stid=71341
cool, Just voted, now it has 73 votes yay.
I wonder how many votes these things need for tcm to put them onto home video.
I think its 605 votes!
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