![]() ![]() Instead of finding his antics humorous, the absolute control and insanity of some of the things he did make wide-eyed wonder and amazement just as much of a legitimate response as rolling in the aisles. There’s a thought that needs to be sat on – Buster Keaton was doing things that only cartoons could recreate. Hindsight doesn’t help either with the very DNA of this short being found in countless cartoons the world over. The little moments of competition lack connective tissue from one to the next, but the audacity of the man makes you question how much is real and how much is done through clever staging. Its story sees Keaton compete with a young outdoorswoman after being swept away by a runaway hot air balloon – as only Keaton could. Slapstick and cartoons have a great deal in common and the Balloonatic is the perfect capsule of this. There are some interesting shorts to be found outside of the classics. Some were a procession of fragmented gags, others were endlessly derivative in that Keaton played an unconventionally attractive, unlucky romantic lead in the exact same situation in a variety of places and others were sadly forgettable. Keaton is regarded as one of the finest comedy performers of all time and with good reason, at his best his physicality and timing defied logic, however, given the number of films he did during 1917-23 it’s only natural that every short doesn’t live up to the reputation of history – he’s only human, after all. There are glimmers of chemistry in the earliest films, a connection that never really had the chance to flourish as these where Arbuckle films in which Keaton featured, an apprenticeship rather than a partnership. This is evidenced in the short film ‘Good Night, Nurse’ in which Arbuckle is taken to a revolutionary sanatorium that claims to be able to cure alcoholism, that film ends with Arbuckle cross-dressing to escape. If history was somehow different, Arbuckle and Keaton may have become a great double act. While these films are often funny in their own right, they lack a certain something – like Laurel without Hardy or Abbott without Costello they are half of a complete picture. The earliest films date back to 1917 and see Keaton as a supporting player to Roscoe ‘Fatty’ Arbuckle. Contrarily that lottery is also home to some treats with new inter-titles, musical accompaniments and alternate endings, cleaning up the films however possible. Some are besieged by merciless grain, others by the discolouration associated with neglectful safekeeping and the need to re-edit from various cuts, while others are perfect – it is a lottery from film to film. Unfortunately, this means the presentation of the 32 short films is deeply inconsistent. Even with its fair share of lost films, Germany is a world away from the safekeeping and restoration of American silent cinema an apathy and negligence that has gone down in notoriety and legend thanks to the Martin Scorsese’s of the world. In recent years Eureka’s lionized Masters of Cinema imprint has released countless classic, lost and forgotten silent films with masters as fresh as the day they left the printing press thanks to outfits like the F.W. With his centenary looming, Eureka has re-issued their previous complete short films box-set on Blu-Ray including his early collaborations with Fatty Arbuckle and ending with a run of commercially and critically successful shorts that saw him become one of the greatest film icons of all time. Going back a few years shy of a century, slapstick was king and its serving monarch – Buster Keaton. Comedy is different in that it has so many different types and distinctions that the very early stuff is just as valid as the modern. Take science fiction and horror as the prime examples, both are worlds away from their respective zeitgeists – almost as if comparing night with day. The history of cinema is fascinating when journeying back to its origins, illustrating how much has changed over the course of time.
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |
AuthorWrite something about yourself. No need to be fancy, just an overview. ArchivesCategories |