Buster Keaton, part I

In my opinion, the greatest filmmaker ever was Buster Keaton.  Look, it’s just my opinion.  But let me relate a few reasons why I think this is.

The silent film of the teens and twenties is fraught with actors stepping off the boards of vaudeville and melodrama.  Because the silent film cut off a very important part of the actors’ instruments, their voices, they took their melodramatic poses and exaggerated them even more for the cameras.

It quickly became apparent that the film lens worked as a magnifying glass and these poses often overwhelmed the screen.  Directors even began to look to non-actors for major roles.  A great case and point is Gary Cooper who started in the silent days.  The camera liked this kid who had been rejected by his college drama club and failed at every other job he tried.  His inability to act on stage came across as brilliance on the magnifying screen.

Before Cooper, along came Buster from the boards of Vaudeville.  Luckily, he was born and raised a comedian.  He was famous for sending up the well-known melodramas of the day.  He knew there was much more money and audience satisfaction in a spoof of The Drunkard than trying to play it straight.

When Fatty Arbuckle offers him a partnership just before World War 1, Buster brought with him 20 years of comedic experience, an engineer’s wit for knowing how things work, and a finish carpenter’s skill for fashioning things.  The first thing he did at Arbuckle’s studio was to disassemble and reassemble cameras and projectors.  Then he studied the films of D. W. Griffith and Georges Melies.  He then worked diligently under the tutelage of the great Arbuckle.

Buster, at first, did everything Fatty asked him.  A great example is the film Coney Island; it is one of the few times that you can see Buster’s character smile on the screen.  Fatty gave directions like, “Laugh your head off then I’ll hit you on the head and you will wail like a baby.”  Buster did as he was told, but when he saw himself on screen, he developed a character.  His character could never smile.

This went back to his days of vaudeville with his dad.  They had a roustabout act where the elder Keaton would toss Buster around the stage like he was a rag doll.  If he smiled and let on to the audience about what fun he was having, the laughs would stop.  This drew the admonition (under his breath so the audience couldn’t hear) from his father, “Face.”  That meant, ‘don’t smile.  Take it straight.’  Buster concluded that he just was the kind of comedian that couldn’t laugh at his own jokes.

Therein was something much deeper going on.  Buster’s skills as a comedian, an entertainer and a filmmaker were innate.  This is why it was so hard for him to receive accolades.  Giving him an award for his work was like giving a chicken an award for laying eggs.  It’s what he was born and groomed to do.

At the same time, Buster was incredibly intelligent.  Fatty argued that they had to do the hammy overacting because the average intelligence of the filmgoer was about that of a 9 year old.  Before being drafted to the Great War (WW1), Buster warned Fatty that his opinion was dangerous and may shorten his career.

Something else, a false scandal, ended Fatty’s career.  And returning from the war, Buster had to rely on his native wit to restart his.