Buster Keaton: A Hard Act to Follow

This is simply a perfect documentary. I cannot find any fault in it or room for improvement, unless it would be to make it an even longer sampling of Keaton's skills. Buster Keaton was a unique master of physical comedy on film and this documentary is a worthy examination of Keaton's life. The music is wonderful. When I see Keaton's films now I wish the music from this documentary was playing with it. Everyone should see this documentary. Many would be surprised at what silent films had to offer.

"A Hard Act to Follow" is probably the best documentary of its kind that could have been made. Three hours isn't long enough to document everything about a man's life but it is long enough to give a touching picture of Buster Keaton as a person, and a thoroughly insightful impression of his peculiar brilliance as a comedian and filmmaker.

The use of old film of Keaton's work is extensive and done in exactly the way it should be. It's not just B-roll thrown randomly behind narration or interview audio. Clips selected for that kind of use illustrate what is being talked about perfectly, and are timed and sped or slowed with great precision, probably just as Keaton would have wanted them. Longer extracts do a marvelous job of illustrating his greatest comedy moments, and -- best of all -- film is slowed or enlarged in ways that really illuminate, sometimes in stunning ways, new things about the comedies that even somebody who had seen them dozens of times would not have known. This is one of this documentary's biggest strengths.

Rare footage of Keaton is very generous and aptly introduced too, including home movies, candid shots of his directing, television kinescopes, commercials he created, and lengthy interview material from the man himself.

Another thing that makes this documentary special, and the thing that makes it really irreplaceable, is that, made a not-astronomical 21 years after his death, it is able to include illuminating interviews with Keaton's third wife and other people who knew and worked with him during his lifetime (and they all seem to have a boundless affection for the man).

I think anyone appreciates Keaton's work should see this documentary, and it would probably be an excellent introduction for those who don't already. It's made with an enormous amount of insight, skill, affection, and apprehension.

After Hollywood, and THE UNKNOWN CHAPLIN, Kevin Brownlow and David Gill did this documentary on Buster Keaton, and how he developed as the leading rival of Charlie Chaplin as number one comic of the Silent Period (Harold Lloyd is number three, and then - supposedly - Harry Langdon, Raymond Griffith, and Laurel and Hardy). Keaton had begun with his parents in a lively, knockabout vaudeville act (literally his father threw him about the stage). When he entered movies it was with Fatty Arbuckle's company, and as Arbuckle's friend and admirer. Unlike most silent performers, Keaton was interested about how movies were made, and actually took apart a camera to study it's workings. He learned to build jokes into his films to develop character. And he never lost his fascination with the power of what films could do. Look at a film like SHERLOCK JR., where he carefully spends time using cutting to make a series of improbable events occur on screen (such as jumping through the chest of a man standing in front of a wall). Chaplin plucks at the heartstrings, Lloyd takes ordinariness and perks it up with dangers, but Keaton is concerned on how man is at the mercy of nature and science. In one long sequence joke in OUR HOSPITALITY, Keaton is being chased to a waterfall set of cliffs. He ties himself to a rope hoping to climb up. An enemy finds the rope and ties it to himself, planning to surprise Keaton when he climbs up. Keaton sees this and yanks on the rope causing his enemy to fall off the top of the cliff into the waterfall, but as the body of the man fall down in the background, Keaton realizes the rope is still tied securely to his own body. Looking stoically into the camera and waiting, a moment later we see Keaton pulled off the screen by the falling body of his enemy. He can fight human enemies, but not the law of gravity.

Keaton did well until 1928, but then family and health problems hit him, especially his growing alcoholism. Stripped of his dignity by a studio boss (Louis B. Mayer) who had no time for has-beens, he became a gag writer. But he still occasionally made films in the sound period. The film shows how Keaton's rise occurred in the 1950s, spurred on by the rediscovery of many of his films. It is a remarkable story of a gifted genius who lived long enough to know he was not a drunken failure but universally admired.

This has to be one of the best documentary/biography's around. Narrated by distinguished British director Lindsay Anderson, this is an incredibly detailed portrait of one of the silent screen's, nay, movies greatest and most talented legends. It details his life from cradle to grave in an unflinching manner, from his childhood in vaudeville to his debut in the Arbuckle shorts to the dizzy heights of the 20's to the tragic lows of the 30's and 40's then on to the rediscovery of the master film maker's work in the later years of his life, something we are all grateful that he lived to see. Full of wonderful interviews with the man himself and his wonderful wife, the late Eleanor Keaton, to those who knew him as a young man and the friends he had in his later life, with many examples of the work he did in television after his rediscovery in the 50's and 60's which show that he still had genius. I am fortunate to own it on a single video having seen it many years ago when it was shown on British TV, but, when oh when will it be on DVD? It's shocking that this and many other glorious movies particularly of the silent era are unavailable and some of the most turgid drivel, that is a waste of fresh air, is out there to buy, as if you'd really want to. It took them long enough to bring out "The Cameraman" on DVD, a perfect example of his genius. 10/10

This takes you from Buster's birth to death in about three hours and three installments with an emphasis on his body of work. It is unusual in that you get quite a bit of interview material from Raymond Rohauer, the man responsible for financially backing the restoration of Buster's films, destined for nitrate decomposition, in the 1950s. And you hear from Keaton himself throughout the documentary, in what looks like interview material that was largely done during the filming of "Buster Keaton Rides Again" made in 1964, two years before his death. Other prominent interviewees are his widow, Eleanor, who comments not only on the time she knew him but on what he had told her about earlier times. What's also insightful are interviews with some of the stuntmen and technicians who worked with him in his silent independent days and during his time at MGM. These aren't film scholars summarizing his work. All of these people actually knew the man.

It gets only a few things wrong. For one, Buster Keaton was not fired by MGM in person by Louis B. Mayer as a result of an argument between the two over his "party mobile" - a luxury motor home parked on the MGM lot. Instead, after "What No Beer?" opened, and was making good money, L. B. Mayer took advantage of the fact that Irving Thalberg was away convalescing due to a heart attack to fire Buster by telegram. And even that could have been patched up by Thalberg when he returned, but Buster demanded Mayer apologize. That was just not going to happen.

I'll also say that the Educational shorts Buster made in the mid 30s get short shrift here too. The documentary mentions "Grand Slam Opera", which in my opinion is brilliant. But some of the others are quite good even if you can tell they were rushed out the door.

Buster's humble but creative spirit comes through the entire documentary. For even as an older man, you can always see that fragile yet rambunctious spirit of his and the intense passion he had for his craft.