This seemingly improvisational approach to filmmaking belies Keaton's precision in his films, particularly the short bits of physical comedy that he called “gags.” He would work out a gag, practice it carefully, and then shoot it. We just came up with what we thought was a good idea for a picture and went from there.” ”We never even thought of writing a script. “Neither Chaplin nor Harold Lloyd nor myself ever had a script before we started shooting a picture,” Keaton told an interviewer in the 1960s. She looks at him, and then this dialogue card flashes on the screen: “You?” She touches his hand, then begins to caress it, and suddenly recognizes him because touch was her way of identifying people prior to her sight-restoring surgery. She is amused by him until she takes pity and gives him a flower.
Suddenly, he notices the Blind Flower Girl whose sight has been restored by his efforts. In that scene, the Little Tramp is really down on his luck, his clothes are in tatters, and he is the subject of mockery. There is no comparable scene in the entire length of Keaton’s filmography that comes close to matching the deep emotional power of the final scene in City Lights (1931). Keaton’s movies never move you the way Chaplin’s did.
#Buster keaton movies directed movie#
But as each movie goes on, one thing that always begins to dawn on me is how much they demonstrate the human capacity for survival and triumph. And I mean a full-hearted, big old belly laugh.
When you watch a Buster Keaton movie, you’ll surprise yourself at how many times you’ll be laughing. Keaton was one of the greatest geniuses of the 20th century. Orson Welles once said of Keaton: “He was, as we are now beginning to realize, the greatest of all the clowns in the history of cinema.” For him, movie-making was an evolving process of discovering what works and made sense at that moment. Keaton had said that most times when he started shooting a movie, he only had 50 percent of it all planned out. It is said of Mozart that he would have an idea for a symphony, and when he sat down to compose, he was just writing down what he had already heard in his head. He often started shooting without an actual script or even a fully fleshed-out storyline. As a filmmaker, he was unconcerned with carefully plotted stories. His movies are astonishing, hilarious, and unlike any you have ever seen before. Well, I am here to tell you that you are making a big mistake by not watching Buster Keaton movies. It seems like the kind of thing you just have to do, like wearing dress shoes once a year to some event you didn’t want to go to in the first place. And I get it Buster Keaton is a genius, right up there with Charlie Chaplin and Harold Lloyd as the three kings of the silent film era. Three other Keaton films received votes in the magazine's survey: Our Hospitality, Sherlock, Jr., and The Navigator.“Yeah, yeah, yeah,” you’re saying. A 2002 worldwide poll by Sight & Sound ranked Keaton's The General as the 15th best film of all time. "Orson Welles stated that Keaton's The General is the greatest comedy ever made, the greatest Civil War film ever made, and perhaps the greatest film ever made.
#Buster keaton movies directed series#
Critic Roger Ebert wrote of Keaton's "extraordinary period from 1920 to 1929, he worked without interruption on a series of films that make him, arguably, the greatest actor-director in the history of the movies. In 1999, the American Film Institute ranked Keaton the 21st-greatest male star of all time. Keaton was recognized as the seventh-greatest director of all time by Entertainment Weekly. He was best known for his silent films, in which his trademark was physical comedy with a consistently stoic, deadpan expression, earning him the nickname "The Great Stone Face". Buster Keaton (4th October 1895 - 1st February 1966) was an American comic actor, filmmaker, producer and writer.
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