Keaton, Buster

Best Of Buster Keaton

Our Hospitality/Sherlock, Jr.

Buster Keaton's second feature, Our Hospitality is his first masterpiece. He plays a New York city boy who travels south to receive his inheritance, only to discover he's in the center of a generations-old feud. While his sworn enemies (the family of the girl he has fallen in love with, naturally) vow to gun him down, Southern hospitality forbids them from harming him as long as he's a guest in their home. Plenty of comic mileage is mined from Buster's desperate attempts to prolong his stay, and highlights include a deliriously surreal train (run by Keaton's father, Joe) and a heroic rescue involving a rope, a log, and a mighty waterfall.

Sherlock Jr. is a delightfully surreal fantasy of a film projectionist and amateur detective who climbs into his movie screen. Like Daffy Duck in the famous cartoon "Duck Amuck," Buster is at the mercy of sudden scene changes, sent from desert to snowstorm to lake in simple cuts while he remains helplessly fixed onscreen. (Even more astounding is that he accomplished this engineering marvel with nothing more than surveyor's tools and an exacting eye.) Settling into his dream role as a master detective and society bon vivant Sherlock Jr., he chases the dastardly villains in a world as wild and unpredictable as the French serial Les Vampires: bombs are hidden in billiard balls and Keaton leaps through the torso of a peddler woman and into nothingness! No other silent film turns logic on its head with such grace and comic hilarity. --Sean Axmaker

The art of Buster Keaton is on spectacular display in two of his finest films. The wonderful film "Our Hospitality" (1923, 75 min.) is in many ways a companion piece to Keaton's 1926 masterpiece "The General." It stars Buster as a New York man who returns to his southern homeland only to find himself embroiled in a longstanding feud between his family and that of the woman he loves. Perhaps no other film offers as exciting a rollercoaster ride as "Sherlock, Jr." (1924, 44 min.). Dramatizing the uproarious exploits of a meek theater projectionist turned amateur sleuth, the film blends the knockabout physical comedy normally associated with slapstick with more subtly crafted moments of humor.

Buster Keaton Collection (The Cameraman / Spite Marriage / Free & Easy)

Studio: Warner Home Video Release Date: 12/07/2004 Run time: 152 minutes

The Buster Keaton Collection presents three of the first films (one, The Cameraman, a near masterpiece) Keaton made for MGM beginning in 1928, an arrangement that gradually ushered the great comic actor and director into the sound era but ultimately deprived him of creative control. The Cameraman, considered by many to be Keaton's last important silent work, is an unusual story about a tintype portrait photographer (Keaton) who becomes a newsreel cameraman in order to win the heart of a secretary (Marceline Day). After flubbing an assignment by double-exposing some action footage, the hapless hero tries to prove himself in several memorable sequences of Keatonesque knockabout comedy (including a Chinatown street battle). There are also a couple of grace notes, such as a scene set in Yankee Stadium in which a solo Keaton exquisitely mimes the moves and attitudes of a pitcher. But The Cameraman's strange, almost subconscious power is in its variation on an old Keaton refrain: The hero's conflict over different kinds of authenticity, represented here on either side of a motion picture lens--the difference between capturing something real and living it.

The Cameraman shows obvious and unfortunate signs of MGM's insistence that Keaton, long accustomed to improvising scenes, conform to prepared shooting scripts. But it is less stifling than the second feature (Keaton's last silent movie) in this set, the 1929 Spite Marriage, a slight farce about a pants-presser (Keaton) who borrows his customers' fine threads to attend the theatre every night. There he worships an actress (Dorothy Sebastian) so furious with her caddish lover and co-star (Edward Earle) that she asks Keaton to marry her. The predictable results are unworthy of a Keaton film, but he does shine in several hilarious sequences, such as a disastrous turn as a bit player in his soon-to-be-wife's stage dramas. Finally, 1930's Free and Easy, Keaton's talkie debut, is a garish MGM valentine to itself, trotting out celebrity actors and directors (Lionel Barrymore, Cecil B. DeMille, Fred Niblo) in a wooden story set on a movie lot. But while Keaton struggles with dialogue and a script that frequently sidelines him, he has many good moments causing havoc on film sets. --Tom Keogh

Slapstick Festival - 35 Shorts

Hilarious slapstick skits from comedy's golden age! This collection includes such legendary performers as Laurel & Hardy Our Gang Fatty Arbuckle The Keystone Kops Buster Keaton The Three Stooges. W.C. Fields and Charlie Chaplin!Included:1. Bad Boy (Silent)2. Baloonatic The (Silent)3. Bangville Police The (Silent)4. Bear Shooters5. Blacksmith The6. Boat The (Silent)7. Brideless Groom8. Cure The9. Daydreams (Silent)10. Dentist The11. Disorder In the Court12. Easy Street (Silent)13. Electric House The (Silent)14. Fatal Glass of Beer The15. Fatty's Suitless Day (Silent)16. Follies of Our Gang17. Ghost Parade18. Golf Specialist The19. Her Painted Hero20. Just Ramblin' Along21. Love Speed and Thrills (Silent)22. Mabel & Fatty's Married Life (Silent)23. Malice in the Palace24. Mud and Sand25. My Wife's Relations (Silent)26. Oranges and Lemons (Silent)27. Paleface The (Silent)28. Playhouse The (Silent)29. Rink The (Silent)30. Schools Out31. Sing a Song of Six Pants32. Stolen Jools The33. That Little Band of Gold (Silent)34. Waldo's Last Stand35. Wife and Auto Trouble (Silent)System Requirements:Running Time: 665 minutesFormat: DVD MOVIE Genre: COMEDY/SLAPSTICK UPC: 683904505965 Manufacturer No: MV50596

The General (1927)

Slapstick Greats Movie Pack

Disc 1 contains: buster keaton(college the general steamboat bill jr). Disc 2 contains: the three stooges (swing parade of 1946 jerks of all trade classic shorts). Disc 3 contains: stan laurel and oliver hardy (includes: lucky dog tree in a test tube stolen tools west of hog dog..) bonus features. Studio: St Clair Ent Grp Inc Release Date: 07/26/2005 Run time: 330 minutes Rating: Nr

One Week (1920)

Silent Classics Collection 4 Movie Pack

Steamboat Bill Jr.

The Blacksmith (1922)