Everyone reading this knows Buster Keaton, and most of you probably know a little bit about Three Ages, his first feature, too. Untested in hour-long comedies, Keaton agreed to film something that was splittable into three short films: each one able to stand on its own, if need be. As it turned out, Three Ages worked out just fine as a feature. Today, we remember it as the start of the second, and most artistically successful, phase of his career.
If you like Keaton’s shorts, you’ll like Three Ages. And who doesn’t like his shorts? Almost all of them are fast-paced, sharp comedies, with good gags that obey the laws of physics. They were ambitious too—in scale, as in Cops, and in technical reach, like The Playhouse. The trio of films that make up Three Ages fall about in the middle of that pack. One, though, offered a glimpse into Keaton’s future work, and for that reason, it the most special of the three.
The General is the greatest of Buster Keaton’s features—his most inventive, ambitious, and perfectly crafted film. To say this is not simply to conjure up some scale of achievement, with The General at one end, and say, Battling Butler at the other. The General is more than a highpoint in a Keaton Continuum; it is also unique among his works. And this is thanks to a little man, Johnnie Gray, whom Keaton plays, at the centre of it all. Utterly capable, Johnnie Gray is no typical Keaton hero.
In fact, I’d trust Johnnie with my life.
Buster Keaton's last work was The Scribe (1966): an industrial safety short filmed here in Toronto. In this article, Toronto writer Eric Veillette takes a look back at the 10-day shoot, done after Keaton's health had already begun to fail.
You can see The Scribe, too. It's available as an extra on Kino Lorber's new Blu-ray release of College (1927).
The law today is the rich man’s law. The courts are the rich man’s courts. Lawyers speak not of courts of justice, but of courts of law, and this law can be twisted by hirelings schooled in deft evasion for the service of any rogue who is able to pay the lawyer’s price. This system becomes the rich man’s tool.
With a little tweaking, these could be the words of a current New York Times columnist. But they’re not. They’re part of a fictional op-ed; part of a script. When Mary Turner reads these words in a magazine, she’s inspired by them. If men can get rich on the backs of others, all within the letter of the law, then so can she.
Cops is one of Buster Keaton’s best shorts—maybe the best. That's as close to a universally held opinion as you’ll find among silent film fans.
How can I say this? Well, because Keaton’s body of work is known to almost anyone with even a beginner’s interest in silent films. If the quality of Cops was in dispute, there would be plenty of thoughtful voices to dispute it. Yet there are nearly none.
I won’t dispute it either. I think Cops is a fantastic film—brisk, smart, cynical, and funny. It’s my personal favorite of Keaton’s shorts. I’ve seen it many times, but I’ve avoided writing about it in the past because it’s so hard to examine without spoiling, and because I questioned whether I’d have anything new to say about a film seen and loved by so many.
Maybe I still don’t. But the film’s been on my mind lately, and so I’m inspired to try. The catalyst was an event I attended a little while ago—a screening of a very different film: F.W. Murnau’s The Last Laugh (1924). (You can read my review of that film here.)
