#BUSTER KEATON MOVIES SERIES#

Buster understood quite early that he would get bigger laughs if he retained a serious expression. Buster was billed as “The Little Boy Who Can’t Be Damaged” and Papa Joe Keaton was flinging him roughly around the stage at the age of five.

#BUSTER KEATON MOVIES SERIES#

Restrained, unpretentious, pure films, they belie his seemingly disorganized working methods, a series of disparate and largely unnecessary co-directors and the apparent self-destructiveness of his own personality.Īs a child, he was part of a vaudeville act with his parents. During the 1920s, he put out a phenomenal array of rarified, perfectly judged features and shorts, a cinematic jewel-box featuring authentic period detail, is-he-really-doing- that? stunts and an enduring persona that qualifies as one of the most poetic reactions to life imaginable. Like so many film artists, he needed the freedom to create spontaneously if he was to function at his highest level. Dismissing claims to greatness, Keaton insisted again and again that what he was most interested in was getting the laugh. It is this attitude that makes Buster an important artist, patronized by intellectuals who appreciate his profundity and by mainstream audiences who gasp and giggle at his daring. This brief appearance in Billy Wilder’s mordant classic expresses the essential attitude of his life and work. With his customary stoicism, he croaks, “Pass.” Then, facing up to lousy luck, his face only slightly dejected, he again says “Pass” more quietly. February 1 1966, Los Angeles, California USAĪs one of the waxworks playing bridge in Sunset Boulevard (1950), a ravaged Buster Keaton contemplates a dubious hand.

Buster keaton movies