Buster Keaton - 65th Anniversary Collection (1940)

WHEN A GENIUS WORKS AT A FACTORY

By 1939 when Keaton made these films, his career as a major film comedian was over due to a combination of personal and professional problems. He managed to cleanup his personal life and wanted to rebuild his career. He thought working at Columbia would be a good start since their shorts were given much wider distribution than the short films he made a few years earlier at Educational that went unnoticed. Wider exposure would reestablish him with the public and let the major studios know he was well and ready to work again. That was the plan.

The Columbia short films department operated on a "We don't want it good - We want it Friday" mentality imposed by studio boss Harry Cohn. As a result, these Keaton films are generally frantic and unfunny. His screen performances give the appearance of someone being shoved in front of a camera with little or no preparation and told "OK - Be funny". Sometimes it worked but most times not. That was the reality of working at Columbia. After two years, Keaton quit in frustration saying he couldn't stand making any more crummy pictures at Columbia.

These films have been unavailable for many years. Sony has done a wonderful job at restoring these films and making them available. They are to be commended since these films are not masterpieces and will probably appeal only to the die-hard Keaton fan.

As a side note, watching these films have given me a new respect for the THREE STOOGES. While not a big fan of their work, their films are at least funny while the Keaton films are not. How the STOOGES managed that is a credit to them and not to the Columbia studio system.
July 3, 2008

More for Stooges fans than Keaton.

Filmed at Columbia c.39-41 these films will appeal more to fans of the 3 Stooges than fans of Buster Keaton. In the silent days nobody was funnier than Keaton (including Chaplin) but, by his own admission, Keaton was not a good sound comic. (His voice recalls a gruffer Bud Abbot.)
The Columbia shorts were considered bottom-of-the-barrel and were a haven for silent "has-beens" (inc;uding Harry Langdon). The only Columbia shorts still in regular circulation today are the 3 Stooges. And a lot of the Stoogers directors (Jules While, Del Lord), writers (Clyde Bruckman) and supporting actors (Bud Jammison, Cy Tyson) cn be seen here. Also, hardcore Stooges historians will recognise gags- ie an ironing board routine later reused by Shemp Howard.
The best film in this collection "Mooching Through Georgia" (1939) my have been writen for Keaton but was remade by the Stooges as "Uncivil Warbirds" seven years later- and, since Moe Larry n Curly were better at sound, their version is vastly superior!
Sooge fans will find these an interesting curiosy. But Keaton fans should stick with silents made before 1928. June 17, 2008

This set won't make you a Buster fan...

...but it won't prevent you from becoming one either.

Buster did these short films for Columbia between 1939 and 1941, and the pace of production was frantic, so there was really no time for the Keaton finesse you see in Buster's short silent films of the 20's. These films have always had a pretty bad reputation, but they are amusing enough, especially for a Keaton completist. The problem is that Jules White's brand of comedy that worked so well for the Three Stooges was just not suited to Buster. White was head of the Columbia shorts department at the time, and he had a tendency to be autocratic. Buster ceased making shorts for Columbia after he decided he just couldn't go on working this way in spite of the fact that his financial position was still not good at this time.

The commentaries on the ten shorts are very good. The commenters are quite knowledgable about Keaton and his career as well as Columbia's supporting comedy players, and don't limit themselves to the things that every Keaton fan already knows. Neither are they shy about mentioning the shortcomings of Buster's Columbia shorts. Included is a shooting script from "She's Oil Mine" with a forward by Melissa Talmadge Cox, Buster's granddaughter. There is also a mini documentary on Keaton's career on the second disc. If you already know Buster's story there's nothing new here, but it is still well done.

You'll notice that Keaton recycles gags from many of his earlier films, from his silent films up through his MGM talkies. Everybody did this, the trick was to do it well, and Buster does. Without home video or television, once a film stopped its short run in the theaters it was forgotten, and largely so were the gags. This is how comics got away with this. May 3, 2008

Pest is Best

I always enjoy lectures about the arts, and I was delighted to find that each of these movies comes with a voice-over commentary. Joe Adamson and Patricia Tobias seem completely unprepared to start -- they begin their talks haltingly, almost as if it takes a few minutes to set their brains into multi-task mode to watch a movie and talk at the same time. But once they get in gear they do pretty well, and they share interesting information without being greasy about it. Each commentator goes astray once in a while, yammering on about some oblique topic or obscure actor while I am wishing they would talk about the movie going on in front of me; still, the lectures are largely suitable, and there are many insights (into questions like, Why is "Pest from the West" SO good?). The films do seem better and are more enjoyable the more you know about them.

There is much to appreciate about Keaton's work here, and the speakers point out what is superior in these movies as well as identify the flaws. The image and sound is first-rate, and Sony has collected the complete batch. Turn off the sound to the first half of "She's Oil Mine", and you get an almost vintage Keaton-Arbuckle film (with a skinny Arbuckle). The second half, the duel, has very funny sound with judiciously few but good lines for Buster, and is a model of how his sound films should have been made. I have watched all these films several times, and a few of them more than that.

There are so many movies out there we need to see. Columbia and Universal are really to be commended with their re-releases. Let's hope MGM, and whoever owns the Hal Roach and Lupino Lane films can properly restore and release those before they are damaged beyond viewing, or lost. February 9, 2008

Damn Hollywood for Wasting So Much Genius

This was a Krissmiss gift for me, and as a Buster Keaton fan, I must say that it is perhaps the nicest gift I have ever received. This was the only phase of Keaton's career that I had never seen before. These ten films are three hours of joy watching Keaton. The joy also comes with great sadness. We see Keaton still able to execute brilliant comedic moments, but for most of these Columbia films, he is forced to act the part of the Fourth Stooge. How could the studios be so blind and not see the brilliance of Keaton? How could they not offer him features when he is obviously so capable of producing laughs? The studio heads must have been blind, deaf, and dumb.
"Pest From the West," the first movie he did for Columbia is the best one. It comes close to matching the quality of his silent shorts. "Taming of the Snood" is also quite interesting. The story is a mess, but it contains some wonderful physical bits. The other eight are closer to the three stooges level of quality, but in each of them for at least a minute or two, Keaton gets to do a few outstanding pratfalls, or a bit or two and raise the quality.
Curse the Hollywood studios for wasting so much talent and genius.
December 30, 2007

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