Buster Keaton Collection (The Cameraman / Spite Marriage / Free & Easy)
by Buster Keaton, Edward Sedgwick
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DVD Cover Information
Actor: Buster Keaton, Harold Goodwin, Harry Gribbon, Marceline Day, Sidney BraceyDirector: Buster Keaton, Edward Sedgwick
Brand: Warner Brothers
Writer: Al Boasberg
Writer: Byron Morgan
Writer: Clyde Bruckman
Writer: Ernest Pagano
Writer: Joseph Farnham
Writer: Lew Lipton
DVD: Region Code 1
Audio: English (Unknown), Dolby Digital 2.0 Mono; English (Subtitled); Spanish (Subtitled); French (Subtitled); English (Original Language), Dolby Digital 2.0 Mono
Format: Closed-captioned, Color, DVD, NTSC, Original recording remastered, Silent, Special Edition, Subtitled
Picture Format: Academy Ratio, 1.33:1
Running Time: 152 minutes
DVD Release Date: 2004-12-07
Audience Rating: NR (Not Rated)
Model: 67009
Studio: Warner Home Video
Product features:
- Considered by many the greatest of cinema's silent clowns, Buster Keaton was a consummate practitioner of physical comedy. Although labeled the "Great Stone Face," Keaton found tremendous eloquence in his deadpan style with the alert and expressive eyes, lithe acrobat's body and that air of grace described by critic James Agee as "a fine, still and dreamlike beauty."This TCM Archives 2-disc celebr
Movie Reviews of Buster Keaton Collection (The Cameraman / Spite Marriage / Free & Easy)
Movie Review: Two last breaths of genius from Keaton before the studio beat him down
Summary: 5 Stars
Giving up his independence and moving to MGM was the beginning of the end for Buster Keaton's career as a major star and creative force, but TCM's rather good two-disc set offers the best of his tenure at the studio before he was relegated to straight man duties opposite Jimmy Durante.
Right from the start of his contract, with 1928's The Cameraman, it's obvious that the studio is trying to get its new star to fit their in-house studio formula, and for much of the first third of the film there's more pathos than laughs as it takes an inordinately long time to set up its plot (Buster's tintype street photographer tries to make it as a newsreel cameraman to win the girl of his dreams). There's even a banana skin joke at one point, but thankfully things pick up with a brilliant fire truck gag and an inspired mime sequence in an empty Yankee Stadium that sees him acting out a ballgame (one of only two scenes he was allowed to improvise) before going on to a prolonged less-than-perfect date sequence at a swimming baths that allows the star to forget about the plot and throw in some great sight gags. Yet you can constantly sense the conflict between the comedy and the plot: Buster's disastrous double-exposed newsreel footage that sees a battleship sailing down Wall Street probably would have been a much longer display of effects and trickery in a pre-MGM film, but here the sequence is surprisingly brief - just enough to make the story move ahead. But there's still plenty to enjoy - the wonderfully executed single take sequence that sees him racing down and despondently trudging back up the stairs waiting for a phone call, his destructive attempts to smash open a piggy bank (the film's only other improvised scene) and the spectacular Chinatown Tong war sequence that even throws in a monkey with a machinegun!
Rather more consistent despite perhaps not having quite so many comic highlights is Spite Marriage, which sees his adoring stage door Johnny married to the actress of his dreams when she is spurned by her co-star. He's seemingly oblivious to the fact she's a drunken nightmare who wants a quiet divorce as soon as she realises the effect the marriage might have on her popularity, but circumstances lead to Buster finding himself alone with her on an abandoned luxury yacht. Although the studio were eager for him to stop doing his own stunts, there's still an impressive prolonged not quite falling overboard sequence, though it's the scene where he puts his blind drunk other half to bed that's both the film's highlight and one of the funniest sequences of his entire career. It comes as no great surprise that the studio wanted to cut it.
Having already removed nearly all of his regular crew except for director Edward Sedgwick, the studio then set about removing almost everything that made his screen persona a success with his next film. Despite the studio throwing money and cameoing stars and directors at it (Lionel Barrymore, Cecil B. De Mille, Fred Niblo, Jackie Coogan and William Haines among them), his first talkie, Free and Easy is, to put it mildly, abysmal. Along with his marriage, Keaton's problems with MGM turned him to the bottle and this film is so incredibly bad it nearly did the same for me trying to watch it. Despite his gravel tones, the problem isn't the move to talking pictures - Keaton had planned Spite Marriage as a talkie, but MGM's only soundstage was booked solid at the time. It's that the film is almost unrecognisable as a Keaton film, dropping him into a substandard smalltown-innocent-in-Hollywood plot and not allowing him an inch of breathing space or creative control to do anything to improve it by forcing him to stick to a script that plays against his strengths and, worse still, casts him as a loser who doesn't win through in a dire Laugh, Clown, Laugh-style ending. There's virtually no physical comedy, no chance to show his athleticism, no technical ingenuity (it has all the worst sins of static early talkies). It's like casting Jackie Chan in a 90-minute monologue. A few moments with Doris McMahon's appealing native dancer and the odd glimpse of how the studio wanted its fans to see it aside, there's nothing to recommend it, and nothing underlines the studio's attitude to its star than a scene where Niblo insists Keaton sticks to the script or the musical number that sees him as a puppet pulled around by unseen hands.
Rounding out the set is an excellent 38-minute Kevin Brownlow-Patrick Stanbury documentary So Funny It Hurt covering Keaton's tragic decline at the studio. If the US version of Free and Easy is bad, the Spanish and German language versions he filmed simultaneously, learning the lines phonetically and delivering them mechanically, look even worse, while - a genuinely charming scene from WW1 comedy Doughboys aside - the sparingly used footage from his later MGM films as his drinking became more noticeable onscreen is desperately sad coming so few years after the genius and athleticism of films like Steamboat Bill Jr. When the studio fired him with a curt three-line letter, it seemed almost like putting him out of his misery. There was a happy ending with Keaton's remarriage and rediscovery, and there are generous clips from a revealing interview with Keaton later in life, but it's a tragedy along the way.
All three features have good print quality (though The Cameraman is still missing a 'lost' sequence of a ship being launched) and it's definitely worth picking up for the first two films, but don't feel bad if you want to give up on the third: it's pretty obvious Buster did too.
Summary of Buster Keaton Collection (The Cameraman / Spite Marriage / Free & Easy)
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