THREE AGES - Buster Keaton

 

Buster Keaton's directorial debut released for first time on Blu-Ray in celebration of the film's centenary.

Masters of Cinema/Eureka Entertainment are back with another Buster Keaton release, this time proudly releasing the directorial debut of old Stoneface from 1923. 

A film that was made as a swipe or reaction to D. W. Griffith's Intolerance which spanned several centuries of early American history, Keaton here takes the notion of love through the ages. Keaton shows the stone age, the roman age and the modern age. We spend the most abundant time in the modern age naturally as Keaton and Wallace Beery (Treasure Island, The Champ) as they attempt to win favour and the hand of Margaret Leahy - portraying heightened versions of themselves.

Keaton has fun mimicking and making fun of the eternal quest for a companion using sight gags (hitting a tall cavewoman over the head, she promptly stands up and dwarfs him) and stunt work of the highest order from the collapsing car to his death-defying jump across the street at height. A jump that nearly ended in tragedy yet he kept the seeming mistake in the final cut.

Keaton sets himself apart due to the little nuance and details he gives his characters, from the playful tapping of fingers on the arm of a sofa next to Leahy in contrast to the harsh brashness of Beery's modern day neanderthal bully.

There is the little touch of taking his American safe headwear off as a man and team-mate (he essentially) is helped get maimed leaves the field on a stretcher, this deftness sets someone apart. Whilst Chaplin would yearn to be the centre of the attention, Keaton is someone who tries to stay on the sidelines and prevent the spotlight hitting his characters.

The ending works so well as a foreshadowing of how love does and does not change - it becomes an unlikely foreshadow for Mike Nichols' The Graduate and then the final shot of a couple happy in domesticated bliss with man's best friend is one of how perhaps things have changed somewhat from little tykes running amok everywhere to one of coupledom taking time to enjoy life before a family begins - not unlike how many find ourselves nowadays. Another notch as to how Buster was ahead of his time.

Keaton shared directing credit with Edward F. Cline, the style and auteur streak can be seen that he would repeat in such classics as Sherlock Jr. and The General. While it may not reach the heights of those films that landed on the BFI's Top 100 of all time, it never the less serves as a reminder that Keaton was a pioneer and revolutionary in the still young medium of motion picture cinema. 

On the centenary of its release, we should never lose sight of the fact that modern day comedy stands upon the shoulders of Keaton and his peers.

The new release has a first run of 2000 copies for the Limited Edition slipcase; a new 1080p presentation on Blu-Ray from Cohen Film Collection featuring reconstructed original intertitles. Brand new audio commentary from film historian David Kalat. A new video essay This Side of Impossible by David Cairns. A new video essay by Fiona Watson entitled Under the Flat Hat. A 1912 D.W. Griffith short Man's Genesis that Keaton parodies in Three Ages; archival recordings of Keaton. And a collector's booklet featuring new writing by Philip Kemp and Imogen Sara Smith.

This is the UK debut on Blu-ray in celebration of the 100th Anniversary.

THREE AGES is released from Eureka Entertainment on August 21st.

The Saphead - Buster Keaton

 

Eureka Entertainment release another classic silent cinema film featuring the legendary Buster Keaton.

The Saphead was made in 1920 and was Keaton's first leading role following his apprenticeship with Fatty Arbuckle.

The story revolves around Keaton as Bertie Van Alstyne, a pampered son of a Wall Street tycoon, who having never known any other way of life bar privilege he has to navigate new social situations, unknowing of the obstacles ahead of him.

While Keaton was not the creative force behind this adaptation of a stage play, nevertheless, the film is important in creating the now universally known screen persona of Keaton as the Stoneface and the stoic nature of his performance. His undaunted aspiration in a changing world who may well laugh at him, yet usually the quiet man who has the last laugh.

Keaton does not have to do much to garner laughs, and you can see in contrast the theatricality of other actors comes to the fore and has aged in nearly a hundred years of passing, whilst Keaton's calm is front and centre.

In contrast to the other major silent comedian of the time, Charlie Chaplin, there is a naturalness that remains to Keaton's work. While Chaplin specifically was playing a character in The Tramp, a parody or caricature that ultimately garnered world acclaim who was thrust into moments that became comical. Keaton on the other side of the coin was a person who made situations funny, whereas Chaplin could have you laughing before he did anything with the twirl of his cane and funny walk. 

Again while Chaplin would do small movements like a dancing potato to illicit maximum potential of laughter, Keaton would use big sets and stunts with his still centre in the middle of frame an ocean of calm as chaos surrounds him with Chaplin a feverish ball of energy in an altogether calmer milieu.

With it being his first lead role, you do see Keaton being more a ensemble member in this instance and his character's behaviour is more akin to that of say Adam Sandler or Rowan Atkinson, a person of lesser intellect but into an elitist world and whose humble mindset shocks the upper classes and puts them in there place. 

The new release from Eureka Video is a Blu-ray release for the first time features essays, a featurette on different adaptations, The Scribe (1966, Dir. John Sebert) - Keaton's last film role; a two hour audio interview between Keaton and Kevin Brownlow from 1964 as well as the collector's booklet.

The Saphead is out on August 22nd from Eureka Video.

My thanks to them for the review opportunity.

The Thief Of Baghdad

As part of the continuing Masters of Cinema series from Eureka Video, The Thief of Baghdad is released on a special Blu-ray edition and brings to the small screen in a new print one of the great films in the career of the hugely admired Douglas Fairbanks.

Directed by Raoul Walsh, but produced by the highly independent Fairbanks, Thief tells the story of Ahmed (Fairbanks) who encounters danger and adventure in equal measure in a purely studio based film.  Featuring ahead of its time special effects such as the famous climatic flying carpet ride, the film is indicative of one man's vision. In stark contrast to the stringent Hollywood studio system that was still 10 years away from its heyday, this was a film full of invention and imagination.

We are still ten years from Capra's coming out party with It Happened One Night, 15 years from John Ford's Stagecoach in 1939, the same year as Hitchock's final UK film before he came to America in 1940 under David O. Selznick to make Rebecca. In the mid 1920s three years before the advent of sound in cinema, the art form was following theatre by making the actor the star.  The stars knowing this wanted more creative control of their final product.

Fairbanks was a contemporary of the other two Hollywood darlings of the mid to late 1920s, Mary Pickford and Charlie Chaplin. The three of them helped form United Artists; the independent production company that allowed the three stars to make what films they wanted and give them the power to produce and in Chaplin's case ultimately direct.  It gave them the freedom to pursue artistic endeavours of their own volition.

In Fairbanks case it was a chance to do something of this scale, a film with vastness of a Cecil B. DeMille film but with the imagination of Melieres whilst embracing a key central performance by the featured actor.  In a way you could say Thief is the first actor led film who was not reliant upon the name of a director be it Griffith/Lubitsch above the title.

 

If that's the case the Thief of Baghdad is an amazing Hollywood product - larger than life, fantastical, amazing and hugely entertaining. The reason a silent cinema featuring the problem of a white man play a Muslim is accepted due to the sheer photogenic presence of Fairbanks himself. Like his contemporary Chaplin, there is a magnetism about his performance the way he moves and does his own stunts all with a charm burning from his shirtless torso and a smile beaming from whiter than white teeth set against the vast production and set design.

While the case this could be made as an actor's auteur film, the work of Walsh who would go on to direct such classic Hollywood fare as High Sierra and White Heat, should not be ignored. Coming to the set as a somewhat novice, this was his first major production and he does a great service to the film by keeping the tempo and tone throughout the work.

From shimmering up a rope out of a basket to the carpet ride, there are thrills and spills a plenty in this brisk 140 minute running time. It would be a great introduction for many to the joys of silent cinema, helped by the sprightly new score by Carl Davis and the London Philharmonic Orchestra. The dual format Blu-ray/DVD edition has an accompanying 40 page booklet by Laura Boyes from the North Carolina Museum of Art.

The Thief of Baghdad will be released on Blu-ray/DVD dual format on Monday 24th November at £14.99 rrp

www.eurekavideo.co.uk