Clyde Bruckman, Buster Keaton (1926)
This BFI screening of Buster Keaton’s American Civil War comedy The General was preceded by a two-reeler, One Week (1920), which describes the first seven days of a marriage and the newlyweds’ attempts to build a house, a DIY wedding present from the groom’s uncle. The couple (Keaton and Sybil Seely) have to construct the house by following the numbering of its component parts. The man jilted by the bride in favour of Keaton changes the numbers, with spectacularly cock-eyed results. In the opening sequence, as the bride and groom emerge from church, I smiled: Keaton was already worried – enough to flinch from the confetti being thrown. (And rightly so: some of the projectiles turned out to be shoes.) I’m not sure I smiled again – I didn’t laugh anyway – either for the rest of One Week or for the whole of The General, a movie now regarded as not just a silent comedy classic but as an all-time great, pure and simple. (It was an expensive movie for its time: a commercial failure on its original release, The General stymied Keaton’s opportunities for making films of his choice for years afterwards, although he lived long enough to see its reputation rise.)
I felt bad about finding these films a drag. I can see that Buster Keaton is a great, acrobatic clown and a very good and natural actor. I much prefer him to Charlie Chaplin – Keaton doesn’t have Chaplin’s sometimes grating self-awareness. His big, lugubrious features help to make him quintessentially up against it but Keaton doesn’t push for iconic quality in the way that Chaplin does. After genuinely enjoying classic silent dramas in the last couple of years (Greed, Intolerance, Metropolis, Sunrise), I thought I should try at least this comedy too but it’s no good. I don’t find the silents funny, however broad or however sophisticated the humour may be. People around me at The General kept laughing and the sound was a prompt to pay attention and to think yes, that’s clever – or even brilliant. But I was miles away from laughing spontaneously. Watching The General reminded me of my godmother talking about how she couldn’t stand a film in which Laurel and Hardy try to get a piano upstairs. This must have been The Music Box (1932). It’s not a silent film and Laurel and Hardy do make me laugh – particularly when they’re talking – but I still know what she meant. The cumulative effect of the comedy, which reduces many people to helpless laughter, can also get on your nerves – and powerfully. Besides, I’m someone who cringes at exuberant violence or physical harm done even in Tom and Jerry. When human beings keep falling down or getting whacked or, as also happens in The General, a train carrying passengers crashes through a bridge and into a river, I can’t see it as unreal.
5 February 2014
