Buster’s Best
Musical accompaniment by Ben Model
Wednesday, March 17, 2010, 1:30 p.m.
Theater 3 (The Celeste Bartos Theater), mezzanine, The Lewis B. and Dorothy Cullman Education and Research Building
Includes the following films:
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The General
1926. USA. Directed by Buster Keaton, Clyde Bruckman. With Keaton, Marion Mack, Glen Cavender. Silent. Approx. 79 min.
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Steamboat Bill, Jr. (excerpt)
1928. USA. Directed by Charles F. Reisner (and Buster Keaton, uncredited). With Keaton, Ernest Torrence, Tom Lewis, Marion Byron. Silent. Approx. 10 min.
Joseph Francis “Buster” Keaton (1895–1966) was, with the possible exception of Charles Chaplin, the greatest comic artist the movies ever produced. What is intriguing is that some of his best work—as in this program—is not conventionally funny. It requires a certain adjustment of intellect to fully appreciate that Buster’s most harrowing escapades, his narrow escapes from machinery and nature, produced with the most exquisitely precise timing, are not merely breathtaking; they also capture our human frailty in ways that are intrinsically laughable. Who else could make a brilliant comedy about the bloodiest war in American history? Who else could turn a destructive cyclone into a rollicking cinematic farce?
In the Film exhibition An Auteurist History of Film
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