DVDs:

	Buster Keaton Collection (The Cameraman / Spite Marriage / Free & Easy) Richard Alexander, Sidney Bracey Warner Home Video, 2004 average customer review:based on 27 reviews view larger image
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highly recommended

Considered by many cinema's greatest silent clown, Buster Keaton was a consummate practitioner of physical comedy whose career began in vaudeville at the age of three. Wearing trademark slapshoes and big baggy pants identical to his father's, most gags involved pratfalls with his father kicking him across the stage or tossing him into the air. Within a few years of his debut, Keaton was scoring rave reviews which applauded the physical comedy that would come to be so much a part of his film fame. "The dexterity or expertness with which Joe Keaton handles 'Buster' is almost beyond belief of studied 'business.' The boy accomplishes everything attempted naturally, taking a dive into the backdrop that almost any comedy acrobat of more mature years could watch with profit" (Variety, March 12, 1910).

Details of The Buster Keaton Collection Films

The Cameraman - After becoming infatuated with a pretty office worker, Keaton sets out to become a newsreel cameraman in order to be closer to his dream girl. Keaton's first film for MGM, made in 1928, is considered one of his funniest masterworks and offers up a feast of visual gags. The newly remastered DVD includes a new score by Arthur Barrow. Spite Marriage - In this 1929 silent laugh-filled classic, Keaton stars as Elmer, a man madly in love with stage star Trilbey Drew. When Trilbey's boyfriend gets engaged to another woman, she marries Elmer in a desperate attempt to get even. This was Keaton's final silent comedy, and is presented here with its original Vitaphone music score. Free and Easy - In Keaton's first talkie, he stars as an agent to beauty contest winner Elvira Plunkett. When Elvira decides to try her luck in Hollywood, Elmer goes along to help and the two soon find themselves falling in love. Chaos ensues when the couple must contend with Elvira's disapproving mother and a handsome movie star, who also has his sights set on the lovely Elvira. This 1930 classic is highlighted by guest appearances from a host of other MGM stars of the era including Robert Montgomery and Lionel Barrymore.

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To be a Keaton fan is to have your heart broken regularly...

...someone somewhere once wrote. This DVD set is an object lesson as to how that heartbreak occurred. It shows how Keaton declined in status from independent comic filmmaker to sad clown to someone whom the film industry considered an unemployable alcoholic in only a five year span, 1928 - 1933. Before you view this you should view Buster's silent features and shorts from the 1920s so that you get a full appreciation of the death of the career of a comic heavyweight.

The Cameraman (1928), Buster's first film at MGM, is as good as any feature he did as an independent with maybe the exception of The General. This film largely left his original filmmaking team intact. Spite Marriage (1929), Buster's final silent film, is still a very good one, but it just seems to lack that complete Keaton signature present in his earlier features. A prime example of this is when Keaton's character tries to cheer up his new bride with a stuffed doll of a dog that has a tear in its eye. Buster never went for the sentimental approach when he had a completely free hand. At this point MGM had largely dismantled Keaton's filmmaking team and replaced them with their own people. Plus, they were interfering more with what Buster wanted to do with the story. The lesson MGM took away from the success of The Cameraman was not that Buster's approach and comic instincts were good, it was that their assembly line approach worked.

The final blow is in 1930's "Free and Easy", Buster's third feature for MGM and his first talking picture. Here Buster has no creative control and has been reduced to a reciter of lines and performer of stunts while Robert Montgomery inexplicably crowds Keaton out of the limelight. To be fair, many very early talkie efforts suffer from the same set of problems as this one - bad dialogue, thin if not inane plots, musical numbers inserted where they really don't belong - overall the new talking picture technology being in the driver's seat rather than the art of film making. What makes this film so sad is that one of the most creative guys on the MGM lot has been reduced to "who's on first" type verbal gags that don't suit him, and in the closing number is a puppet swinging through the air in a clown's outfit with his puppet strings being controlled by figures off stage - a fitting visual metaphor for what is to come in Keaton's future MGM films.

The 40 minute documentary that wraps up the set - "So Funny It Hurt: Buster Keaton and MGM" ties everything together and even has footage of Keaton himself talking about his decline at MGM. He was basically bewildered at how such bad films as his early talkies were such a success at the box office while his own silent works that he thought were so good had not been nearly as successful. This loss of both his self-confidence and a creative outlet as well as the break-up of his first marriage led to his descent into alcoholism and ultimately his dismissal from MGM.

The odd thing about all of this is that Buster Keaton himself is probably the only person who didn't consider his treatment and string of bad luck a tragedy. From every source I've ever heard he always considered himself to be a very lucky man.

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Rating The Cameraman and Spite Marriage!!! Not Free and Easy.

The Cameraman and Spite Marriage are both excellent Keaton classics. Of the two The Cameraman is the superior but Spite Marriage on its own would rate as a five star film.

The Cameraman has everything you'd expect from a Keaton, great sight gags, inventive stunts and effects and a fun and exciting storyline. Warning: There are some segments where the monkey steals the show!

Keaton plays the inept cameraman perfectly. One of the funniest in the swimming pool was used again by Peter Sellers in A Shot in the Dark.

The Cameraman is a very funny film and definately one of Keaton's finest.

Spite Marriage is another great Keaton outing. Dorothy Sebastian the lead actress was also Keaton's girlfriend around the time the picture was made. She unfortuneately had a drinking problem and was nicknamed "Slam Bang" Sebastian because she would fall down when she had too much to drink which was often. One of the funniest scenes in the movie (possibly an inside joke?) takes place after she has had too much to drink and Keaton has to put her to bed. Wonderful stuff.

Free and Easy doesn't have much to offer. It's too bad this wasn't a lost film! One star for that one.

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Buster Keaton and the Lion

Making "the biggest mistake of my career" (in Buster Keaton's own words) by signing with MGM, Keaton left behind his independent filmmaking days for good. MGM dangled the bait before Buster: Better budgets and more distribution. What they failed to mention was that Buster would be there in the capacity of "performer only"; he traded his creative freedom to work at a more streamlined studio, becoming another "cog" in the giant MGM system "wheel".
TCM lovingly assembled this homage to a great comedic talent who was living the beginning of his end when both the movie system and talkies launched a slow, painful decline for the once-great silent star.
The best film on this package is easily "The Cameraman". While it is a more conventional story for Buster, it also contains some of the best comedy work he's ever done. Keaton's physical prowess is absolutely stunning as he races through a busy city street on foot, arms & legs pumping like mad (especially on the gag which he drops the phone, runs down the street, and faces his surprised object-of-affection just as she's hanging up the phone!). Highlights in the film include: Buster playing a solitary game of baseball inside an empty stadium; a hilarious dip in a public pool (complete with sharing a changing room with another man and losing his swimsuit in the water); and covering a Tong War in Chinatown (excellently staged with Keaton's trademark sight gags).
His final silent, "Spite Marriage", is even more conventional in theme and story (a jealous actress spites her flirtatious boyfriend by marrying a pants presser--guess who!--hence, the title). Although Keaton fought to get his own ideas on screen (and lost the battle most of the time), there is one thing interesting about this unique talent: No matter how slight the material, Keaton's sublime presence cannot be ignored. His antics during a Civil War stage drama and later, on a deserted boat, are quite hilarious.
And finally, his first talking picture, "Free and Easy", demonstrates how sadly mis-used Keaton was in the new medium. MGM chose projects that were completely ill-suited to Buster's talents. Here, Keaton plays what he calls his "Elmer" role (the first in many)---an imbecilic idiot part. Add to that Keaton's croaking voice, a contradiction which turns his character from a stoic hero into a fool. The best film moments, of course, come in the no-dialogue segments, which Keaton does his best silent bits; unfortunately, they are few and far between.
The DVD extras include a documentary called "So Funny It Hurts: Buster Keaton and MGM", hosted by actor James Karen, who knew Buster during his final years. "So Funny..." gives a lot of fascinating insight into the business relationship between Buster & MGM, complete with glimpses into his personal life, his career after being fired from MGM, and a 1964 interview with the man himself.
This DVD collection is a must for fans who are interested in Keaton's career as he transitioned through MGM and beyond.

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The Rise and Fall of Buster Keaton

Having not too long ago had the pleasure of seeing a set of Harold Lloyd's film, I felt it was time to expand my silent comedy horizons. The Buster Keaton Collection is my first real exposure to the stone-faced actor, a trio of films from his MGM years, which also were the period when talkies first replaced silent movies. As discussed in the commentaries and in the accompanying documentary, the MGM years were not kind to Keaton, whose free-wheeling form of film-making did not agree with the rigid studio format: because of this, this collection also documents the beginning of the end of Keaton's career.

The first disc in this two disc set has a pair of silent movies. The Cameraman has Keaton as a tintype photographer who falls for a girl working for a newsreel company. Determined to win her over, he gets a motion picture camera and goes in search of news, all the while wooing her. There's some wonderful physical comedy, but only a couple scenes used the old Keaton style. Ironically, MGM would use The Cameraman for years as a demonstration of how to do a comedy, though more of the success seems due to Keaton's creativity and MGM's strict rules on movie-making.

Even better than The Cameraman is Spite Marriage, Keaton's last silent film. In this movie, he plays a clothes cleaner hopelessly enamored with a stage actress. Borrowing clothes from his unknowing customers, he impersonates a wealthy man. Unfortunately, she is in love with a fellow actor, but when he starts cheating on her, out of spite, she marries Keaton. Though she quickly regrets her decision, a dejected Keaton will eventually get a second chance to win her over.

The third film, Free and Easy, is a letdown after the first two films. This is Keaton's first talkie, and though he does an adequate job, this movie suffers from a number of flaws. In particular, like most early talkies, the dialogue is rather stiff, and with the studios trying to fully utilize the new aspect of sound, the emphasis is more on dialogue than the physical humor that is Keaton's forte. There is some of this physical humor, but it is clearly diminished. The ending of this movie is also certain to disappoint most viewers, though I won't spoil things by saying how or why.

Although Keaton would continue to make commercially successful movies for a few years, his years of quality material had clearly passed him by, done in by the new medium of sound pictures and the policies of MGM (and if there is a villain in the reality behind these movies, it is clearly MGM).

Free and Easy may be three star fare, but the first two movies are just as clearly five-star material, and with the supplemental materials (including commentaries, a documentary and still pictures), this is easily a five star set. If you enjoy silent comedy, this is well worth picking up.

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Skip the "bonus" commentaries

WARNER'S BUSTER KEATON COLLECTION is as expected, of fine quality, and a welcome addition to the library of any fan of early 20th Century comedy. Buster's first 3 MGM features are here. Of these, the transfer of FREE AND EASY, his first "talkie," seems a bit dark. The others look quite good. Although given star billing on "Free..", Keaton clearly was already being reduced to "supporting player" status.

The only real flaw of this Buster triple feature is in the commentary tracks. Glenn Mitchell's thoughts during THE CAMERAMAN are particularly distracting, and occasionally inaccurate. His biggest faux pas occurs during the organ grinder scene. Mitchell's concern over the sailor-suited monkey's safety must have clouded his vision here. As Buster and the organ grinder fall to the sidewalk, Mitchell says (paraphrased) "I have examined this scene closely, and although it looks like they are falling on the monkey, it's clear they fall behind him." TOTALLY WRONG. If Mitchell had used his DVD player's "pause" function, he would have seen that the organ grinder fell IN FRONT and Keaton landed right on top of.... a stiffly posed DOLL. At times during THE CAMERAMAN, Mitchell talks about other movies and actors, and his arcane info adds little to one's viewing pleasure of the picture in progress.

The duo of film historians commenting on SPITE MARRIAGE fare even worse. When not giving amateurish readings of a prepared script, these two mutely struggle for something noteworthy to say. Neither rises to the occasion very often. Granted, criticism of DVD "extra" features may be going a bit far. On the other hand, would it not have been better to skip commentary tracks altogether than to issue those of such questionable worth?

As for Mr. Keaton-- he's simply the best! For your ultimate enjoyment though, watch these three films without the "expert" commentaries. And for a really great deal on a BK multi-pack, check out ST. CLAIR's BUSTER KEATON COLLECTION. This one contains 15 shorts and 5 feature films for under $10.

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reviews: page 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6

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