Charlie Chaplin, Harold Lloyd and Buster Keaton are the actors inevitably cited whenever silent movie comedy is discussed. Of the three, Lloyd was the most popular then and the least regarded now—he embodied the can-do spirit of an ambitious office clerk determined to climb the ladder of success. Chaplin’s Little Tramp, imbued with pathos and social commentary, is instantly recognized and beloved yet very much a creature of his time. But with his stone face set against the winds of absurdity, Keaton and his ironic detachment speaks more clearly to us today.
That’s the thesis of Wes D. Gehring’s book Buster Keaton in His Own Time. The subtitle, What the Responses of 1920s Critics Reveal, explains the approach. A film professor at Ball State University, Gehring poured over reviews and essays from the era’s newspapers and movie magazines, hoping that the way Keaton was understood a century ago might cast some light on ways to think about him in the 21st century.
The vintage criticism also provides a framework for Gehring’s own thoughts, given that 1920s critics recognized that Keaton differed significantly from his rivals. As Gehring explains, Keaton often displayed a “withering view of humanity.” The comic fatalism of his films such as The General runs contrary to Lloyd’s cockeyed optimism. According to Gehring, Chaplin embraced “a similar perspective” to Keaton yet his “tidy approach suggests art is where one gets it right, because life is ultimately an unfinished rough cut. In contrast, Keaton’s work wants to constantly remind you of life’s no-exit (except death) chaos.”
Support is offered for Keaton’s intuition of Existentialism by Samuel Beckett, who cast the comic in his one movie, a short silent called Film (1965).
Advertisement: Shop for this title on Amazon:
