Buster
Keaton’s movies have a very modern feel to me – not that they’re like today’s
movies, but that they feel very modern for the times they were made in. Buster was a real filmmaker’s filmmaker, and
he employed innovative camera techniques to do stuff that a) must have been
incredible to his audiences, and b) add a lot of signature flavor to his
movies.
The
Playhouse
The
whole multiple-Busters dream sequence is of course astounding. For several minutes, there are variously two,
three, or nine Busters onscreen at
once, and they’re all him – no doubles. He recorded the same shots multiple times,
each time covering up a different segment of the film. The camera had to be hand-cranked at
precisely the same speed throughout, and when Buster dances with himself, he
used a metronome to make sure the steps would line up perfectly.
Sherlock,
Jr.
More
dream sequence stuff, different but still great. Buster steps into an onscreen
film-within-a-film and then starts jumbling said film into a bunch of random
shots from various locales. He moves
about a city street, a desert, a winter scene, an ocean, and a jungle, the
movements in each carrying him smoothly into the next shot. It’s seamless;
I can’t imagine how much work it took to ensure he started each shot in exactly
the same position as he ended the last one.
Sherlock,
Jr. revisited
Sherlock, Jr. is totally Buster’s
auteur movie – the whole thing shows off what an excellent filmmaker he
was. This second instance is, if I
recall correctly, a modification to an old vaudeville trick where it looks like
one person jumps through another’s
stomach. Buster’s vaudeville roots influenced
his work a lot, but he also took advantage of new technology, and here, he used
clever camera work to expand the gag and make it look more authentic.
Seven
Chances
I like
this little trick, a shot of Buster getting into his car in one location that melts
into another of him getting out at his destination. Though not as impressive as some of the scenes
here, it’s noteworthy because it’s so
small. He easily could’ve filmed himself
driving up to his destination instead of having it seemingly materialize around
him, but he did it just cuz. That’s the
kind of filmmaker he was; why do something ordinary when he could dream up
something different?
The
Cameraman
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