Film (1965)

Next up on Buster Mondays is a few miscellaneous shorts, pieces that don’t fit in with Buster’s shorts with Fatty Arbuckle, his independent shorts, or the shorts he made for Educational and Columbia.  As per IMDb, Buster actually has a small handful of projects that fit into this category, but I’ve only been able to see a few of them – haven’t been able to get my hands on the rest.  If I find more, I can always circle back later to include them.

Film was written by Samuel Beckett, and that pretty much tells you everything you need to know.  Almost totally silent, the short follows Buster (literally follows, always shooting him from behind) as he struggles to get away from prying eyes.  He covers his face on the street, and in the privacy of his squalid little home, he’s still plagued by the fear of being watched:  he shies away from the windows and covers the mirror, he shuffles his pets out of sight, he tears up the picture on the wall that seems to be looking at him, and even the decorative holes cut out of the back of his chair appear to be eyes gawking at him.

Remember when I said The Awakening was one of the more unique entries in Buster’s filmography?  I had to say “one of” because I remembered that this short existed and knew it definitely claimed the top slot.  Even before getting into the “why Buster?” question, it’s just odd.  It’s very still, with lots of lingering extreme close-ups and recurring moments, and it’s absolutely quiet.  Not like a silent film, which removes the sound of the dialogue and the action and replaces it with music.  Not even like some of the longer wordless bit in the Educational and Columbia shorts, that feel a little static with no music to accompany Buster’s antics.  This is silent, not even background noise.  If Beckett thought, “Hey, I’m making a silent movie, I should get an old silent movie star to be in it!”, it’s not because this short in any way captures the feeling of watching a movie from that era.

So why Buster?  Other than the above supposition, the only reason I can think of is that they needed someone who could convey story convincingly through their body language alone.  Never mind the silence, or even the lack of intertitles – because “The Man” is shot almost entirely from behind, that means the actor can’t use his face to express anything (insert Great Stone Face joke if you wish, but even stone-faced, Buster was still quite expressive.)  So, maybe they needed a physical comedian who was very comfortable telling a story with his body in order to make the ideas come through while just showing his back and the back of his head, arms, and legs.  As for actual Busterish-ness, the only moment here that feels like Buster is a little bit where he’s trying to put his dog and cat out into the hallway, and every time he opens the door to send one out, the other scurries back in.  It doesn’t have the same feel as it would in one of Buster’s comedies, given the overall foreboding nature of the short and the sterile atmosphere created by the intense silence, but it is the one thing that seemed like something Buster would do.

Buster wasn’t shy about admitting he had no idea what the film was about, and far be it for me to pretend I understand Beckett.  A strange little curiosity, morose, mysterious, and pretentious.

Warnings

Nothing of note.