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Date: 4/2/2019
What I’m watching: a documentary on one my cinematic heroes and a solid re-telling of the Bonnie and Clyde story.
On Blu-Ray: The Great Buster
When I was teaching film at Western New England University, I soon realized the best way to introduce students to silent films was to show then a comedy and for me that meant a Buster Keaton film.
As a kid, I saw Keaton on television – he had a whole second career making guest shots and commercials – and I knew that he was called “The Great Stone Face” because of his tradition of never smiling on camera. It wasn’t until college that I actually was able to see some of his film work and I was floored by them.
Keaton, who had a long career in film and later on television, has been described as one of the three major silent film comics – the others being Charles Chaplin and Harold Lloyd. For me he is the best in this group, a man whose films seem fresh and modern even to this day.
Director and writer Peter Bogdanovich’s new documentary does a very good job in introducing Keaton in a way that I hope younger audiences who see the film will want to actually watch a Keaton feature.
Bogdanovich tells Keaton’s story from the time he was a vaudeville star at age four to the chance meeting with silent film comic Fatty Arbuckle, who invited him to come by his studio to see how movies are made. Keaton turned down a starring stage role at the time to become Arbuckle’s co-star and to learn the film industry.
Keaton soon inherited Arbuckle’s studio when he started making features and quickly became a star. In turn Keaton became a star.
Bogdanovich notes that Keaton and his staff were essentially left alone by his producer and were able to make their films in a non-regimented way. They worked on a movie until they got it right.
This independence brought forth glorious films such as “Sherlock Jr.,” “Steamboat Bill Jr.” and “The General,” among others in the 1920s.
Keaton’s style featured stories of underdogs who triumphed over adversity marked by remarkable stunts and intricate slapstick. He prided himself on not relying on title cards to propel the story forward as some silent filmmakers did.
With the coming of sound, though, Keaton followed the advice of his producer and made a deal with MGM. He quickly lost his independence. The result was personal and professional disaster. Keaton no longer had his crew, no longer was in charge of his own films, became an alcoholic and his marriage crumbled.
Yet Keaton’s story is one ultimately of triumph as Bogdanovich shows. Although it would take years, Keaton became sober, started working again in film and lived long enough to see his films find a new generation who revered them.
Bogdanovich’s film is a solid work, although a better Keaton documentary, “Buster Keaton: A Hard Act to Follow,” goes into much greater detail.
There is one curious omission in Bogdanovich’s film. Keaton’s films reached new audiences in the 1960s largely due to a gentleman named Raymond Rohauer, who was both a film collector and distributor. After Rohauer met Keaton, he was able to work preserving Keaton’s prints of his films and eventually securing rights to them.
Rohauer eventually developed a bad reputation in the film industry as someone who assumed rights to films of which he did not have any legal ownership. Perhaps, that’s why Bogdanovich did not mention him in any way.
Regardless of this omission, this is a wonderful introduction to the work of a true cinematic genius.
On Netflix: The Highwaymen
This new movie starring Kevin Costner and Woody Harrelson takes an interesting approach to the story of 1930s gangsters Bonnie and Clyde: it concentrates on the former Texas Ranger who successfully hunted them down and ended their crime and murder spree, rather than the criminals.
In fact, the outlaw pair is barely seen in this film.
Costner plays legendary Texas Ranger Frank Hamer who is called out of an imposed retirement – by 1934 the then governor of Texas had disbanded the law enforcement unit – to try to stop the gangsters.
He is accompanied by another former Ranger, Maney Gault (Harrelson).
The film is a beautifully realized period piece about two men who supposedly represent values of law enforcement that are now considered antiquated. It is a procedural crime film that is also a human drama speaking of the personal impact being in the Rangers had on a person. Hamer actually was shot 17 times and is credited for killing more 50 people in the line of duty.
While I’m sure there was plenty of dramatic license taken with the dialogue scenes between Hamer and Gault, director John Lee Hancock and writer John Fusco do stick to a lot of the facts, especially in the final sequence during which the two criminals are stopped and killed.
Hancock directed “The Founder,” the story of Ray Kroc and the development of the McDonald’s fast food empire – a favorite film of mine from the past few years.
I liked the Western feel to the film and to the understated performances of Costner and Harrelson. I also enjoyed the fact the Bonnie and Clyde story was flipped in this way to show the impact their notoriety had on the people of the time.
It’s well worth watching.