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The Keaton Film Psyche Much of what Keaton became as an adult clown was shaped by childhood experiences. Although the Keaton family life was far from normal, the family did stay together - both on the stage and off. In the vaudeville act "The Three Keatons," Buster's father, Joe, held the boy's ankles and swept the stage with Buster's hair (he was billed as 'The Human Mop'), after which Joe hurled his son across the stage into the scenery, into the pit and once into the audience. Buster learned to take any kind of fall naturally and without injury. As an adult Keaton injured himself seriously only twice, once when he caught his foot at the top of the moving staircase during filming of 'The Electric House'. He broke his ankle, which halted shooting and instigated the making of "The Playhouse" while he recovered, supposedly this was a less strenuous film for Buster…. all things are relative! The second incident didn't come to light until years later, Buster broke his neck during the shooting of "Sherlock Jr." He found this out during a routine medical and concluded it must have happened while filming the water spout scene, the force of water released from the spout as he swung down on the rope threw him to the ground, he landed with his neck across the rail track. Although suffering headaches for days after, Buster thought nothing of it and continued filming with out getting it checked. He was also nearly drowned during the making of "Our Hospitality" when a guy line snapped and he was swept through white water rapids, but he was miraculously uninjured. Keaton's delight in intrinsic machines also began in childhood. At their summer home in Muskegon, Michigan Keaton and his pals rigged up an assortment of tricky devices. One was an outhouse who's walls fell out at the pull of a string leaving the unhappy occupant exposed to the wind and the world. He also developed his love of sports during these summer vacations - particularly a passion for baseball. As a star at MGM he organized the studio baseball team in two of his movies, the game was included. There was a questionnaire for anyone wishing to work for the Keaton studios, it consisted of two questions. 1. Can you act? 2. Can you play baseball? There was a 50% pass mark. Acrobatics, athletics and machines - the three essential ingredients of the great Keaton films. The Keaton pattern had been established when he was almost a babe in arms - impossible physical feats accomplished with miraculous success. In his films Keaton never performed a physical stunt with the aid of trickery and only once did he use a stuntman. That was to pole vault through the girl's window in "College". He acknowledged he did not know how to pole vault and his attempts would look unconvincing so he employed the current Olympic pole vault champion to do it for him. He also often doubled for other characters in his films doing their stunts, he consistently caught the perfect performance of a gag in a single take. Some gags were unrepeatable, for example the bridge with the train travelling across it collapsing into a river in "The General". The Keaton comic technique centered around his body as a whole. A single physical object that could launch itself into space the way no physical object ought to have the right or power to do. When Keaton takes a fall, his body doesn't just fall it does a myriad of things before hitting the ground with a perfect spatial awareness and total physical control. During chases he leaps in the air, tautens his body into a rigid plank, then tucks in his knees and falls over himself in mid-air, landing with hardly a break in his stride. Keaton did not take the world as seriously as Chaplin who was pointedly social, intellectual, concerned with hunger, humiliation, justice and freedom, Keaton's films seemed pointedly pointless. Keaton as an artist was never consciously trying to make a point (except in perhaps "Cops"), he merely tried to do something that he found funny and had fun creating. In his autobiography Keaton takes a friendly swipe at Chaplin's seriousness and intellectual pretensions. Keaton liked to think of his whole production team as a family, he played gags on the set, drank with the 'gang' at the studio or at home, played bridge and baseball. This surface cheeriness bursts through in his autobiography in his refusal to say anything nasty even about those who ruined him. He went out of his way to be nice and his niceness exists in his films - on the surface…. Beneath the surface there is more. The situations Keaton found funny, the way he interacted with objects and the world, the stories he selected, and the way he solved his problems successfully in those stories. All these imply an attitude towards human experience, whether Keaton was conscious of it or not. The tension between superficial and the depths is seen in the Keaton face. There is the assumption that, because he didn't smile, his face belayed no emotion at all. He became known as The Great Stone Face. In motion, when he runs or in the tranquil longshot where Keaton stands unmoving before bursting into action the face is still, concentrating, not a flicker of the surrounding dangers register, the mind is busy planning Buster's next move. This sometimes lures the unsuspecting into assuming he neither feels nor thinks. But in close ups you can see the thought process reflected in expressive, querying eyes sometimes emphasized with a small tilt of the head or a look of resigned acceptance as nature and inanimate objects gang up against him. The Keaton character is far from unfeeling and certainly not stupid, he uses a long-range strategy produced by thought. In "The General" for example, two little boys follow Buster where ever he goes, imitating him right down to his flat hat, he is off to visit Annabelle, his girlfriend. The boys walk behind him following him right into her house and sitting down with Annabelle and Buster in the parlor. Buster simply stands up, puts on his hat and walks to the door, the two boys do likewise. Buster opens the door for the boys and they walk out, he closes the door behind them, removes his hat and sits back down next to Annabelle. The objective has been accomplished. Buster has performed a sensible action in a pragmatic way without tipping the boys off with a single maneuver. This initial bit of strategy is just the prologue to a whole film in which similar pragmatic strategies drive the plot. Buster's subtle expression is another strategy. He does not kick like Chaplin but closes his eyes in disbelieving acceptance of his fate, underneath the gears of Buster's brain are constantly whirling in motion. What it consistently comes up with is inevitably right for that situation. If the circumstances don't make sense, well that is hardly Buster's fault. No other comedian had Keaton's subtlety Harold Lloyd's face shows all the mental activity that is taking place, and Harry Langdon's, all the activity that isn't taking place. It is Keaton's body as a whole that tells all. At rest the Keaton body is a coiled spring, perfectly poised, its tense wariness reveals its potential even when covered with clothes. Keaton wears costumes beautifully, some of his films required period costumes in which he looks very elegant. The latent energy radiates through his clothing becoming more obvious when he strips to his shorts in "College" or "Battling Butler". In those films Keaton's body is seen to be so well physically developed that it throws the whole premise of the plots (that Buster is weak and incompetent) into suspicion. Chaplin, in contrast still looks the baggy panted, puny weakling in "The Champion" and "City Lights". The Keaton body in motion is equally elegant, poised and commanding in its apparent ability to accomplish anything with effortless ease and smoothness, Keaton performing a stunt appears no more taxed than Keaton at rest. Lloyd makes every physical stunt look as difficult as possible, Keaton on the other hand makes the most impossible physical stunts look like nonchalant, everyday activities. Keaton, unlike other great comedians of his day played many different characters in his films from different eras and different social classes. He was not Buster transported through time or location he was the character with the Buster's ideals and motivation. All the Keaton figures have the same mind traits, composed, pragmatic, certain of the task to be accomplished, wildly imaginative in accomplishing it if that is the most sensible way to meet his ends, flexible with his interaction with new objects and determined to reach his goal. The interplay between face and body play in counterpoint leaving the spectator to decide what is going on behind that subtlest of masks. Keaton's minimalist facial expression is not a comic gimmick but a means to survive in a chaotic, dangerous world. He knows much more than he shows Psychological interaction and human motivation in the Keaton films are far more formulaic than Chaplin's. Motivation is more literary, the plot demands a particular type of action and Buster's motivation is clearly to accomplish it. Three of his driving forces are to win the girl, prove his mettle and to just plain stay alive. What the character's want and why are the basic stuff of a Chaplin film, for Keaton that is obvious, how they get what they want is the business at hand. For this premise the body in motion is more useful than the aggressive face. But unlike the movement in a Sennett style film, the Keaton body in motion is always directed in a specific manner towards a specific goal, there is no exaggerated miscellany of movement. Although the body is the center of the Keaton film world, many things revolve around that center. The Keaton body is a single object, indeed a small one, in space. The element surrounding Keaton is not primarily society, a social role, definition or assumption as in Chaplin films but nature itself, trees, forests, oceans, cyclones, fire or rivers. Keaton is not essentially the little guy set against malignant social forces like Chaplin, he is a little guy set fundamentally against elemental forces. Natural enemies, unlike Chaplin's opponents, are not necessarily malignant or oppressive. Nature is neuter, it is huge, violent and overpowering but it is also conquerable. Nature has no will, only man has will and Keaton films consistently reveal the triumph of human will and spirit over the forces of nature. The Keaton comedies are more epic than Chaplin because they show man in competition with traditional epic forces rather than with individual men and social attitudes. Keaton's camera work shows nature in all its powerful glory, where as Chaplin would show facial close ups and tight body shots regardless of the location and story. Buster works much farther away from his people, often he is seen as nothing but a human dot in the frame surveying the horizon with his hand on his brow. The Keaton film focuses on the interplay between man and nature, every feature film includes major scenes shot outdoors or on location. The outdoors gave Keaton the space to move and the vast panoramas to contrast with his moving body. Chaplin could generate a world of excitement in a single room, Keaton's films needed the world. Little man juxtaposed with big universe was the Keaton theme, cinematic principle, composition, and basis of story construction. It also influenced the kind of objects Keaton chose to play against. Huge inanimate objects and living opponents were merely a manifestation of the hugeness of nature. Keaton played against a dinosaur, a waterfall, an ocean liner, a landslide, a herd of cattle, a locomotive, the entire Union and Confederate armies, a steamboat, a Tong war, a gang of bootleggers, a storm at sea, a tribe of Indians, and the entire New York City police force! In most films Keaton started off playing against the enormous object and ended up playing with it. The object that dwarfed him in the film's beginning became an ally that he used to defeat others by the end. Keaton conquered immense mechanical objects in addition to natural forces, both parallel and inter related. Keaton's attitude towards all things mechanical influenced his cinematic technique and makes the union between a mind like Keaton's and a mechanical medium, such as the movies a magical combination. He favoured the long shot, not just from the perspective of demonstrating the enormity of nature and the smallness of man but also to provide a distant view of how a particular mechanism works. The far shot provides the means to see both cause and effect and all the relevant elements in a situation. Keaton's far shots are so memorable and revealing, not just a little man on the vast plains in "Go West", or a little man falling from a rope bridge in "The Paleface", or a little man leaping from a train car to train car in "The General", but the principle of showing in totality how it works. In both "The Haunted House" and "The High Sign" a far shot reveals all four rooms of a house which has had one wall cut away, one is able to see exactly how the chase progresses from one room to the other. In "The General" another far shot reveals the union train on a bridge between the Union and Confederate sides of the river. The bridge collapses, with the steaming, hissing train into the river drowning the Union's hopes. Probably the most complex long shots revealing a process is in "Sherlock Jr." The initial set up shot shows Keaton in a room surrounded by thugs, the front wall of the building has been removed as in "The High Sign", an open window to the left of screen has a paper hoop previously placed in it by Buster, the exterior of the house is also seen. In one continuous shot Buster dashes towards the window, leaps through it and the hoop somehow putting on the dress that was inside the hoop on his way through, rights himself on the ground outside and walks off impersonating a little old lady. Without the far shot no one would believe it was done without trick photography. Keaton did however insist on keeping his more outlandish stunts enclosed in dream sequences. He was very insistent on keeping reality believable in his films even when he made the unbelievable a reality. Keaton's interest in machines and mechanical processes also influenced the way he handled the camera. He was innately interested in its function and in finding new ways to use it. In "The Playhouse" Keaton and his technical advisor, Fred Gabouri, constructed a nine-piece mask to fit over the lens enabling nine Keatons to appear simultaneously on screen, he was an entire Minstrel Show. There are also two Keatons tap dancing in sync a pit full of musician Keatons and an audience made up of Keatons. Another phenomenal piece of Keaton technical mastery was in the opening to his dream sequence in "Sherlock Jr." It starts with Keaton falling asleep in the projection booth and 'climbing out' of himself. He walks towards the screen and climbs into it becoming part of the action. This section was filmed with live action on a stage, which, through lighting appears to be film. This is not too complex in itself but what happens next is an extraordinary piece of cinematography. Buster remains fixed in his spatial continuity as the scene around him continuously changes. Gabouri and Keaton took surveyors equipment out with them to measure accurately Buster's position in the frame and shot scenes in the desert, an ocean, snowdrift, garden with seat and in amongst a lair of lions. When edited together they give a smooth running nightmare of a dream sequence. Buster is in control, it is his surroundings that are not. The mechanical perfection of the stunt is extraordinary but behind the mechanical ability to work the gag is the sheer marvel of conceiving it. It is precisely the imagination that Keaton reveals in film after film. However the stunt would not have suited just any screen comic or character. Despite its apparent lack of humanness and personality it has a unique relation to the Keaton persona. The gag works not just because of the montage idea, but because a human being tries to make sense out of impossibly changing surroundings. Keaton goes about his business trying to make as much sense of it as he can, to deal with it in the most practical way he can devise. It is the conflict between senseless surroundings and sensible Keaton that makes it a uniquely Keaton gag. The first two reels of a Keaton feature length film set up some of his character traits that make it seem all the more impossible for him to accomplish his feats, (weakness and/or incompetence). Buster then, without erasing the inadequacy established in the opening reels, shows how he can still perform impossible, heroic acts. Therefore the Keaton feature starts slowly unlike Chaplin's which can start with an explosion of gags. The Keaton character then faces "the Keaton imperative", Buster must do something, and something the character would never normally do yet now must. His successful accomplishment of the Keaton imperative reveals how close the Keaton comic world is to melodrama and how influenced Buster was by the likes of D.W.Grifith. Just watch the non comic opening scenes of "Our Hospitality", it makes one wonder what successes would have lain ahead for Keaton if he had directed serious movies. Keaton liked to parody in his films too, taking then modern concepts and movies and lampooning them with subtleness. It added another dimension to the movies humour, as the audience would have been familiar with the original. Although probably subconsciously, Keaton did make statements about social issues in his films. "Our Hospitality" shows the artificiality of the code of honour, which demands that the Canfields must treat the guests in their home with courtesy and, on the other hand, they can murder him as soon as he steps out of the door. "The General" casts doubt on all the cliches of war and romanticism, of which the American Civil War is perhaps the best historical example. The film is anti-heroic, anti-romantic, anti-war and turns the romantic illusions into comic bits. A consistent Keaton motif is the ridiculing of all inhuman definitions of human worth. To define a man by his uniform, wallet, muscles or family name is not to define him as a person. What Buster accomplishes has little to do with social and literary cliches about what certain types of men can accomplish. The Keaton character consistently shows how much a little, unheroic, unromantic man can simply do by going about his business in his own way, exercising his ability and will. But beneath Buster's accomplishments there is not always the same optimism, the same success as there is in Harold Lloyd or Douglas Fairbanks films. In several of the shorts Buster fails to fulfill the Keaton imperative, for example "Cops", "Day Dreams", "One Week" and "The Boat" Keaton women were only a means to an end in his films, which was a conscious decision on Buster's part. "There were usually but three principles - the villain, myself and the girl, and she was never important….. The leading lady had to be fairly good looking and it helped some if she had a little acting ability. As far as I was concerned I didn't insist that she had a sense of humour. There was always the danger that such a girl would laugh at a gag in the middle of the scene, which meant ruining it and having to remake it." Buster's ultimate feeling for his leading ladies is shown in "Go West", he uses a cow as his ingenue. Keaton really accomplishes the heroic because he has to, "Because its there" and he gives us many laughs and beautifully shot movies to see in the process. |
