Buster Keaton became a vaudeville star when he was 4 years old and he died over 50 years ago, but “The Great Stone Face” will forever warrant the occasional documentary reminder of his Mount Rushmore status as a comedy and directing pioneer (note how I don’t qualify that with the words “silent film.”). Adding his voice to the chorus is filmmaker Peter Bogdanovich, the Oscar nominated director of 1971’s The Last Picture Show. In The Great Buster: A Celebration, he provides a loving, but rather standard account of Keaton’s life and career, enlivened only by his inspired choice of ending his film, not with Keaton’s death and legacy, but with a lengthy discussion of the 10 classics he directed between 1923-28, including The General. So while David Gill and Kevin Brownlow’s 1987 three-parter, Buster Keaton: A Hard Act to Follow remains more definitive, Bogdanovich’s efforts are still rewarding.
Bogdanovich provides a brisk rehashing of Keaton’s childhood years and early career. At the age of 4, Joseph Frank Keaton Junior becomes the physical comedy component of his parents’ vaudeville act, at one point wearing a handle on his back so his father could more easily toss him around the stage. With his pratfalling technique suitably honed, he follows up a stint serving in World War I by teaming with silent film superstar Fatty Arbuckle. This leads to the launching of his own production company that produced a long series of classic comedy two-reelers, including One Week, featuring Keaton and his on-screen wife trying to assemble a prefabricated house.
Bogdanovich’s narration occasionally gets too informal but, as director, he goes sound-full for an appreciable amount of time on many clips, allowing us to enjoy and rediscover Keaton’s gifts for creative, even artful, body-stretching stunts. He also doesn’t skimp on the talking heads, which vary in quality. Mel Brooks, Carl Reiner and Dick Van Dyke are legends and I’ll buy the thoughts of directors Quentin Tarantino and Werner Herzog by virtue of their status. But Bogdanovich errs by including past-their-prime celebs like French Stewart and Johnny Knoxville, whose claim of being influenced by Keaton is a vaguely-successful stab at justifying his presence here. And having Spider-Man: Homecoming director John Watts draw a parallel between Keaton’s expressionless eyes (which were anything but expressionless) and those of Spider-Man is extremely labored.
Bogdanovich gets the most mileage from recounting Keaton’s down moments, including ““the biggest mistake of my life”, his 1928 signing with MGM, a studio whose factory-like approach to comedy film production sucked the life out of Keaton’s films and Keaton himself. This leads to tragic bouts of alcoholism, which result in him being carted off to a sanitarium in a straight jacket. Cleaning himself up, he spends his later years as a commercial pitchman, which pays the bills and keeps him relevant. Bogdanovich and his team unearth plenty of these historically valuable spots which, taken on the whole, seem like a sad ending for a great man, until a 1965 Venice Film Festival tribute reminded him, and the world, of Keaton’s genius.
The Great Buster: A Celebration is neither the best nor the worst boiling down of Keaton’s career. Bogdanovich, who has delved into Hollywood biographical documentaries before, in 1971’s Directed by John Ford, is a walking, motion picture history book who deserves his shot at Keaton. Its primary value will be to allow old-timers to share a laugh once again and, if we’re lucky, introduce new audiences to one of the all-time greats.