Read Ebook {PDF EPUB} The Complete Films of Buster Keaton by Jim Kline The Complete Films of Buster Keaton by Jim Kline. The Three Ages (1923) Directed by Buster Keaton and Eddie Cline. Buster Keaton, Margaret Leahy, Wallace Beery (56 min.) The Three Ages is one of the first old movies I ever saw. It stars Buster Keaton and takes place in three different time periods, the Stone Age, the Roman Age and the Modern (1920s) Age. The girl who stars alongside with Buster is an English girl who could not act to save her life. She won a beauty contest and her prize was to be in a movie. I love this movie. In all of the different ages the same basic thing is going on in different times. In all three ages Buster is challenged by the bad guy (Wallace Beery) to a fight for the girl. In the Stone Age, they clomp each other on the head with clubs. In the Roman Age he is challenged to a chariot race, but the day of the race there is a blizzard (in Rome?). So, he puts sled runners on his chariot and fastens on dogs instead of horses. How ingenious! In the Modern Age, the battle is football. In all of these times you have to imagine little Buster up against BIG, BIG Wallace. it is just funny. One of my favorite parts is in the climax of the Modern Age. Buster is running from the cops (like in so many other movies). He goes through obstacles and comes to a point where he is supposed to jump from the top of one building to the next, so he sets up a diving board on the roof, jumps--and misses! He falls down the side of the building. Now, he was supposed to make that jump, but since it was such a great fall they used it in the movie. My favorite part in the whole movie is in the Roman Age. Poor Buster gets trapped in a lion's den. Now, he remembers that once long ago, someone did something to a lion's paws and they became friends. Of course, he is thinking of the time when a man took a thorn out of a lion's paw. But, Buster cannot remember the specifics, so he gives the lion a manicure instead! If that is not funny, I don't know what is! So, see this movie even if it is black and white, which I love, and silent, which I also love. notes by moviediva: This was Keaton's first independent feature film.(He'd acted in The Saphead in 1920, but contributed little creatively, so it's not really a "Keaton" film.) He was the last of the three great comedians (along with Chaplin and Lloyd) to abandon shorts for features. He and his team of gag writers came up with the idea of a satire of D.W. Griffith's monumental Intolerance, with its parallel stories of injustice in four historic epochs . Keaton reasoned this episodic structure permitted the film to be edited into three shorts if the feature length version really didn't work. But, of course, it did, and Keaton went on to make his collection of cinematic masterpieces. There were significant changes as Keaton moved into features. First, he bypassed his vaudeville friend Joe Roberts, who had played the heavy in nearly all his short films, in favor of the more famous Wallace Beery. There would be a bigger budget allowing the construction of more elaborate sets, under the eye of his superb technical director Fred Gabourie. In the early days, Buster often constructed sets and props himself, but after an accident on the set of The Electric House , he relied on Gabourie's expertise. The chariot race that concludes the Roman section took place on the site of the recently closed Hollywood Exposition. The lower tiers of the Colosseum were constructed, and the upper levels were hanging miniatures. Keaton loved baseball and often had baseball gags in his pictures. This one has a doozy, one that required 52 takes to get just right. Note too, that Buster always gets wet in his movies; his crew considered it to be good luck if the boss got drenched. Margaret Leahy's beauty contest prize was a role in Norma Talmadge's movie, Within the Law . Hopelessly incompetent as an actress, she was "demoted" to star in The Three Ages . Norma was Keaton's sister-in-law, and her husband Joe Schenck was his producer. Buster couldn't believe he had to take Leahy on, but Schenck announced "Comic leading ladies don't have to act," and he was stuck with her. "The scenes we had to throw in the trash can! Easy scenes!" Keaton recalled later. Fortunately, like many of his leading ladies, she was just another prop in The Three Ages . (Sources include: The Complete Films of Buster Keaton by Jim Kline and Cut to the Chase by Marion Meade. The photo of Buster and Amazon Blanche Payson, and in the lion's den are from The Movies by Richard Griffith. Buster kissing Margaret Leahy is from Robert Benayoun's The Look of Buster Keaton . Note how the white makeup on their faces contrasts with Keaton's unmade-up hands. Review by Captain Quint Pro. Steamboat Bill, Jr. 1928 ★★★★★ Captain Quint’s review published on Letterboxd: Steamboat Bill Jr. ended up Buster's least profitable feature, a fact that, ironically, has more to do with the film's financially unstable distributor, United Artists, than its escalating budget. Despite its initially disastrous draw, Steamboat Bill Jr. is easily one of Buster's best and most spectacularly inventive films. It also contains some of his most ingeniously subtle, yet intricately timed pantomime sequences. (as when) Buster and Marion Bryan act out a series of near-miss encounters in the middle of town with the two actors conveying an amazing range of emotions with simple facial glances and expressive body language. Beautifully filmed, wonderfully acted by all, and containing the most exciting climax of any of his films, Steamboat Bill Jr. comes close to matching the all-around perfection Buster achieved with his masterpiece, The General. - Jim Kline, "The Complete Films of Buster Keaton" Rival riverboat captain’s feud while their children fall for each other. This movie has a touch of Harold Lloyd style story development - the opening scenes are not riddled with big gags, but they are funny and establish character much the way Lloyd did with “The Freshman” (The scene where Bill Sr. catches Bill Jr. dancing, singing, and playing the ukulele to try and calm a crying infant, is hilarious and sets up the rocky the relationship between father and son). Unfortunately, the film bombed at the box office. It was expensive to make and lost money. Considering the quality of the movies (College=okay, The General/Steamboat Bill Jr=both genius) it’s astonishing to think that this was his 3rd failure in a row, which leads to his contract being sold to MGM, which spells the beginning of the end for great comic. The expense of the picture wasn’t entirely Keaton’s fault, he'd originally planned a flood as the film's climax instead of a cyclone, but was talked out of it and was told that it would be insensitive to people who lost loved ones in recent floods. Buster countered with an argument he recounts in his autobiography, "My Wonderful World of Slapstick" – “I pointed out that one of Chaplin's greatest successes was 'Shoulder Arms,' a picture making fun of the war and everything connected with it. 'Chaplin made that movie in 1919, the year after the World War ended,' I said. 'Nobody objected to it. And that includes the gold-star mothers who lost their sons in the war.'" Buster lost this argument and a whole new set was built. I think most of us are glad he didn't win that debate. Though costly and ultimately ruinous to his career, the ending is one of filmdom's most spectacular. It’s rife with big gags, amazing effects but also some truly nail-biting suspense and drama that furthers the story and characters. While some viewers struggle with the opening act (they find it dry). I side with those like Jim Kline, quoted above, who disagree. There are laughs, and setting the table this way makes the big payoff at the end even more poignant and hilarious. and awe-inspiring. I like character and story in my comedies, to go along with the gags - that, and the small gestures and such that Keaton throws in there adds to the fun, and facilitates rewatchablilty (this is my 4th viewing). IMHO this is one of the great comedies of the silent era, and beyond. Notes: This was the film debut of petite, and bubbly Marion “Peanuts” Byron, who played the love interest. Byron did pretty well during the talkies, but she is also noted for a 3 film, silent era teaming with Anita Garvin, which was Hal Roach's first attempt at creating a female Laurel and Hardy, type series (he'd find greater success with Pitt & Todd, and later Todd & Kelly) Some favorite scenes: The “Trying on hats” sequence. At one point they put Buster’s traditional pork pie hat on him, but his character looks horrified by it and quickly tosses it aside. LMAO at that. The confrontation on the boats with son and daughter caught in between quarreling fathers. (reminds me of bits from Abbott & Costello, where Bud would goad Lou into defying an order) The title card… “I’ll wait around until he’s famished” and the rest of the bread scenes.