Keaton and Snow* Downloaded from http://direct.mit.edu/octo/article-pdf/doi/10.1162/016228705774889592/1751235/016228705774889592.pdf by guest on 28 September 2021 ERIK BULLOT I On Buster Keaton’s first appearance in cinema, in Roscoe Arbuckle’s film The Butcher Boy (1917), filmgoers were struck by his impeccable reserve. When slapped in the face with a bag of flour or grappling with gooey molasses fallen into his hat, there was no struggle that disturbed the precision of his gestures. Coming out of vaudeville, Keaton’s first stage act was with his father, who used him as a missile, shooting him across the stage like a bullet. He perfected his restraint by developing an acting technique that was simultaneously dramatic, formal, and elastic; it had a geometric character that continues to fascinate us today. The burlesque effect of Keaton’s work depends less upon hazards encountered than upon the way in which a course of action or a clever unfolding of coordinates of space requires a suspen- sion of logic. The subject does not disappear as a result, but gets caught in the web of the physical realm, where twists and turns multiply according to the laws of a sur- prising general ballistics. Keaton’s wit is geometric by nature, as was his passion both in life and in film for tinkering and building. In his memoirs he has told of build- ing a chicken coop and a miniature train that brings drinks and appetizers to guests around the pool. He was fond of organizing areas of space, of working with the switches on train tracks, of building houses, and of driving cars. And it was by patiently and rigorously deconstructing space that Keaton’s genius attained its bal- ance. In his article “Le cinéma, art de l’espace,” Éric Rohmer has already noted that a “spatial obsession” seemed to guide his performance.1 Here was a filmmaker able to draw the maximum of burlesque emotion from the deployment of spatial rules in a logical and distorted manner. How did this clever dismantling take place? One must first consider the distorted relationship between Keaton’s charac- ter and space. Keaton is disoriented, poorly lateralized, the victim of a sort of motor dyslexia; he mixes up right and left, forward and back, high and low, depth and length. His confusion can involve systematic inversion. When the doctor in * This essay was originally published as “De Buster Keaton à Michael Snow” in Art Press 24 (2003), pp. 88–94. It was translated by Molly Stevens. 1. Éric Rohmer, “Le cinéma, art de l’espace,” La Revue du cinéma 14 ( June 1948). OCTOBER 114, Fall 2005, pp. 17–28. © 2005 October Magazine, Ltd. and Massachusetts Institute of Technology. 18 OCTOBER Downloaded from http://direct.mit.edu/octo/article-pdf/doi/10.1162/016228705774889592/1751235/016228705774889592.pdf by guest on 28 September 2021 The Cameraman (1928) strikes his knee with a hammer, his other knee reacts. Turning his back to the scene is also a determining principle: events always happen behind his back and unbeknownst to him. When one becomes aware of this formal rule, exam- ples pop up everywhere. Steamboat Bill Jr. (1928), for instance, is a film that is entirely structured around the principle of two symmetrical circles turning in opposite direc- tions. It is a guiding factor not only at the dramatic level (the bitter rivalry between the respective owners of the two boats, between one’s son and the other’s daughter), but also at the performance level (for example, two characters seek and avoid each other, turning away from each other at the same time; Keaton and his father at the station, Keaton and his fiancée at the barber shop or in front of the prison). We can understand the sheer panic created by the arrival of the hurricane in the film, for this scene will definitively cancel out the spatial paradox by resolving the opposites through catastrophe. It’s when the prison that confines Keaton’s father is destroyed, and when his enemy’s ship is demolished (the two circles open) that reconciliation is possible. In a staggering confrontation, the enemies shake hands and the two unruly children exchange a kiss while being tenderly watched over by their fathers. The two pairs, who have crossed their partners to reach one another, now look out in the same direction. Other formal principles, similar to a chiasmus, can also be detected in Keaton’s work. The back-and-forth theme in The General (1926) has often been dis- cussed, both in terms of the plot (the train crossing enemy lines before returning to its starting point) and in terms of the gag (the cannon that dangerously changes direction before taking correct aim). But a masterpiece like The Neighbors (1920) is based instead on the mirror principle: two symmetrical facades, two family rivals, a Keaton on the set of The Cameraman. 1928. Keaton and Snow 19 fence that is a dividing line, scaffolding and a lever system to go from one world to the other. During a chase, Keaton is able to escape a policeman because of his half- white, half-black makeup. He is wearing on his stunned and determined face the formal principle of the plot, thereby exemplifying the geometric drive in his work. Downloaded from http://direct.mit.edu/octo/article-pdf/doi/10.1162/016228705774889592/1751235/016228705774889592.pdf by guest on 28 September 2021 The film is the systematic proliferation of a formal rule that results from the hero’s inability to first gain control of the laws of space. However, the fact is that Keaton’s character usually goes from obvious incompe- tence to extreme capability. For example, in Steamboat Bill Jr., he first brilliantly demonstrates his inability to maneuver the ship or exert the least physical effort. He then overcomes all obstacles and destroys a boat, dives into the water, and saves his loved ones—and all this while managing a complex tangle of ropes. His performance shows that he can anticipate what will happen and face it with an athletic courage that is nothing less than astounding. How does this transformation occur? It some- times results unexpectedly from a sudden amazing jump that’s almost graceful (this is the case especially in College [1926] and Battling Butler [1926], in which Keaton, the puny, awkward hero, ends up accomplishing—after numerous, repeated failures— unprecedented athletic feats out of the pure passion of love; and yet the arbitrary nature of this sudden metamorphosis is maintained). But most often the transition from incompetence to tremendous ability occurs through a patient study of space; it Keaton in Battling Butler. 1926. Keaton in The General. 1926. 20 OCTOBER Downloaded from http://direct.mit.edu/octo/article-pdf/doi/10.1162/016228705774889592/1751235/016228705774889592.pdf by guest on 28 September 2021 Keaton in College. 1926. is learned by feel, step by step, as if he were relying on knowledge of the body itself. Although he has just been part of a chaotic circumstance, subject to all kinds of fluc- tuations, threatened by danger and desire, often in combination, he becomes the pivot, the rudder in the face of a group of forces. He consequently can save his fiancée from peril and vanquish an evil rival. Urgency, necessity, and the virtues of pragmatism force him to observe, calculate, and predict. It seems that his initial clumsiness resulted only from false perception, that vision predominated over under- standing. The hero moves about in a way that is indeed at variance with what he actually sees. Therefore, the way bodies in general stumble about is due to telescop- ing, to distance being misjudged, and to the sudden appearance of obstacles. The topological aspect is defined by closeness, orderliness, and envelopment, and it is characteristic of his first shorts because they play on the effect of contiguity and interface. In The High Sign (1920), the newspaper he wants to read continues to unfold to the point that it covers him like a sheet, thus foreshadowing the way homes take to the air in his feature films. Then the Euclidean aspect, marked by the differ- entiation between vision and understanding, takes over, leading to an effect of reversibility. Jean Piaget’s terminology can serve as a template; it is as if Keaton’s char- acter were going through the stages of child development, the inventor of a “spontaneous geometry” in cinema. It is time that gives depth to the space by offer- ing the possibility of a door sliding, a wall pivoting, a train derailing, a house collapsing. This progression from the topological to the Euclidean is certainly embodied in the character of the projectionist in Sherlock Junior (1924). We note that for Keaton this progression rests on the principle of double negation. Because he is subject to the rebellious character of space, he anticipates the reversal of things while going back over them. Jean-Patrick Lebel has already offered an in-depth analysis of this double reversal, citing it as the dialectical structure of the gag.2 It is a principle that underlies both the logic of the gag and the dramatic construction of the whole film. It is because of the double reversal that the hero finds a solution to his poor 2. Jean-Patrick Lebel, Buster Keaton (Paris: Éditions Universitaires, 1964), pp. 110–51. See also Jean-Pierre Coursodon, Buster Keaton (Paris: Atlas/Lerminier, 1986). Keaton and Snow 21 Downloaded from http://direct.mit.edu/octo/article-pdf/doi/10.1162/016228705774889592/1751235/016228705774889592.pdf by guest on 28 September 2021 Keaton in Steamboat Bill Jr.