Another Buster Keaton Double Feature tonight at CSUN. The first movie we saw was "Battling Butler" (1926). Buster plays another spoiled rich kid (ala "The Saphead") whose parents send him on a camping trip up in the mountains, in order to "make a man out of him". He brings along his valet and a tent with all the trappings of home, including a bathtub and a bearskin rug, so he's not exactly roughing it. Buster isn't cut out for hunting and fishing, or camping, but while in the mountains he meets a nice girl whom he wants to marry (a oft-used theme in his movies). The problem is, her brother and her Dad are both very large and macho Mountain Men, and they don't want the daughter to marry a wimp like Buster. Enter the valet, who seizes an opportunity. There is a boxer in the news who is gaining fame, and he is named Alfred Butler, which just so happens to be Buster's name. The valet has in hand a newspaper he brought along for the trip, in which an advertisement is displayed for "Battling" Butler's upcoming fight. The valet shows the ad to the mountain girl's father. "You see that? That's him (meaning Buster) - he's a boxer and he's got a fight with the champ"! The valet shows a business card with Buster's name on it - "Alfred Butler" - to "prove" that he is indeed the boxer named in the newspaper ad. Seeing that he's not a wimp after all, the girl's gigantic father agrees to let his daughter marry Buster.......who must now go along with the ruse and pretend to be a championship caliber boxer in order to get his girl.
To say that hijinx play out from this point on is to state the obvious. There is quite a bit of physical comedy in "Battling Butler", but no major league stunts or setups ala "The Navigator" or "Go West". It's almost a dramatic movie in a sense, and the climactic scene features a boxing showdown match between Buster and the real Battling Butler, which was a realistic looking punchout, and - though still comedic - was apparently an inspiration for some of the fight scenes in "Raging Bull".
The second movie, even more dramatic than "Battling Butler", was Buster Keaton's most famous movie : "The General", also from 1926. The setting is the Civil War. Buster plays a locomotive engineer who rushes out to enlist in the Confederate Army at the behest of his Southern Belle girlfriend. All the men in her family have enlisted and she feels Buster should too. In Keaton's movies, the plot usually centers around Buster and his girl, and so in "The General", he tries to enlist but is turned down, as the army officials value him more as an engineer than a soldier. Meanwhile, his girl has been kidnapped by Union Army spies, who plan to steal his train in order to sabotage Confederate supply lines. His train is indeed stolen, with his girlfriend on board.........and from there.......
Hijinx ensue. As if you couldn't have guessed.
But the thing is - just like with "Battling Butler" except to a greater degree - is that "The General" has a seriousness to it. Professor Tim called it a "dignity". Because the subject was the Civil War, and because it is essentially a true story about an event in the Civil War, there is a gravity beneath all the comedic action. The comedy in fact is very slight, and relies mostly on Buster's efforts to reclaim his train, and his woman. All of it takes place on two different trains crossing through pine-forested mountains (filmed in Oregon), and the action is as much about the trains and the armies as it is about Buster Keaton. "The General" is the most epic of the films we've seen so far, and the most like a truly dramatic film, in this case a historical film about the Civil War. There is comedy to be sure, but it is lightly sprinkled into the railroad action of the competing trains. Buster will of course emerge to be The Hero, but in a serious way this time, by doing his duty. "The General" is an excellent film that many consider to be Keaton's greatest work. It is markedly different from the "human cartoon" insanity and zaniness of the movies I've reported on in recent weeks, but that only goes to reinforce Buster Keaton's creative talent and range. He could do it all, including making a Serious Farce about the Civil War.
My goodness.
Grimsley exited the Armer Theater looking frustrated and altogether unhappy. He did not walk back with me toward Rathburn Avenue, where I park in the Old Neighborhood to go to the Thursday Night Cinematheque screenings. It looked to me, just at a glance, as if he did not like tonight's films, or even worse, that it had been an ordeal for him to sit through.
I think he likes the Buster slapstick, the cartoon Buster, and this double feature shocked him, and not in a good way. It's like a band who puts out some great albums, but then loses fans because they don't wanna keep repeating themselves.
But some fans will stick with a band that is not afraid to try something different. Sometimes, those are the best bands of all, the ones who expand upon their creative impulses.
That's Buster Keaton, once again throwing the audience a curveball, showing even more of what he can do. I loved it myself. :)
That was all the news for today. SB, I hope you had a good day too. :):)
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