CRITERION | Starring Buster Keaton — Criterion Channel Teaser @criterioncollection | Uploaded March 2023 | Updated October 2024, 1 hour ago.
Now playing on the Criterion Channel! criterionchannel.com/starring-buster-keaton
Arguably the greatest comic genius of the silent era, Buster Keaton turned the adage “less is more” into slapstick gold, using his perpetually passive, poker-faced visage to wring laughs from the most absurd situations. A child of vaudeville, he transferred the knockabout style of physical comedy he honed on the stage to the nascent medium of cinema in a string of increasingly brilliant two-reel shorts, distinguishing himself both in front of and behind the camera with his audacious, often genuinely dangerous set pieces and innate understanding of the possibilities of cinema. With features like THE GENERAL and STEAMBOAT BILL, Jr., Keaton took silent comedy to new heights of astonishing ambition—all the while remaining, thanks to that immovable countenance, touchingly human.
Now playing on the Criterion Channel! criterionchannel.com/starring-buster-keaton
Arguably the greatest comic genius of the silent era, Buster Keaton turned the adage “less is more” into slapstick gold, using his perpetually passive, poker-faced visage to wring laughs from the most absurd situations. A child of vaudeville, he transferred the knockabout style of physical comedy he honed on the stage to the nascent medium of cinema in a string of increasingly brilliant two-reel shorts, distinguishing himself both in front of and behind the camera with his audacious, often genuinely dangerous set pieces and innate understanding of the possibilities of cinema. With features like THE GENERAL and STEAMBOAT BILL, Jr., Keaton took silent comedy to new heights of astonishing ambition—all the while remaining, thanks to that immovable countenance, touchingly human.
