The National Film Theatre Buster Keaton Season
July - August 2000

Programme Introduction (July)

A personal confession : for me, Buster Keaton is quite simply the greatest film-maker in the history of cinema. His comic invention and timing are unparalleled. He was a supremely expressive actor; notwithstanding the refusal to smile, his beautiful face (most especially those watchful eyes) and wired, agile body registered subtle nuances of thought and feeling with utter clarity. He was a fabulous director, alert to the pictorial, dramatic and comic potential of camera movement, composition, cutting, costume and setting. He was an astute, insightful chronicler of American society, and he had a distinctively unsentimental yet profoundly humane vision of life's absurdities that makes his films seem remarkably modern. He was, in short, an artist of the very highest order.

Over the next two months we shall be presenting all of Keaton's major features and a number of his most memorable shorts. It is, admittedly, only five years since the NFT celebrated his centenary with a season assembled by the late John Gillet, but we feel no need whatsoever to apologise for providing another opportunity to catch this miraculous body of work, since the films get richer, and, indeed, funnier with each repeated viewing. There's absolutely nothing here that isn't extraordinary in one way or another, and many of the films - shorts included - fully justify use of the word 'masterpiece'. Watch, laugh and marvel.

Programme Introduction (August)

In this second part of our season devoted to the man whom many - and I am happy to include myself among them - consider to be the greatest film-maker ever, we can again bear witness to his unrivalled comic invention; to the depth and insight of his characterisation; to his facility and precision as a director and visual storyteller; and to his understated expressiveness as an actor. (Small wonder Louise Brookes calls his the most beautiful face in the movies.) We can also, in Sherlock Jr and The Three Ages, appreciate his fascination with cinema itself, with the way the medium can create worlds that reflect our own fantasies, fears and desires; it is hardly surprising that Luis Bunuel once famously professed his admiration. And we can see how absolutely anything - a boat (The Navigator), a cow (Go West), a drunken body (Spite Marriage) or an athletics field (College)- could provide fertile inspiration for an extraordinary array of gags, with Keaton seldom feeling the need to repeat himself.

There is, then, ample reason to continue celebrating this great artist's talent, but this month we are especially pleased to include a genuine rarity among the more familiar gems. In Roscoe 'Fatty' Arbuckle's short The Cook, recently restored by the Norwegian Film Archive, there is a very welcome opportunity to see Keaton already finessing his technique and inimitably understated style amidst the frantic pratfalls of his colleagues; even then, he clearly knew exactly what he was doing. Make no mistake: Keaton was without doubt one of the few film artists who without question merits the word 'genius'. Enjoy !

Geoff Andrew