Peter Bogdanovich's Great Buster: A Celebration

Perhaps Peter Bogdanovich's talent lies more in the field of documentaries than narrative fiction film.  Bogdanovich's film about Buster Keaton is a worthy successor to his 1971 Director John Ford and celebrates Keaton's ten great feature films of the twenties while chronicling his forty-year decline afterwards, until he was re-discovered just before his death in 1966.  I saw most of Keaton's films when they were shown at the Elgin Theatre in New York in the seventies;  there were lines around the block, as most of these films had long been unavailable.

It's always a question what point this kind of documentary makes:  if people have never heard of Buster Keaton will they watch this documentary and, even if they do, will they seek out his films?  If one has seen all of Keaton's great films is there anything to be gained by watching Bogdanovich's tribute?  Two inevitable quibbles I have:  the first is that the film emphasizes the brilliance of the gags in Keaton's films at the expense of their role in the narrative and, secondly, Bogdanovich goes out of his way to tell us how funny something is before he shows it to us.  Even if it is funny I can decide that for myself.  Bogdanovich also has little or nothing to say about the beauties of Keaton's films, which are considerable, even if one doesn't find them particularly funny.

Still, Bogdanovich's excerpts from Keaton's films are  well chosen, just as the ones from Chaplin's films were when Bogdanovich put them together for the Oscar broadcast in 1972, when Chaplin received his honorary Academy Award.  When the Chaplin excerpts were shown, however, most of Chaplin's films were unavailable and I think the overwhelming response to that Oscar broadcast was a factor in Chaplin allowing them to again be shown (at that point only The Gold Rush,1925, was available, somehow it had fallen into the public domain).  Fortunately Turner Classic Movies screened a number of Keaton's films along with Bogdanovich's documentary. Keaton's films have long been available (on DVD as well as often shown at Film Forum in New York) and one can only wonder if Bogdanovich's loving tribute will provoke increased interest.