So Funny It Hurt Buster Keaton

So Funny It Hurt: Buster Keaton & MGM

A Turner Classic Movies (TCM) documentary about Keaton's discontented human relationship with MGM and the events that eventually led to his career downfall.

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Buster Keaton: So Funny It Hurt!

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Chaplin may have been kicked out and exiled, plumbing equipment his tramp persona, and that'south certainly one kind of hell, but I call back being trapped on the within, asked to perform in what you fundamentally don't agree with over and over (in three or four languages to boot) is a worse kind of hell and Buster's resigned, withered face in that subsequently review-- with what looked like tears in his optics, says everything and more. That it happened to the comedian with the Great Stone Face up is all the more ironic.

Often documentaries skip over and birthday stop earlier someone's downfall. This one shows you the trainwreck. It'south painful. Only necessary.

All I know is, Buster, that looked similar some kind of hell.

Buster as a clown puppet in a talkie while people express joy on in ignorance is an image of abject horror and I am non and volition never be fully prepared to watch that picture.
My dad wanted to know a scrap more about the guy for some reason, so he recorded this brusque doc. Unfortunately, this brief picture just covers Keaton'southward pitiful life afterward his heyday had already past, largely looking at the films released past him after the invention of sound. It goes into his failed marriage, naming a few of the people he had affairs with, and and so lists some of his remaining successes as a gag designer and side-grapheme actor.

The whole flick railroads through the major events of Keaton'due south life, only outside of a single recording they had of Keaton in his retirement, the viewer learns side by side to nil nigh the histrion or well-nigh anything influential he did. Instead, information technology…
Yes, I did weep. Next question.
A surprisingly shallow medico almost Buster'due south heartbreaking sojourn at MGM, in which the great historian and filmmaker Kevin Brownlow seems more preoccupied with clever visual segues than emotional truth. There are a few neat observations though, and some extraordinary clips, including a tourist'due south home video of Buster shooting The Cameraman on location in New York City, Crimson Skelton's subsequent rendering of a now lost scene from that classic film, and footage of Keaton delivering dialogue in Spanish and Italian equally his joyless, inert MGM talkies were retooled for strange audiences.
I know I normally requite motion picture documentaries very loftier ratings when others don't, but I just love them so much. They're and then comforting to me, and a complete joy. This was made for TCM in 2004 and is a really great expect at the history of Buster Keaton after he infamously signed with MGM in 1928. After making The Cameraman for them that twelvemonth with artistic control, he never got that aforementioned kind of ability again. MGM was an oiled motorcar that required yous to adjust or get out of the way. Buster'due south mode of shooting was very hectic and non planned out but that'due south how he worked. They were but not made for each other and unfortunately i wonders what would take happened had he not signed with them. A nifty documentary that's a must sentry for Buster Keaton fans.
how do i get to the alternate universe where buster didn't sign with MGM and lived a full and happy life with full artistic control over his films? i don't like the 1 we're living in now :(
on the Criterion Collection Blu-ray for "The Cameraman"
Watched at dwelling on The Criterion Aqueduct.
Solid if partisan summary of Keaton'southward failed acclimation to MGM every bit information technology slid into the sound era. I would yet like to see a serious documentary virtually the Beach Party movies, including Keaton'due south involvement, because there is probably an interesting story to be told there.
Skillful Lord, this short TCM doc was depressing but I was fascinated by it and learned a lot. Buster Keaton was essentially completely washed upwardly by 1932! He wrote and gave material to the Marx Brothers and Red Skelton. He was in a comedy duo with Jimmy Durante and was drunk onscreen for most of it. He was shooting movies he didn't wanna brand past the end of his MGM stint three to four times! For different linguistic communication dubs as he could speak French, Spanish, and German and would shoot the same movie multiple times with different speaking casts! Insanity! He resented Abbot and Costello and the Marx Brothers because they rushed things into product without planning everything out and…
Seems kind of facile. I don't know.