TCM at 12:30am: Charles F. Riesner & Buster Keatons STEAMBOAT BILL, JR. (1928) is the best place to begin an introduction to the greatest natural filmmaker of the silent era. STEAMBOAT BILL, JR. is Keatons most entertaining balance of the instinctual and the cerebral in a tale of father worship, young love, abject humiliation, and heroic redemption. Anticipating a pointed gag about the missing porkpie hat, Keatons vulnerably appealing character enters as a college dandy with a foppish mustache and a silly beret. Because the sentiments about a naive son wanting to prove himself to a dread patriarch are so true, the heros abasement into a hapless babe is all the more mortifying. The movie climaxes in the most epic of screen disasters, the famous cyclone finale. Keatons feats of daring in proving himself display a grace and coolness of calculation that makes the movies official he-men seem like so many sarsaparilla sippers.
Posted on: Tue, 01 Apr 2014 23:33:52 +0000