Videotape Box Set Shows Buster At His Best

Buster Keaton was born 100 years ago this fall, and the best way to celebrate would be to find a theater showing his movies. If that isn’t possible, you can, at long last, watch his best work on video.

Keaton’s film catalog was tied up for years through wrangling over his estate. Now, Kino on Video has issued a three-volume box set, much of which has never been available in this format.

Included are all the shorts and feature-length silents, usually running about an hour, that Keaton made as an independent creator. Also included is “The Saphead,” a feature in which he starred before going into production for himself.

Keaton fans need no explanation for why they should check out this compilation. For nonfans, three reasons are offered:

The Keaton look: “his haunting, handsome, almost beautiful” face, as James Agee described it. Keaton was a small, dark-haired man with pale skin, a thin, unsmiling mouth and a slanted forehead that merged seamlessly into his Roman nose.

The Keaton style: Seen in still photographs, Keaton suggests a rather remote, passive figure. In moving pictures, he turns out to be a marvelous, fearless athlete who performed his own, dangerous stunts and set up the shots to make sure you knew it.

The Keaton mind set: alienated, absurdist, apocalyptic, contending with the very extremes fate has to offer.

Everything in this box set is worth watching, but a handful of other films deserve special mention:

“The Navigator” (1924) - Keaton stars as an idle rich kid stranded on a drifting ocean liner. As it turns out, the girl who had just turned down his proposal of marriage also is on board.

Like Chaplin and the other great clowns, Keaton had a genius for sight gags and manipulating props. In one scene, he’s underwater, trying to dislodge the ship. He sets up a MEN AT WORK sign, uses a lobster’s claws as pliers and fights off one swordfish by using the beak of another.

Sherlock Jr. (1924) - Keaton was a show business child and he enjoyed exploring the relationship between fantasy and reality. In the magical “Sherlock Jr.” he plays a projectionist who dreams he has entered the movie he is showing, “Hearts and Pearls.”

Woody Allen used a similar storyline for “The Purple Rose of Cairo,” but nothing he did compares to the sequence in which Buster jumps into the screen and is bedeviled by the changing backdrops of the movie in progress.

Seven Chances (1925) - Keaton didn’t want to make this film, based on an old Broadway flop about a man who can inherit a large fortune if he marries that night. Fortunately, Keaton added his own touches.

Unsuccessful in finding a mate, Keaton is told by friends that they will place an ad in the newspaper: All he has to do is show up at the church. It’s empty when he arrives and, exhausted from his long day, he falls asleep on a pew in front.

Upon awakening, he finds the church packed with would-be brides. Keaton tries to escape and the chase is on, capped by an astonishing sequence in which he races down a hill, loosens a rock and finds himself in the midst of an avalanche, eluding boulders of all sizes with the skill of a running back in the open field.

If pathos was at the heart of Chaplin’s work, terror was at the heart of Keaton’s. Only Keaton could have dreamed up such a scenario, and only Keaton could have summoned the athletic skills to pull it off.

This is the very peak of film comedy.

MEMO: Volumes 1 and 3 of the box set each have three cassettes and sell for a suggested retail price of $79.95 each. Volume 2 has four cassettes and sells for $109.95. Individual cassettes have a suggested price of $29.95. If your store doesn’t carry the Keaton videos, they can be ordered from Kino at 1-800-562-3330.