Buster Keaton, Silent Clown
Joseph Frank Keaton, known as Buster Keaton, is an American filmmaker, comedian and actor. He acquired the name Buster after falling down a long staircase without getting a single injury. He grew up performing on a stage since his family had a travelling show. Keaton’s passage to fame came from his entrance into the film industry and because of his experience on stage he was a natural at creating silent comedy.
During the 1920s Keaton created many silent films and his work is still seen influencing modern day filmmakers. He has said about his dislike towards over using title-cards and compared to the 240 average title cards used, he only ever used a maximum of 56. He preferred to tell the story through visuals and believed action was the only way to communicate something to an audience.
Keaton did many stunts in his films and tried to never do the same action twice because “every single fall, was an opportunity for creativity”. Along with dangerous stunts, Keaton involved many magic tricks in his films all to serve the joke trying to be made. He used cinematography and mise-en-scene to help create the gags seen in his films. A great example is camera angles; Keaton uses camera angles to make each gag work. A joke can instantly be better if viewed from a different perspective.
The world Keaton creates in his films are much like Cartoons (which came after Keaton) in where his worlds are governed by no law and even physics can be broken in order to make a joke. However, Keaton’s world only takes into account what is visible on camera, this allows him to create jokes that are funny but dont logically make any sense. The magic tricks seen in his films are some of his most creative jokes. Keaton still found it difficult to introduce these magic tricks into his films as he thought it broke too many rules in his world.
To create more natural jokes for his feature length films, he improvised many scenes and said “as a rule, about 50% you have in your mind before you start the picture, and the rest you develop as your making it.” To create realism he never faked a gag meaning everything seen in his films is real. The joke almost came from an audience trying to understand how he even did something. Though, this came at a high cost and a lot of effort but to Keaton it was worth it.