Great Stone Face

Saw the wonderfully hysterical Our Hospitality (1923) at the National Film Theatre this afternoon - a rejuvenated print accompanied, at the side of the screen, by a live, improvised piano score by Andrew Youdell. Both adults and children in the audience were in stitches all the way through this feature-length adventure movie about a man who falls in love with the daughter of his late father's mortal enemy.

Even though Charlie Chaplin's Gold Rush (1925) is one of my all time favourite movies, it is the humour of Great Stone Face - Buster Keaton - that gives me the most satisfying pleasure. Unlike Chaplin, Keaton eschewed sentimentality and happy endings for bitterness, dejection, even death. His characters are existential heroes, deadpanning their way through stoic lives. He was the most silent of silent movie stars.

His biographer, Edward McPherson:

"Keaton was a man who prized subtlety and understood meaning in the flick of an eye, a momentary hesitation, a shift in weight, a motion half-begun. He underscored the big screen spectacle (cyclones, avalanches, stampedes) with the perfectly underplayed detail."

The NFT is fast becoming my favourite venue for movie-watching and I'm incredibly excited that it will be hosting, again, many of the films showing at the upcoming 48th London Film Festival (20 October - 4 November). October's going to be a busy month.

Right, I'm now going to spend the rest of the evening watching all my Buster DVDs. Uncork the wine and unwrap the Maltesers!

Related links:
+ How to make a porkpie hat
+ The International Buster Keaton Society
+ IMDb biography

Other links today:
+ Excuse me, can I have your seat, please? Subway etiquette and morality.
+ The history of the "ethnic" restaurant in Britain