In 1928, Buster Keaton was wrapping up an astounding decade of independent filmmaking, seemingly with another decade or two stretched out before him. But circumstances conspired to bring his remarkable string of sterling comedies to a premature end. During production on his tenth feature film,Steamboat Bill, Jr., Keaton's marriage ended in bitter divorce and Joseph Schenk, Keaton's producer and brother-in-law, sold his contract to MGM, a move that would render silent comedy's most innovative auteur a mere shift worker in Hollywood's largest cinema assembly line. And with the talkies just around the corner, it's no wonder that Keaton's loss of personal and professional autonomy should lead to a fierce bout of alcoholism and steep career decline.
The great clown's depression is on clear display in Steamboat Bill's — and indeed the silent era's — most spectacular stunt, in which Buster stands motionless as gale-force winds bring a thousand-pound wall crashing down around him, the frame of a second-floor window passing neatly over his head and around his shoulders, leaving him stunned but unscathed. Keaton's crew tried to dissuade him from performing the stunt; the photographer cranked the camera with his eyes averted, and the co-director refused to take part at all, taking refuge in a nearby tent while praying for Keaton's soul.
Keaton's career had reached an artistic if not commercial peak a couple of years earlier with The General, his Civil War comedy masterpiece. It was an expensive production that made relatively little profit and drew mixed reviews, prompting Schenk to require Keaton to make a markedly less ambitious follow-up. Keaton kept costs down on his next few films, including Steamboat Bill, saving his money for a lavish finish in which a hurricane wreaks havoc on River Junction. It's a remarkable sequence of daring stunts and comedic destruction, providing a climactic conclusion to Keaton's independent career, one that would, unfortunately, foreshadow the stormy times that lay ahead for him.
1928. 70 minutes. $29.95. www.kino.com.
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