Buster Keaton on Blu-ray: THE SHORT FILMS COLLECTION 1920-1923

So far at ScreenAnarchy, we've gone through all of Buster Keaton's features so far released on Blu-ray, now it's time for some shorts. Back in August Kino released The Short Films Collection, a complete collection of Buster's shorts from 1920-1923.  These films are important because they mark the transition point after which Buster successfully moved into features.  In these films you can see many of his trademark gags being worked out on a small scale before being eventually elaborated upon in later films.  These films also illustrate many of Buster's favorite recurring gags, including the police chase, different train gags, and large scale destruction gags.  Kino has lovingly restored these shorts, nineteen in all clocking in at around 8 hours, and presented them in high definition with a pile of great bonus features.  This collection is worth its weight in gold and belongs in every comedy fan's collection.

Authorized by the Buster Keaton estate and mastered in HD from 35mm archival film elements, The Short Films Collection gathers all of Keaton's solo silent comedies in one monumental three-disc set. Widely considered to be among Keaton's finest work, the nineteen two-reel shorts are loaded with laughs, punctuated by breath-taking stunts, and bursting with raw creativity. Over the course of this three-year period, Keaton evolved from a successful slapstick comedian into one of cinema's most inventive visual stylists, and became an enduring icon of American popular culture.

Because there are so many features, I'm going to focus my energy on my favorite few, but trust me when I say that there is not a stinker in the bunch.

One Week: At the opening of this film, Buster gets married and receives a plot of land and a home as a wedding gift.  The home comes in a large box with a set of instructions, Buster sets off to work and shenanigans ensue.  This film is incredibly ambitious for the time and the relatively small scale that a short film requires.  Keaton had an entire house built on a revolving foundation so that the whole thing could spin in a wind storm. He packs more gags into this 24 minute short than most feature length films can manage today, and every single one of them is a keeper.  One Week may be my favorite in the set, but I'm sure I'll say that about at least a couple of others before this review is done

Hard Luck: Keaton opens the film as a hard up young man who has just lost his job and wants to end it all.  This sad beginning leads to a hilarious extended sequence of Buster repeatedly attempting to commit suicide in numerous ways and repeatedly failing miserably. This sequence is incredible and worth the price of admission by itself, but the film takes a complete 180 degree turn when Buster, thinking he is drinking poison, accidentally swigs some whiskey and gains some bravery.  After this, he becomes an adventurer and man of will, chasing down armadillos, foxes, and fishing.  More gags, of course, follow, all perfect in the way that only Keaton could execute them.  Unfortunately, the film's final sequence is missing, and we are left to ponder what could have been from some production stills and descriptions of the scene.

The Goat: This is one of the great Keaton films, it combines his love of trains and his affinity for massive police chases all in one great mash up.  While peering through the window of a jail from the outside, Buster is mistakenly photographed as murderer Dead Shot Dan and chased all over town by a cadre of police in the grandest fashion.  For every one he outsmarts, three pop up in his place.  The gag continues to the point of absurdity with the entire police force eventually chasing him down.  This is all punctuated with more sight gags, pratfalls, and crazy stunts than you could shake a stick at.  Hitchcock, eat your Wrong Man heart out!

The Play House: This is one of the most inventive short films ever made, and often imitated by the many Keaton copycats at the time.  Buster falls asleep and dreams of a theater act consisting of only himself, but many times over.  Buster plays every member of the pit orchestra, he plays all three members of a dance troupe. Everywhere you look you see The Great Stoneface.  This must have been something of a technological step back in 1921, and it still looks good today. The gags in this film are mostly to do with Buster's ability to perform multiple roles, including that of a performing chimp, with equal ease.  His physical grace suits this film well and makes it one of the all time greats.

The Electric House: This film took Keaton's love of physical gags to new heights when he's called upon to rig a new-fangled house with all sorts of electrical gadgetry.  Everything, and I do mean everything, backfires on him and the resulting film is 23 minutes of non-stop crazy stunts and gags.  The film featured an electric staircase, which we'd now recognize as your average escalator, but which was a bit unusual then, especially for a personal home. One of the film's lengthier gags takes place as Keaton runs against the stairs, and when it was initially filmed, he actually broke his leg doing the stunt.  He later came back and reshot the entire film, and it is glorious.

The Balloonatic: This is another of Keaton's gag films, a 22 minute parade of visual punchlines that never gets less hilarious. Buster gets caught on top of a balloon, flies in to the wilderness, builds a kayak, saves a maiden, gets saved by a maiden, and on and on.  It is almost the exact opposite of the practically technophobic Electric House, but just as funny, and with even more classic gags.  If One Week isn't my favorite of the shorts, this one certainly is.

That is only about a quarter of the films involved here, and all of the rest have something to offer, I was never disappointed by any of them.  Having seen several Keaton films at this point, I can say that every one of these shorts is at least better than Go West. This collection is maddeningly awesome, and 9 of the finest hours I've ever spent sitting in one place.  I cannot recommend this enough.

The Discs:

Kino has taken films that range from 88-91 years old and given them new life with this collection.  All of the shorts are presented in the best condition possible, which is sometimes pretty rough, but they are all perfectly watchable.  The images are very lively and very filmlike in a way that just wasn't possible on DVD.  Several of the films have "enhanced" viewing options, but all this does is show the film with selective noise reduction applied.  I prefer the more raw look that Kino offers. The soundtracks for these shorts are fantastic as well, in fact, the quality of these accompaniments outshines at least a couple of the tracks on the feature discs that Kino offers.  Accompanists Ben Model and Robert Israel provide most of the backing music tracks and they are all outstanding.

As far as the extras are concerned, you can look below at the list, it is very impressive. Each of the three discs offers anywhere from 4-6 visual essays covering different aspects of Keaton and the films.  Some cover the differences in intertitles, some cover the problems with sourcing elements from the four corners of the earth to recreate complete films, one deals with the evolution of a background score for a short film, and several deal with Keaton's recurring motifs.  These visual essays average around 6-8 minutes and are all very watchable.

In addition to those, there are several brief excerpts and compilations with short clips of Keaton and other contemporaries in their primes.  These are interesting because the often show thematic continuity between Keaton's shorts and the newly expanding world of film comedy and how often he was imitated or just plain ripped off in those early days. Rounding out the set is an 8 page booklet that begins with an essay from Keaton biographer Jeffrey Vance, and includes synopses of all 19 shorts included.

This is an essential piece of film history. You want this.  You need this. You owe it to yourself.