He is a super comedian, but his "smiling" face is never seen in the camera. An expressionless stone face was his trademark.
He was short, but he could climb high buildings, and in the most dangerous places, he used an extremely flexible posture to jump up and down, creating absurd jokes. Let people suddenly release in tension to cause a strong comedic effect, hilarious all over the audience.
He's the "cold-faced laugher" – Buster Keaton. His classic works, such as "The General", "Sherlock Holmes II", etc., have brought great influence to later films.
This comedy master of the same period as Chaplin may not have had a loud name in China. But in Europe, Keaton's films are preserved in the National Film Archive in Paris, and the British Film Society in London is also very popular, and Berliners even hold the "Buster Keaton" film festival for him. It can be seen that he has an unshakable position in the movie.
We pray to heaven, please give us laughter.
Heaven has taken care of us and sounded the clarion call of comedy.
Born a soul that focuses on the creation of films.
An ordinary acrobatic troupe, Keaton drove in.
<h1>Born for deduction</h1>
Keaton Jr.'s parents are jugglers, perhaps genetically, and this mischievous child has shown super resistance to beatings from an early age. Eighteen months later, he rolled down the stairs on the second floor unharmed. Slightly older, he accidentally slipped his hand into the rack where the clothes were dried, and broke his finger. The amputation had just been done, and I couldn't help but be curious to see the tornado again, and I was almost swept away by the wind. Four-year-olds came on stage, like props, were thrown around by their parents during performances, becoming an element of their show. And all of this, he has long seen and enjoyed it.
Perhaps this is the way he explores the world and the stage with his body movements, sowing the seeds of his own artistic performance. Let him later complete several classics that are unsurpassable in the history of cinema without computer stunts.
At the age of 22, Keaton joined the film company of Roscoe Abaquel, who had worked with Chaplin, and starred in fourteen comedy films. During this period, Keaton borrowed photographic equipment and constantly studied shooting techniques, not only growing into a superb comedian, but also a rare screenwriter and director. [Seven Chances] in 1925, a work in which Keaton was also a writer, director, actor, producer, and editor, so the film had a very smooth stylistic rhythm and highlighted Keaton's comprehensive talent. His cells are filled with comedy stories, and new inspirations are always on the horizon.
Leo McCarré, director of "The Golden League," once said, "Keaton is undoubtedly the luckiest of all of us trying to extract experience from other people's works, because he always comes up with the best comedy."
From 1923 to 1929, he filmed a number of comedy masterpieces such as "Hospitality", "Sherlock Holmes II", "The General", "Photographer" and so on, but the best time lasted only six years, and then Keaton joined MGM, everything was subject to the company's arrangement, for him who was good at improvisation and free creation, he was tied up. Although he has been working hard and making movies all his life, the most tense time is gone. But what does it matter, there are not many classics he creates.
Decades later, keaton's films such as The General were re-examined for its value, and famed director Orson Wells praised The General as the greatest comedy and inner-faceted film, as well as a great silent film.
In an era without computer effects, a real steam train performs crash shots
Keaton continued to play a residual heat for the art of cinema even into his old age. Although the era that belonged to him has passed, he has never stopped exploring movies. It also never fell behind the times. The admiration and admiration for him did not diminish in the slightest. Until three months before his death, when keaton was invited to the Venice Film Festival, journalists lined up all night in the harbor to see the masters.
At that time, Keaton was still full of creative desire and fighting spirit in an interview: "I feel that I will never die."
Keaton is not so much a persistent love of film as he is a man born for this cause, and the film penetrates into the blood and bones, and follows the path of his life.
<h1>Perform with your life</h1>
Mention of performing with life, we will think of Jackie Chan, bold and desperate is his characteristics, the action is crisp and sharp, jumping bridge, jumping car, jumping off the building, this performance style is extremely dangerous, but it can instantly grab the audience's heart, in fact, this is not Jackie Chan's exclusive, kung fu superstar inspiration is "Buster Keaton". Remember Jackie Chan's jump in "Red Fan District"? Known as the "cut off son", Keaton predates him by 72 years. So with the life to act this, Keaton is the grandfather.
Keaton asked the photographer not to stop the machine. Just like when filming "Three Ages", the whole process of Keaton's jumping mistake was recorded, and it didn't look like a mistake at all, perfect, thrilling, natural, hilarious.
No stand-ins, no special effects, not even protection. The whole performance process was completed inadvertently and unexpectedly. So all his shots are coherent shots that refuse to be edited, one shot to the end.
Keaton believes that all humor should be pure and natural, and if the shot cannot be completed in a natural state, it means that the meme is not qualified. The most fascinating thing about him is that he can improvise without warning when doing all kinds of comedic actions, and use complex accidents to highlight the sense of comedy, which is amazingly effective. He admired this kind of brilliance, even desperately, but the people who worked with Keaton sweated for him, and they felt that Keaton "it is a miracle that he can survive every movie."
Keaton in the movie, constantly taking risks, trying new moves, filming "Three Times" to break a broken car,
During the filming of Sherlock Holmes II, he was drenched in a huge water sprayer, and he did not know that his neck was injured, and a few years later the doctor examined that the neck was fractured.
In the filming of Captain II, Keaton needed to stand in the storm, the two-ton two-story building fell from the top of his head, and his head and body had to be accurately protruded from the window, which was again desperate.
This desperate samurai constantly provides the audience with breathtaking comedy shots in a dangerous way. In that era, without the help of computer special effects, every shot was fighting for their lives, and every performance carried a spirit of sacrifice and selflessness. The excellence in the camera and the performance made him almost forget that he was also flesh and blood.
<h1>The source of comedy in the history of cinema</h1>
Keaton received the Academy Award for Lifetime Achievement in 1960. 12 years before Chaplin. Unlike Chaplin, who pays more attention to the delicate emotions of small characters, Keaton pays more attention to action stunts. Keaton's role was usually that of the wealthy, powerful, and status middle class. When Chaplin reveals his attachment to the pre-Industrial Revolution in the film, Keaton has fallen madly in love with the era of the machine, and even the props he participated in making are full of mechanical feelings.
A comedian does something funny, while a good comedian does things in a funny way.
—Buster Keaton
Keaton felt more exploring the use of cinematic techniques than Chaplin had to explore. The laugh points in Keaton's films often require the audience to focus their entire attention on the picture, and every visual detail has been designed with the utmost care.
Keaton's performance is full of passion, he emphasizes the skill of action and the grandeur of large-scale mechanical Taoist dramas, and the improvisational performance brings the audience a sudden shock, thus highlighting the tension of the characters and triggering people's inner joy.
The key element of Keaton's comedy is the body movements. In the silent film era when actors do not speak, movies are the performance of stories. And the story Keaton performs is like a spectacle. Many people look at Keaton's work today, and you will find that it is not an exaggeration to say that it is one of the most influential and far-reaching people in the history of world cinema.
Lincoln said: "Brilliant geniuses disdain to follow a path that others have taken. He searched for areas that had not yet been explored. "Keaton is such a genius.
Many of the brain-hole shots you see are his inventions half a century ago.
The Voyager, made in 1924, only added some soundtrack 42 years later and still sold out.
Half a century ago, Keaton had driven the train out of the car. With a top speed of 60 mph (about 96.5 km/h), that's the real speed and excitement.
Jackie Chan had a scene of jumping the bell tower in the movie "Plan A", inspired by Keaton's 1923 film "The Last Security". Jackie Chan also imitated Keaton's film footage in "Plan A 2".
The terrier used by Star Master also borrowed from Keaton's invention. Looking at Keaton's films now, it is still a high-level existence. Inspire a sense of pleasure in the audience's heart.
Stories of little people becoming heroes. Now we call it "anti-routine".
Like in The General, which combines absurdity, death, pain, and sacrifice, we now call it "black humor."
All kinds of accidental hits, surprises, watching for one second, do not know what will happen in the next second, jumping waterfalls can also be rescued by the way of girlfriends similar shots, now we call "nonsense".
In his eyes "tragedy is a close-up, comedy is a long shot." "All of his shots are coherent shots that refuse to be edited, one shot to the end. A lot of design is like a stroke of genius. He deeply grasps the psychological principles that use to make the audience laugh: to release people's inner tension and anxiety. The thrill of a false alarm makes the audience obsessed.
In addition to comedy, later generations also paid tribute to Keaton in various blockbuster shots:
Buster Keaton pursues not only the originality of the jokes, but also the overall appreciation level of the audience in the story structure. Today, a hundred years later, we enjoy his films on the screen with crank cameras, and you can still feel the vivid and endless creative charm of this rushing face.
God said, there will be light, and then there will be light.
That's the greatness of creativity.
The same goes for Buster Keaton.
True master of originality,
Inspiration for the cinematic era.
Where did he get his inspiration?
Is it knowledge? Is it experience?
Is it a breakthrough in thinking? Is it a leap of consciousness?
unknown
Humanity has not yet found a way to control the generation of inspiration.
Perhaps, it was a dream of his...